JeanneCake

This is exactly the technique Maida Heatter uses for her triple layer cheesecake (it's a vanilla/hazelnut bottom layer, chocolate middle layer and vanilla top layer). The first layer freezes for about an hour (the rest of the batter stays at rm tmp) the second layer freezes for about 20-30 mins and the last layer goes on and the whole thing goes into the oven to bake. It takes a little longer because the first two layers are frozen but it's great. Hope this works for your recipe.

reenicake, did you use regular gel color (I have Chefmaster brand) or candy color? Or do you think it doesn't matter?

I usually start off by filling out a form with the bride and groom's name/addr/phone and email. You want to know the event location (address). Whether the ceremony is held there as well as the reception (for delivery time) and what time the ceremony and reception start. How many guests will be served? Is the cake going to be the only dessert or part of a larger selection? (And if the custom in your area is to provide the top tier for later, keep that in mind.) Ask about colors in the wedding - what are the attendants wearing? What sort of florals are being used (are there just bouquets or floral centerpieces for the guest tables as well)? What color flowers? What does the invitation look like? They may even bring dress pictures to the meeting, which will help. Since inspiration for design can come from any element (floral, the design on the invite or embroidery on a dress) it helps to see all of this. Find out if they have pictures of cakes they like; if you don't have a portfolio of your work, get magazines for them to look at during the meeting. Find out what they'd like to sample for flavors during their meeting. Once you have all the design info, and they are looking at pictures, bring out the samples. Sometimes people send out a "take away box" of samples, but I don't like this since you don't know what they'll do with it (leave it in the car for hours while shopping?) and you want your cakes presented in the best possible way! Offer a glass of water, it is always appreciated. Once you have a design worked out/agreed on, you can either give them a range for price and then follow it up a few days later with a firm proposal; or give them the proposal at that time. Decide on what you want for a deposit and is this refundable or not (if they change their mind)? When do you reconfirm all the details (one month prior?) and then when the balance is due. If they are using items (stands, pillars, etc) are you going to require a deposit on them? You need to spell out how those items should be returned - will you go to collect them (charging for your time) or does the family need to return them within a week of the wedding. You want to make sure that you're covering your costs and ingredients, so don't sell yourself short! Good luck! You'll do great!

What she said I wanted to be able to cut out the cookies and package them up in a window box so you'd see these pastel pink bunnies, pale yellow chick shapes, pale lavender easter eggs, maybe a pastel orange flower. Something not as "expensive" as a whole cake, for example, and not another box of chocolate easter eggs (not that there's anything wrong with chocolate easter eggs - I just want to provide an alternative!). I didn't want to have to go over the shapes with anything, just cut, bake and box! Last Christmas I made tiny gingerbread men, stars, trees, boots and packaged them up and people loved it. It was the perfect hostess gift, a great impulse sale. I saw these cute mini Easter shape cutters and thought it could work. Will try next week.....

Peggy Sue Got Married The main character (Peggy Sue) tells her sister who's eating from a bowl of M&Ms not to eat the red ones. The sister asks why, and I wish I could remember the reply!

I'm thinking of making tiny cookies in pastel colors for Easter and Mother's Day. My tiny gingerbread shapes at Christmas were a huge success, so I started to think about how to do something similar for spring. I've got enough cookie dough made to last me until next week, so adding color now would only make the dough tough. I'm toying with the idea of adding some liquid/gel/candy color to the creamed butter/sugar (before adding eggs, flour, etc). I wondered if anyone else had done it and whether or not I'd be wasting ingredients. Otherwise, I'll let you know how it turns out in a couple of weeks!

I have this wild fantasy.... You should go there again as customers. But bring your own bread to eat at the table. Just like you can bring your own bottle of wine if the restaurant doesn't have a liquor license or however that works.... send the leftover bread into the kitchen with your compliments. That's when they'll put two and two together.... where's the icon for smiling wickedly?!

