JeanneCake

The caterers I share space with are participating in a Soup Fest in early February. I am toying with the idea of participating as well. Part of me doesn't want to, it's been a crazy holiday season and I want to recharge my batteries before wedding season starts. The other half of me is intrigued by the challenge of a dessert soup in with all those other savory soups. I'm having a hard time coming up with a warm dessert soup idea (it's cold here in New England! I'm not sure about a chilled soup for this event). In fact, the only idea I have so far is Sherry Yard's Chocolate Elixir or whatever it was called at Campton Place (I think it was ganache served as a hot chocolate drink.) So, any ideas out there?

I'm wondering about compounds... I've had some for 2 years that still smell good (irish cream) and others that are rancid after a year (eggnog). I mostly use Sieben and Driedoppel and there's no expiration or best buy date on either brand.

And I was lusting after that sheeter! I thought the face was pretty funny too.... I logged in over 1000 cookies this season and have "cookie elbow" (I don't play tennis so I told the dr we can't call it that). The tenth circle of hell is being in the food business during the holidays - especially if you are a small business. Merry merry...

Decorated gingerbread men and eggnog for the big guy and carrots for the crew

Take the pavlova one step further and make meringue mushrooms (put the tops and bottoms together with melted chocolate); add some grated unsweetened chocolate to the meringue and make cookies (from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Christmas Cookie Book) which you can pipe into sticks or kisses; add some melted chocolate and make chocolate meringue (neve nero). If you are doing a lot of entertaining, you could make small individual meringue cups and fill them with different things (regular vanilla pastry cream, or flavored pastry cream, etc) for each different gathering of friends/rels.... Well stored (meaning air tight), these meringue ideas will keep for a long time (end of Jan). Or Angel Food Cake/Chiffon cake....

As a baker, I would say the easiest method would be to make an edible "ribbon" for the edge of the plate out of chocolate plastique (in dark or white) then print (with melted chocolate in a little cornet piping bag) the name on each one. Put the ribbon on the edge of the plate, and then the diners can put them aside til the end of the night and eat them with the chocolate lava cake or save them for ... later. You can make chocolate plastique (aka candy clay) yourself. I can't remember offhand the proportions, but it's basically melted chocolate and heated corn syrup. You mix it together, knead for a bit and then let it sit overnight or at least for a few hours (you can use it immediately but I find it easier to work if I let it rest). If you use too much corn syrup, it will be "greasy" and you can mop that up with paper towels. It would be far less work/aggravation to just use candy melts (the stuff that you can get at the craft store) to write on the rim of the plate. It comes in various colors and melts easily in the microwave, you just have to make yourself a little parchment triangle and you're all set.....it will set up on the plate and scrape off later....

If you end up going on a scavenger hunt for pistachio paste, I second the recommendation for MEC. I get the one from Agrimontana, which for me is easier to find (a distributor here in Boston carries their line) and it's good too. And on an unrelated topic, I love the apricot jam from Agrimontana, it is excellent. I make a regular linzertorte with raspberry jam, but use the same hazelnut dough (from the RLB pastry book. I add egg white to some of the batter to pipe the lattice.) for an Apricot Linzer and it is great. For Valentine's day I might go with a Cherry Linzer if I can find a super cherry bakeproof jam.... sorry, back on topic now!

Pictures, yes please! Just to make sure I'm following this: your roasting bags are pre-sealed at one end, and you are filling it with rice, knotting the open end of the bag and then putting that in to the straight-sided tart pan? The bag won't melt because it's made for high heat, but it doesn't get greasy from the butter in the dough? and the pennies idea has been mentioned by Julia Child and RLB; and Maida Heatter too. They get darker/discolored over time but they work well...

I have better luck with pudgy soft GB men when I underbake them. I love the recipe from RLB's Christmas Cookie book that I stopped trying new ones. If you bake for the recommended time, they will be crunchy. If you pull them early when you think they aren't done, they will still firm up but remain softer - meaning there's no crunch when you bite into them.

