JeanneCake

If they haven't already suggested some type of reimbursement for the time/space, you might offer that with every coffee shop purchase above X dollars, you'll give a percentage off of a purchase of your product (bring your receipt showing a $20 or more purchase and receive 10% off your chocolate purchase ).... that encourages people to spend more with them and with you.

Robot Coupe US has a website that will make suggestions for which model fits your needs based on your answers/selections to their questions. I think it's possible for you to use a consumer model food processor but if you are going to make that much date paste on a daily basis, just realize the unit might not last as long as you think. And you can, in the meantime, be saving up to buy the commercial model. Robot Coupe suggested models

In the quantity you want to do (10kg) each day, I would suggest investing in a commercial-grade machine; you will burn out a home-use food processor within a few months and you'll have to spend more money to replace it. perhaps you can find a gently-used Robot Coupe at a restaurant supply or auction.

There's an article on Serious Eats that talks about some of the reasons why blooming is appropriate; I think it depends more on what you're making. I've seen hard bits of undissolved gelatin in marshmallows before so for those, the recommendation to bloom the gelatin is significant (as well as the fact that the liquid used to bloom the gelatin is part of the recipe and can't be omitted).

I used to make the graham cracker dough from one of Maida Heatter's books and use that to line the pie plate; she does exactly this for one of her pies in another book. You can also use the recipe on the King arthur site (i dont use the cinnamon and my motto is you cant possibly use too much sugar for sprinkling on them.) Enjoy!

I love to bring either the lentil salad from The Way to Cook (Julia) or the Sweet Potato Salad from Thrill of the Grill (Chris Schlesinger); both are fantastic, hold well at rm temp and generate recipe requests The tomato dish reminds me of the Tomato Pie in one of Laurie Colwin's essays (in More Home Cooking); it's a biscuit crust in a pie plate, lined with thinly sliced fresh or best quality canned tomatoes, minced garlic, shredded cheese and topped with the rest of the biscuit. She says it's fantastic when reheated so the cheese is just melty enough.... I might have to have my own pot luck so I can try some of these, they look and sound wonderful!

I am indulging in my latest obsession, Hobnobs. I've loved Digestive biscuits for years and covering them with milk or dark chocolate is, to my taste, wonderful!

I sometimes wonder if it has to do with the amount of dough at the bottom edge of the pan - you roll it or pat it into place and it's possible that you can make that join thicker (stronger)? This sounds like a question for Kitchen Arts and Letters! Or Nick Malgieri. (I was going to say Fred Bridge or Natch Waxman but sadly they are no longer with us

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I had to look up what SteakUmm is/was because I've never even had a cheesesteak sub (If I'm going to have "steak" it's going to be STEAK and not a facsimilie in any way shape or form). I found a very old article about a Steak-Umm mobile truck going around DC suburbs. What you didn't know about SteakUmm This part made me think it's SPAM but with beef: Say your visit to the Steak-umm truck is so inspiring that you pick up a box. There’s more to do with them then craft a drunk food Philly cheesesteak. Stick Steak-umm in fajitas, quiches, egg rolls, stromboli, Sloppy Joes, shepherd’s pie, breakfast burritos, and chili. I've never had SPAM either, I live a sheltered life I am, however, VERY familiar with Nathan's

I am going to hazard a guess that the apartment kitchen will have an automatic dishwasher - but consider how often you'll run it and you might want to keep place settings of dishes/glassware/cutlery for 8 so you don't have to wash something every time you use it. We've basically given up on our outdoor Weber grill in favor of the Philips infrared grill; it's the perfect size for one or two people IMHO (if you ask my son though he would tell you it should be bigger or that we need a second one!). So if you like grilled food, this is a good tool to have. Agree with what Orbit and Liamsaunt recommended; I would suggest a muffin tin as well (it can be used for baked goods as well as making individual frittatas or meatloaf. I would say to do a 12" saute pan if you have a choice, as well as a small one if you want to make scrambled eggs or an omelet for one. You might want to keep a hand mixer if you have one, but I wouldn't go buy one if you didn't. A whisk is helpful too. A blender can be useful for pureeing soups, making sauces (peanut sauce!) and crushing ice for drinks but to be honest the only thing we use ours for now is to make peanut sauce. Well, the kid uses it for smoothies so there's that. Consider how you will store leftovers, how you will store grains/flour/nuts if you use those - as Jo says, Rubbermaid is great for that. Good luck, and congrats on your own space!

Indeed!

This is just wrong. Kind of like when TV shows "share" a cast and do a crossover episode that usually comes off very contrived 😆 Pretty soon they'll pair oreos with pretzels. Or potato chips. Or cheez-its.

Indeed, what a treasure! Enjoy every minute of reading it. So interesting to read and discover how life was different then, how far we've come and how far we haven't ....