If it's any consolation, one of my first restaurant clients (for desserts) first contacted me in June; then invited me in for a tasting in September and started to use me in November, after Thanksgiving. Sometimes their timeline is not what we want it to be and its hugely frustrating for a new business. And sometimes they just don't have the courtesy to say they can't do anything at this point in time. I wouldn't call them again. It's hard not to take it personally, but I don't think they intended to be mean about it, or as thoughtless as they have been (they wouldn't have gushed so much if they didn't truly enjoy your product). If you go there on a regular basis, you could stop by but they know where to find you and how to get in touch. Next time you meet with a potential new client, find out what their intent is (replace their current supplier? fill in gaps from their current supplier), how they order (daily? weekly?), when they want delivery, how to handle returns (they have to call same day of delivery or within some amount of time) and at the end of the meeting, find out what their timeline is for the next step.

Mine are clean from spatters, etc; but I do write notes in the margins and tips for the next time I make it. Recipes from childhood are copied from my mother's onto index cards and are in a steno book. I've had to tape the index cards down a few times because of aging.... My recipe book at work has each recipe typed (some have notes handwritten in) and each one is in a plastic sleeve kept in a binder. If there's ever an emergency, first grab The Book, then exit quickly I do have a second Book at home, but sometimes I have been teased about keeping a third one in a safety deposit box in a bank!

For those of you who have the book, is the second baking of the creme brulee necessary or just part of the recipe for the molten cakes? (the website link refers to instructions the author provides - it says to make the prune armagnac brulee without the prunes) I'm wondering about using the technique to bake/freeze the brulee mixture in shaped flexipans as part of a mini-pastry....

Many years ago in one of my first specialty baking classes, someone said "I never freeze anything!" And the chef rolled her eyes and said "freezing something does not make it bad". It was a lively discussion! I think the consumer at large has the perception that freezing means you are baking a ton of things on one day and selling those very same things a month later. I have people ask me on a regular basis "do I freeze my cakes" - and what they are really asking is "how far in advance are you making my cake and are you keeping it fresh by freezing it until I come to collect it?" I've also had people ask me why I am baking their cake on Wednesday if they are coming to get it on Friday and I explain the process of baking on day 1, assembling on day 2 and they pick up on day 3. They ALWAYS ask "will it be fresh?" to which I reply "what?!" and that's when they say "won't the cake be fresher if you bake the day I pick it up?" And I tell them they'll have to pick it up after 9 pm if they want it the same day. No one has ever taken me up on that - which reinforces my opinion that they're really asking how old something is. Maybe because in the food business we're trying to eliminate waste so we're trying to push stuff out the door - first in, first out. How many of us will bypass a sell-by date on perishable things for a later one when we're grocery shopping? The issue is the general public's perception that freezing is bad or is trying to mask an old product. They forget that they buy chicken on sale or prepared food and bring it home and freeze it themselves. I'm not advocating lying or being deliberately misleading. If the customer wants the brownies on the day they're baked, that's when they can pick them up. If they want them a different day, they'll be frozen first.

I loved reading those books too. I wasn't sure about including them here though-- are they cookbooks with narrative, or memoirs with recipes? Either way, it was certainly an immense loss when she died. I still remember the shock I felt when I read of her death, and yes, I shed some tears also. ← Me, too! Laurie is in many ways the person I aspire to in my writing. Call them what you will - essays of food, recipes with narrative - they are the best! Try her Kathryn Hebpburn brownie recipe -easy and oh, so scrumptious. ← I cried as well when I read of her untimely death; both books are always on the nightstand and it is a great comfort to re-read the essays. Maida Heatter tweaked the Katharine Hepburn brownies by making a batch and freezing it unbaked. When it was firm, she spread a scant amount of seedless raspberry jam on it, then poured another batch of the batter on top and let it sit til it was rm temp then baked it. If you thought those brownies were great the way they were written, try it this way. It's sinful with either raspberry or cherry jam. The other cookbook I like to read is Bitter Almonds. I still can't get over the way the nuns treated those girls. For shame!

You can tell her that you follow Alice Medrich's advice to freeze just baked brownies to ensure they stay fudgy and delicious. Even if you didn't know you were following her recommendation. : You can even show her the book where she says it (the story is pretty cute - someone's room mate threw a still-warm pan of brownies into the freezer - he was saving them from something dire but I can't remember what that was!!)

Do you like fruit with chocolate? What about an orange curd filling? If your tart crust is chocolate, it would be a nice surpize beneath the meringue. Or a flavored ganache with some yolks like a chocolate marquise.