We use the tops from leveling the cake in trifles; we make individual servings in plastic cups with lids for take-away and in big hotel pans for buffets. If you google "dirt cake" you'll get a bunch of recipes along the lines of the trifle if you want to play around with it. But still, there's only so much trifle you can make. I've got an entire bus pan filled with cake tops in the freezer right now....

It goes a little easier if you spray non-stick spray on the blades of a knife or the scissors.

Molasses or gingerbread cookies would be good. You could underbake them slightly to make them softer if you think they would be too hard for the senior citizens. My favorite recipe comes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Christmas Cookie book - it calls for mixing 6.25 oz brown sugar with 6 oz butter til smooth; then add 1 egg and 5.5 oz molasses (don't use the blackstrap, it's too bitter for this cookie); then mix together 15 oz all purpose flour, 2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt and add to the rest of the stuff. Roll into sheets between parchment or flatten into a disk and chill for a few hours (then roll and cut). Bake at 350 for 12-15 mins depending on what you've made. Another good cookie I remember making as a child is Snickerdoodles. Shortbread would be wonderful too.

Carrot cake can probably survive pretty well for the time it would take to arrive there. Bake the cake, remove it from the pan, wrap it well in plastic wrap; put it back in the pan (if you can find a cardboard round that fits the pan, so much the better. Put the round on top of the pan and wrap the whole thing in plastic) and put it in your luggage or carry on. ETA: you can ice/assemble it there once you arrive.

The champagne creme brulee from Roland Mesnier's book is good - it's basically a stovetop creme pat you put it in a mixer to finish and add the butter and champagne. He presents it with grapes in it (a la the fresh raspberries in creme brulee) and then sugared grapes on the side. I always make a big batch so it takes a while to cool down; it might not be enough time for your competition But I like the idea of the toffee pudding cake in the pressure cooker....

How many can you make at a time, Jennifer? What are your molds shaped like? Sort of half cylindrical? Personally I think mousse in a mold with sponge on the bottom sounds far tastier than the ganache filled, rum soaked sponge roll that I use......! I also love that look of the velvety sprayed cocoa butter! You don't happen to know where your bakery purchased their molds, do you? ← I thought I saw some in the PBC Catalogue - it's pretty far to go to get, though. Seems as if Delmarle/flexipan would have something similar.

First time so the parchment sticks to the pan, second time so the cake releases from the parchment Anyplace you don't spray the parchment, the cake is sure to stay there!

I used to have problems with sponge rolls before I realized I didn't have to follow the instructions that usually come with the recipes - I use a strainer to add the flour to the beaten eggs (to prevent lumps of flour) and use a large spatula to fold everything together (whites, eggs, flour). I don't use the towel over the baked cake, I just throw some sugar on the top and wrap in cling film when it's cool. Here's what works for me. It makes two half sheets or one full sheet. You want to spray the pan well with a release spray, line with a sheet of parchment then spray liberally again. I use large eggs. 5 egg whites in a mixer bowl - whip with 75 grams of granulated sugar (added slowly once the beaters leave a trace) - beat to firm but not dry peaks 5 whole eggs and 5 yolks in a second mixer bowl (if you beat the whites first, you can use the same beater); add 250 grams of sugar, beat to a ribbon. Use a strainer to add 125 grams of all purpose flour (you can add an additional 50 grams of cocoa if you want a chocolate sponge) to the whole eggs, then plop the whites in and use a spatula to fold until there are no streaks left. Usually the flour wants to sink to the bottom. Pour/spoon out onto pan(s); bake at 375 for 13-15 minutes (use 300 in a commercial convection oven). Watch for low spots, those will overbake. When you pull it out, throw a tablespoon or so of sugar over the top and when cool wrap in plastic. You don't have to refrigerate this but use it in a day or so. I've never kept it longer than a day before I used it to be honest.