That is a lovely cake, @Kim Shook! If you really want to gild the lily @AKS613 you could cover this with green marzipan, put a fresh pink rose in the center and call it a Princess Cake (Traditionally a Princess Cake is a dome of whipped cream on top of the second cake layer but the inspiration is there).

cream cheese is sweeter and somewhat dense by comparison to swiss meringue. You're layering a lot of almond in there and the raspberry is a nice tart counterpoint to it. You could just do vanilla bean swiss meringue, you don't really need the white chocolate IMHO. We don't use cream cheese frosting for the exterior of a cake because it has a tendency to pull up crumbs and can be frustrating to work with. When I've had to use it on the outside, I just mix it longer so the color is lighter/whiter.

You made my day! Thank you!

I have a LOT of cookbooks, probably in the upper hundreds in terms of count. I read through them like novels, I write in the ones I use most often. So for me, the book in my hands is part of the adventure (even if it is a culinary text or the compilation of essays from Laurie Colwin) and it's not the same for me scrolling through a blog on my phone or computer. The next generation feels differently I am sure. I had to go look up what an NFT is and I agree that NFTs don't add much to cookbooks. I've regretted loaning out all the cookbooks I never got back from the people who borrowed them (my original copies of Great Italian Desserts from Nick Malgieri, Jack Ubaldi's Meat Book, to name just two) so perhaps I might be coerced into buying a digital copy just so I could have the recipes again (I bought another copy of the Meat Book and I can't get another copy of Great Italian Desserts as it's out of print). The only books that have ever fallen apart on me are the ones I've used constantly - The Cake Bible, the Pie and Pastry Bible, Rose's Christmas Cookie Book, Maida Heatter's Book of Great American Desserts, Mastering the Art of French Pastry and Julia Child's Way to Cook. The books fell apart because they were *well used* so I bought second copies of them once I realized I was in danger of having to use elastic bands to hold them together!! I expect that when/if we ever downsize, I will donate my cookbooks to the library. I hope they will want them by then.

Such wonderful photography (as usual!). I have both books in my Amazon cart right now, since I needed a folding cart for work otherwise I would have gone to the local bookstore. Thank you

I don't have any experience with the machine. I did see a short video posted by Antonio Bachour two or so years ago about it; he may respond to an.email inquiry if you reached out. He travels a lot (based on his social media posts) so it may take a while to get a reply....

If you're in Jersey, then go get the pie version from Carlo's bakery and see if you like the filling and the topping; then buy one of their cakes and see if you like it. I've never had anything from Carlo's and my guess is that they (being a huge bakery/manufacturer) are likely using custom-formulated cake mixes to ensure product consistency but maybe they are making something similar to Mazur's. Then see if they make a version of this cake. The checkerboard cake is simply chocolate and vanilla cake poured into a pan (usually with an insert designed to keep the batter separate while you pour it into the pans). Maida Heatter has several cheesecakes in her various books, all of which are heavier/denser (her choc/vanilla bullseye cheesecake is dense, you can just make the whole thing vanilla if you want, Book of Great American Desserts). By contrast, Rose Levy Beranbaum's (the Cake Bible) cheesecake is light and more delicate.

What was the name of the bakery you got the California fruit cake from?

That's what I'm thinking. I subscribed to the magazines for years and I could probably try to find the (very dusty) boxes of magazines I kept ...... I don't object to subscriptions, - I don't mind paying for new content or updated content but this isn't it. I'd be paying for their upkeep (which I am sure isn't cheap) but keep what's been free, free, and charge for the new stuff......

I went looking for a recipe (google) just a moment ago, and learned that epicurious is now a subscription only service - $40/annually or $5/month. When did this happen?! I don't know that I want to spend $40 a year just to access recipes but I'm going to miss the winter root vegetables with dill recipe, and the brussels sprouts with chestnuts (I never use the chestnuts but this is a great recipe). At least I have the Havana Moon Chili recipe....

It would help if you defined what YOU think of as a delicious cupcake. I own a bakery. I have several options for topping cupcakes - ganache, American buttercream made with butter and confectioners sugar, milk, vanilla or Vegan American buttercream made with vegetable shortening, confectioners sugar, water, salt and vanilla; or Italian Meringue buttercream (our house buttercream). I have various recipes for cake - some call for butter, others use shortening, some use oil - but despite all of these choices, what I offer may not appeal to everyone. Just the other day, during a bridal consultation, the groom loved the Italian Meringue while the bride, who needed a dairy free option - thought the vegan buttercream was out of this world delicious (the groom spit it out LOL! He wasn't a fan of shortening!). So while I might tell you a recipe produces a delicious result, you might not care for it.

IMHO there are a lot of people who don't follow recipes carefully and then squawk about the results. Some recipes aren't tested enough (or by a wider skill set from novice to passionate amateur) or proofread carefully during the editing process and mistakes happen. As a method, 1234 works; does it produce a wonderful cake? That depends on how you define wonderful. If reviewers are saying what they made from the book doesn't match the shop product, that's one thing. If the recipes produced utter failures (and some recipes work, some don't) then did the reviewer try all the recipes or just a select few and give up after one or two? I remember buying Johnny Iuzzini's book and trying the coconut curd; the recipe worked but I didn't like the result. Maida Heatter tells a story about a lemon buttermilk cake that was an abject failure when made from her book; they deleted the recipe from subsequent reprints of the book; she rewrote the recipe and never did figure out what went wrong. Are you trying the recipes from these books? What is your experience with them?