JeanneCake

Well, given the track record of past winners, it seems that the FN leaves the winners high and dry after their 6 shows. Guy Fieri is the only winner who we hear from .... far too often IMHO. So maybe A&A can capitalize on a win with the restaurant? It would be a smart move....

what kind of buttercream? A meringue buttercream? Adding (quality) white chocolate increases the fat content by the addition of the cocoa butter in the white chocolate, but it also adds milk solids. It makes a meringue buttercream a little sweeter to my taste. As for helping it to hold up in warm situations, I don't think it gives you as much as a liquid shortening would. This past weekend, two of the wedding cakes I did were buttercream and I didn't have access to the refrigerated truck. Temps hit above 95 in the afternoon and I was concerned about transporting the cakes. For one, I didn't add anything to my usual merinue buttercream and it was ok. The other one, I added some hi ratio shortening (about a cup maybe? Scant cup) to about 5# meringue buttercream for the final outside frosting layer. I noticed it was easier to smooth to perfection without the usual tricks because of the added fat. But since both of the cakes were fine, I can't say one is any better than the other for regular use. For shipping a cake, can you do something like a white chocolae ganache as the outside frosting? Just pour it over the crumb coat, you might need a second coat of glaze. Maybe this would be an alternative?

Maybe you should create an inventory of equipment, just for your own use so you can refer back to it. It doesn't help with things that have already walked away, I know, but equipment leaving with staff isn't a new thing and Chef may feel that if she purchased the equipment for her own use, and was letting the store "borrow" it, that's something you need to know. Kind of like when you buy a house, you need to know do the appliances stay or go - the lighting fixtures, etc....

Congrats! Can't wait to hear the details and see the food!

Check out some catering web sites that you know and admire, look at their menus. (they don't have to be local vendors. You could find hundreds of caterers just looking at online wedding websites like Brides, The Knot, Wedding Channel; most of them will have sample menus online and that's where inspiration can strike). Even Martha Stewart's Hors D'oeuvres handbook will give you lots of ideas! Pulled pork? BBQ? some kind of smoked meat on small sweet potato biscuits (who needs those little tiny hamburgers!) Love the gazpacho idea! The always and ever present tortellini on skewers. Do wedding cake cookies as favors and encourage them to do a selection of desserts rather than a cake (she says irreverently, being a baker!) so you can show off your dessert style. (this is minutae: Most of what you would be offering could be transported in insulated Cambro units in hotel pans. Wrap everything in plastic wrap before you put it in the Cambro; this way if it tips, nothing spills beyond the plastic. And pack a panic bucket of extras - paper goods, silverware, serving utensils, etc) Wishing you and Tyler all the best in your new adventure! ETA because I can't spell

Completely, wholeheartedly agree. This train has not only wrecked the station (pun intended), but took the entire track with it. Maybe they are the reason so many of the chefs that made Food Network something to watch in the early years are gone. They aren't in touch with the viewers in any way, shape or form. I'm glad the child goes to camp next week and I don't have to sit through it.

I had to fill an order earlier this year (it was for a pastry chef who was on vacation, the remaining pastry cooks didn't want to attempt it) for chocolate beggar's purses - a molten chocolate recipe (thank you again Marilyn!) scooped into the center of a bric round, brushed very lightly with butter, and twisted the top closed. I froze these, delivered them frozen and they were baked to order (so the center would be appropriately "molten"). To help hold the shape until they were frozen solid, I used a square of foil drawn up around it. Originally I thought I'd do phyllo until the chef said it was a crepe, the crepes were too small so the feuille de bric was it. And it is so much easier to use, I would never consider using something else. The bric was flexible and easier to handle than phyllo, so if there are things you are doing with phyllo, you might give the bric a try instead.

the straws are cut with the angle of the cake, they don't really stick up. Annie was in a hurry to draw the pics because I was just about to build the cake (as in, it's Friday night and this is going out the door on Saturday). When you assemble the tiers, you watch for the angle when you're putting the next tier on top. This is where I find that the narrow bottom helps with the overall illusion - if you don't narrow the bottom, it looks odd (to me at least). I have been doing it this way for the last year, and this is very, very stable. I like building it this way because it's faster and just as stable as the other methods (BKeith's and Colette's use of styro)

You know, at first, I wondered if that was what you meant! You need the boards to support the weight of the cake tiers above. Otherwise you'll have a collapsing cake on your hands If you have a recent Colette Peters book, it has some diagrams and illustrations which will be helpful - but the Annie Method has served me very well over the last year. Especially through today's adventure - lots of Boston roads are closed due to the concert today, and my three tier Mad Hatter Birthday got bounced around pretty well on those cow paths we call streets ....