Normally, a Key Lime pie is a pale yellowish color. I once had the GM of a restaurant ask me to add green food coloring to it so it would be green; the chef refused to even consider it so we didn't. But I always thought it would be one of those "St Patrick's Day" things where everything gets food coloring added to it whether it looks good or not. But, it's an idea. I wouldn't do it with a lemon curd tart with blueberries (too close in texture) but if you are doing an Earl Grey tea cake - or Earl Grey truffles that would work. Or make the truffle filling and use that to fill the tart shell and do something entirely different for the green. Not knowing you were were allergic to pistachios, I was going to suggest the pistachio marzipan truffle roll cookies from RLB's Christmas Cookie book. They're the perfect color!

Hee hee! A few years ago, I had a client order an elaborate cake for the centerpiece of their T-day table (this is a long standing client who always goes over the top for the holidays, I love the things she comes up with!) So, I knew I couldn't finish her cake, deliver it and be home in time to get the turkey in the oven. So, the chef where I worked offered to cook it with the other orders they were doing and I'm going to deliver the cake and pick up the turkey on the way back. My father (who made all the side dishes) arrives at our house expecting to smell roasting turkey while I'm off delivering the cake. Something my son says to him makes him think we're about to have a problem so he calls my cell phone and says ... "dear, where is the turkey? I can't find one in the fridge to put in the oven - how could you forget to get a turkey for Thanksgiving?"

No, it was just as painful to watch a few brief minutes of that show back in 2005!!!

You could, it might be a little flexible ... or a cookie sheet that has no sides (or at least no lip on one side)

I only make pumpkin rolls once a year, and it usually takes the first two or three to get back into the swing of it. I use a scaled up version of the Libby's recipe, but I find it heavy and dense. What I'd like is a pumpkin version of a joconde or biscuit that's light. Anyone got any ideas? I know that pumpkin is going to weigh it down, but at Whole Foods last week, I saw something that looked like a pumpkin roll where the cake was an inch thick, filled with a cream and rolled short side (I roll from the long side so I can get two rolls, and then use the end to make a knot in the log...). I also make enough of the cream cheese/whipped cream filling to use for the outside as well as the inside. I've toyed with the idea of adding another egg into the recipe (when I scale it up for a full sheet, it's just doubling the recipe but there's not enough batter to really go out to the edges. Same thing when I double it again for two full sheets.) but I don't know whether that would be sufficient in getting a lighter result.

How long do you want this to last? Just through the holiday season? Or for years? That's when storage will make a difference I would think and all those environmental factors come into play. I have two recipes, one from RLB, with butter, which I use for the cookies and have used for houses with good success; and the other with veg shortening and works pretty well too. And, Rob - for making the wall/roof, etc edges fit tight, I use a microplane to even things out and make sure there are no gaps before I start gluing. For the mortar, I've used white chocolate (Felchlin Ultra Gloss because I use it for cookies); royal icing and hot glue (for the non-edible versions.)

This isn't pie filling, but the cake filling for the Peninsula Grill Coconut Cake always wins rave reviews - it is a cooked filling (in the style of the filling for german chocolate cake) so you could lighten it with the judicious use of whipped cream because it is pretty intense/creamy in it's intended state as a cake filling....

I didn't make a haunted house, but I've been averaging one large gingerbread McMansion a week (for various displays in the gourmet stores)! And, the magazine shoot for which I did the holiday version in place of the Halloween version? They canned it until January. No one buys a gingerbread house in January Did anyone see the Food Network challenge about Haunted Gingerbread Houses? Wish I'd seen that back in Sept! I loved the one from Riveria Bakehouse, and thought the one from Just Cake's assistant was a little too... perfect? I think it was a tough call between the two. And Elizabeth Falkner's cave! I don't know what I enjoyed more - watching the judges struggle to "get it" (they should have read her book first!) or her build it.