At Squires Kitchen in the UK, they sell a "folk art paint" specifically for painting on cakes - you can see it here: Squires Shop When I've seen it on fondant, it looks clean and almost translucent but I don't think it is any better than any of the other suggestions that Kate mentioned above. I find that the stuff I buy from the UK is really good stuff - the average consumer there can easily buy very high quality cake and sugarcraft supplies just like we go into a craft store to buy materials. I've never bought this particular stuff myself so I can't say how easy it is to use but if you are tempted to buy anything else from there it might be worth the splurge.

white chocolate mousse was big in the 80s as I recall - or white chocolate with raspberry was a combination that started then and hit a zenith ten years later

the frosting sounds like a take on ganache so even with choc chips, it was probably good. enough. Ghiradelli has a sweetened chocolate that is boxed similarly to cocoa but the box is clearly labelled "sweetened chocolate" as opposed to cocoa. I didn't see the show but maybe the cake mix quip rattled things so she kept saying unsweetened when she meant to say dutched?!

The show that was on yesterday showed them taking baked cakes out of the oven; I noticed in the first set of shows they didn't let any film of the actual cake preparation (mixing, scaling, baking, making buttercream) into the show; but this last episode showed them making cake batter. And I don't remember seeing a walkin at all!!! I wonder when stuff goes on the "done rack" how long it stays there before it goes out the door...

Are you going to sugar them yourself? Or you can buy them already done from Meadowsweets - at www.candiedflowers.com....

The last few tablespoons of butter may not have been incorporated well enough before you stopped mixing (whipping) - this happens to me sometimes when I am in a rush and the butter is cool/cold. There's a balance you can play with of how long you let the meringue go after all the syrup is added and the temperature of the butter. If the meringue is warm, I can use cooler butter; if the meringue is cool, softer butter incorporates a lot better.

If you are interested in take out, I have fond memories of excellent meals from Via Lago in Lexington center. You can eat in or take out. My husband could polish off an entire large container of the spicy beef salad in one sitting. It's worth it for a change of pace.

There is a Cambridge College in Cambridge - not Boston so somebody missed it when they did their fact checking for the show... it's a very small school, certainly not one I would mention in the same sentence as Harvard or MIT...!

The commercially frozen whites are a problem - I've only been successful when subbing out no more than 30% of the total weight of whites with the commercially frozen ones. When I use all commercial whites, it deflates when you add the hot syrup. Doesn't matter which brand, either - it happens using Sysco, Glen View Farms, Papetti.... But if you are talking about freezing your own shelled whites, that's different. As Ruth says, it should work perfectly if you don't have any specks of yolk in them.

I have a vague memory of RLB discussing the merits of different thickeners and how they perform as glazes/gels for pies and fruit tarts in her Pie and Pastry Bible book; the book is on loan to a friend so I can't get to it to check. I don't know whether this is helpful to you or not, but maybe if your local bookstore has a copy, you could browse through it and see.

I've been using Chefpeon's modeling chocolate formula for a while and it's great. I usually use less corn syrup than she calls for because I'm using a different brand of chocolate. If I use the full amount of corn syrup, it is too much and it oozes. I've successfully divided this in half and even in quarters (1.5# choc to 1/2 cup corn syrup) and it works every time. I copied this from the wrinkly figurine thread alligande started years ago: My modeling chocolate recipe is as follows, and it's based on using Guittard White Satin Ribbon. Other brands of white chocolate behave differently, so adjustments may be needed (such as using a little more or less corn syrup). In micro, melt 6 lbs white chocolate. Stir often! Remember WC burns easily! When melted and perfectly smooth, heat 2 2/3 cup corn syrup for about a minute in micro. In a large plastic bowl, add your corn syrup to your melted chocolate and stir rather quickly, making sure you scrape the sides of the bowl often. I use a big rubber spatula. The mixture will seize and clean the sides of the bowl. When completely mixed, press mixture into a flat pan that has been lined with plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap up over the top. Put in fridge to set up, then bring out to room temp, break off pieces and knead it smooth. If it's cold out, I put it in the micro for about ten seconds so it doesn't kill my arm off to knead it.