It was a powdered, instant type of drink that she was using as a coffee replacement - it might have been made from freeze-dried chicory or some other root. I don't remember anything else about it except that I tried it and didn't really care for it. But I was 12 at the time so that's not saying much It came in a jar, not a can, like ground coffee; it was probably more like instant coffee than anything else. I remember she always made it hot, as opposed to coffee which she had hot and iced. And in the summer, there was always a pot of tea cooling on the stove for iced tea. Her mother, on the other hand, always had hot water after dinner. Not tea. Not coffee. Just hot water, which I never understood. And still don't!

This made me remember the time my mother switched from her usual instant coffee to Postum in the morning. She had just won a microwave in a contest at work - the thing was enormous!! - and would use a glass mug to heat the water and add the Postum to it. I remember that smell. I wonder if they still sell Postum, I'll have to look in the supermarket for it just for old times sake! Eventually she went back to coffee. For the longest time, well into my twenties in fact, I could not stand the smell of freshly ground or brewing coffee, it would make me physically ill. Somewhere it all changed, and now I am addicted to espresso and the dark roast at Starbucks!

My first and only attack happened about 20 years ago in the big toe in my right foot. I couldn't walk and was told to stay off of it (but not advised about diet or anything else). I do remember drinking a lot of water and it cleared up within a week.

I am having trouble with the visual, sorry! But I can describe how I build a mad hatter cake and maybe that will help? For virtually all of my cakes, I use bubble tea straws (thanks to Annie) for support. For larger or especially heavy tiers, I use the plastic dowels that can be cut with a knife - they are a little larger than the bubble tea straws. As for topsy-turvy cakes, I started out doing the "cut a flat part in the bottom cake for the next one to fit in straight". That takes too long for me to do now that I have a lot more experience with this sort of design. (But if I were doing an especially large cake like that, I might do the bottom two tiers that way.) But again thanks to Annie, I have a more efficient way to assemble these, and I'm doing one a weekend now that we're in the throes of wedding season. This weekend I am doing one for a July 4 birthday. The bottom tier is a 10 and 11" round; the 10" is torted in half, the 11" is split at an angle. I will build them just like Annie does in the Baby Shower cake demo (larger one on the bottom, smaller on top, then flip them). The middle is an 8" and 9", the top is a 6" and 5". Once the cakes are assembled (before the crumb coat) I will carve it so the bottom is more narrow and smooth out the angle between the two cakes. I think with a topsy-turvy design, the bottom of the cake needs to be more narrow than the top, all the way around. Then, I crumb coat, and cover with fondant as usual. Then I put the straws in, and use melted chocolate in the middle and put the next tier on top; the chocolate sets up almost immediately and holds everything in place. Then I use three bamboo skewers through the two tiers. The top tier goes on just like the middle one. Some bakers use styro wedges to get the topsy turvy look, and this is pretty stable; they cover the wedge with flowers or make it the bottom of the cake and cover both the cake and the wedge with the fondant. But I'm not nearly so organized as that to have styro wedges made in advance

After this was on last night, Ace of Cakes was showing two new episodes. Guy Fieri was on one of them, the Charm City crew made a huge hamburger cake for his arrival. Guy says while pulling the cake toward him "hey, it's bigger than my head" Duff replies, with a laugh that seemed a little forced to me, "Nothing's bigger than your head!" How true, how true!! Guy is the only person still on FN from a past NFNS and he's a parody of a celebrity with the shows he's on. This whole premise is a gimmick, we all realize that. No one is going to go on to a successful career in food TV after this BS. These people give up a large part of their lives (how long does filming last?) to be ridiculed and then sent home. The first winners aren't around, but there's all these new shows that would have been more than suitable for some of the past contestants. Given the "success rate" of past winners, why do they think they would be different? I wish they'd show some of the people from past years, and we could learn that they've gone way beyond what they ever imagined the FN could do for them in their lives. I can't figure out why my son likes this show, but he does. I don't care for it at all, it's just beyond foolish what they have them do (and the premise of this year is so vastly different than previous years where they spent more time learning how to do a cooking show rather than prattle on describing food they didn't prepare.) At least now I know what Cat Cora is up to. How did she get the Bon Appetite gig?! Has she ever won in Iron Chef?

I've tried writing with ganache; it works - don't use it as soon as you've made it. When it is fluid (warm-ish), it works great to cover/drip down the sides of a buttercream covered cake, but that fluidity will also make the letters run as you are writing. So wait until it is cool if you use it. I also second the melt some choc and use that to write with.....

I'm going to have to see that part again... I thought she said something along the lines of she didn't care that she'd ruined the blouse but was more embarrassed that she's in front of all those people looking like a drowned rat, er, Romulan. I was really surprized by her talking about her brother serving in the armed forces in Iraq; she's never before talked about family, friends, life... I missed the part about how the order that they chose their ingredients with was decided. I wonder what else they do with their week after these challenges are taped. Are they allowed out of the asylum? I remember from last year that they weren't allowed to talk to their families for very long, if at all so what else are they doing?

But not if the company thinks the problem in the container you tried was an error; they want you to try it again so you can either confirm your original complaint or realize that the one you had was off for some unknown reason.

I think maybe that's next week. The clip was shown again at the end of this week's episode. They're on a ship cooking for the Coast Guard, I think My son is really into this show. It occurred to me yesterday while watching it (on demand) that I think it's not named correctly. This has nothing to do with being a Food Network Star. I think it should be renamed Survivor: Food Network. I think Kelsey is natural - I think she's by nature a happy go lucky person and that's probably due to her youth. She hasn't been around long enough to get burned and become cynical Same with Shane. I hated The Romulan (god, that is so apt!!) the first time I saw the show but after last night's episode, I can see how she's loosening up and is starting to show her cooking chops. Thank goodness she dropped that food philosophy thing cause I sure didn't get it either.

If the real issue for you is you didin't think the level of service matched the charge, why did you not take the lead at the time you paid? You didn't give her the bill and your cash and say, "we're not happy about the gratuity being added to the bill without prior notice. The gratuity is short 87 cents, and we're not inclined to make it up since we didn't feel the service tonight warranted 20%." Instead, you waited for her to figure it out and then you're telling us you kept your composure as you responded to her? Sounds like you were spoiling for a fight... Did you really not expect her to say anything to you?

white corn syrup is fine. be sure to pay attention to how long to beat the yolks and the temp of the butter; if your buttercream is thin it could be the butter was too soft or the yolks not beaten sufficiently.

I have all the books you listed, and then some by RLB. I've tried at least a third of the cake recipes from The Cake Bible, and all of them worked for me. I use her buttercream recipes almost but not quite exclusively (scaled up a lot, though!). I've' tried most of the tart recipes (but not the tart dough, I have my own favorite, thanks to Chefpeon!) and had no problems either. I haven't made anything from the bread book, though. If you are used to baking by weight rather than measure, her books are a joy (no converting); you cannot mix the measure method with weight (you weigh the flour but measure out the sugar, for example) because that can cause a problem (a cup of all purpose flour can weigh 4.5 or 5 ounces depending on whether you dip into the container or sift it or spoon it in. Multiply that by 3 cups of flour and you've got either an overage of 1.5 ounces or are short 1.5 ounces. This could be a contributing factor if a recipe doesn't work.) Having said that, if you are off just a little, the recipe will most likely work but may be a little dry or too moist or whatever. It won't be an utter failure unless you really mess things up! She has a baking blog that maintains a list of all the errors in all the books. Rose's Baking Blog If you are precise, you will like the way it is written; if you are very casual about measuring/baking, it may not be a good fit for your style. maybe you can borrow one from the library and see how it works for you. BTW, there's a new version of the Cake Bible coming out next year.

Chefpeon had a recipe from Epicurious for Stout cake (the same one probably as the one Danielle Lauer mentions above); I've made it and also found it to be not too chocolatey but very sturdy and excellent for scupting cake into various shapes and forms. I use my favorite Felchlin's cocoa powder, though; which tends to be intense (much more than Hershey's, Droste and the other one that Williams Sonoma sells whose name I can't remember exactly. Not Valhrona though.) so even though I didn't think of it as very chocolatey, it was probably more so than with another brand of cocoa. To my taste, the beer highlighted some bitter notes (not unpleasant).

Wow. THUMP.... (That was me swooning after all the wonderful produce and excellent food, and falling off the chair). I used to live near Gramercy Park and Irving Place, thanks for the pix!

I start by rubbing the pot with a cut lemon before I start (don't leave any of the membranes in, those will burn); usually I do it dry - no water, no corn syrup, just the lemon and the sugar. Just as Tri2Cook says, it will burn underneath in spots and still be dry in others if you pile in all the sugar at once. Maida Heatter suggested in one of her books to start with just some of the sugar, and sprinkle in the rest as it began to liquefy, and that works well.

Square cake pans - the corners. The FLOOR. I hate mopping the floor. I so hate mopping the floor that the last two places I rented (shared with) I had them build it into the rent so I didn't have to worry about it. But now I don't have that luxury anymore I'm usually the last one to leave so I have to do it.