JeanneCake

You could ask the supplier if they will tell you who they sell this product to and ask that company if you can buy a carton from them (if they don't want to give out client names, they could ask their customer on your behalf)?

I subscribed for many years, starting in my 20s when I had my first apartment and couldn't afford much. I could travel all over the world in a week, armed with that magazine and later, when I had advanced at work and was travelling a lot, I could go back in time and find articles on the places I was heading to. The zenith for me was reading Laurie Colwin's columns and when she died, I was bereft. It was nice to have a whole year of her columns to look forward to, but when they stopped, I found I didn't feel the same way about the magazine. Now I don't read it as closely or as thoroughly as I used to, but I have decades of the magazines stored here at home. Whenever I decide to part with them (not any time soon, mind you!), it'll be someone's motherlode!

I like watching the food network for the entertainment value and if I pick up a few cooking tips and techniques, so much the better. I'm a baker by trade so I don't expect to learn a lot from these shows, but it's better than anything else that's on TV. I'd rather watch Paula Deen than some not-really-reality or crime show where half a dozen people are killed before the opening credits! (well, truthfully, I usually am reading a book or emailing friends. We've only got the one TV and it's off during homework time and I get up too early to stay up late to watch much!) I was reading in the Boston Globe newspaper about the woman who started the don't like Rachael Ray website and how the thing has taken off and created a life of it's own. Yet on numerous occasions the journalist notes how the woman chuckled or giggled to punctuate what she was saying - not unlike what RR would do! What I find fascinating is that both Paula Deen and Rachael Ray have exuberant on-air personalities, a joie-de-vivre that comes across to some as too much so that makes them a target for being bashed. Are we all just in a perpetual bad mood and can't take it when someone else is happy?!

It's equal measures of nuts (almonds or it could be hazelnuts or even pecans or walnuts) and granulated sugar. But if you have almond flour, I'd use the powdered sugar because that would give you a more tender crust for the tart.

This is a great way to end the year! What a wonderful dessert! To me, it looks as if the bubble wrap was pressed onto the surface of the curd, the uniform thickness of the bottom part is what makes me think it was poured into a frame or pan and then left to set a little, then the (sprayed with a pan release maybe?) bubble wrap pressed on. Bravo, dejaq!

can you tell they've had some customer service issues in the past?! The part about not tolerating abuse regardless of who you are, who you think you are, who you know - THAT was funny! I don' know how appropriate it is, but after a long day at work, it made me chuckle and I sure could use a good laugh!

macarons? You could go through the whole thread on them, or use Nicole Kaplan's demo for help.... Does it have to be pastry? You could do a baguette.....

I can sometimes find frozen cranberry juice concentrate in my grocery store, perhaps that would be a good thing to add? It's not easy to find, but it's there. I use it for a cranberry-orange cheesecake. You could use a tablespoon of that (thawed) in place of reduced cranberry juice......

Here is how I would tell you how to make this in a 10" round springform pan (bake at 350 for about 60-70 mins). It is not how the author would tell you to make it. FIrst, chop into 1/2 cubes: 2 med green apples, and 2 med pears into a bowl and throw in 1.5 cups washed/dried cranberries. If you chop the cranberries, that's fine too. Beat with paddle: 1/4# softened unsalted butter, 1.25 cups white sugar, and 1/4 cup buttermilk until it is light. Sift or whisk together 2.5 cups all purpose flour, 1 TBL baking powder. Divide in half and add half to the mixer and add 2 eggs. Blend well. Then add two more eggs, blend and then add the other half of the dry ingredients until it is light. Stir in the fruit and pour (scrape) into a (sprayed with Pam or other baking spray) pan and bake until firm in the center. When I do this cake in the summer, I add about 1/4 cup of Poire William with the buttermilk (I have also used heavy cream with no ill effects s ince I always have cream around and not always buttermilk) and use the granny smith and anjou pears and raspberries and blueberries. I usually have cake flour on hand so that's what I use. It's fine either way (all purpose or cake flour).

Jim Dodge has a fresh fruit poundcake in his Stanford Court dessert cookbook. It calls for fresh apples, pears and cranberries - and I've been making it for years. In the summer, I sub berries for the cranberries and some Poire William for the buttermilk. It's definitely not "fruitcake" in the sense of soaking with liqueur or brandy or what-have-you, or making in advance. I've even layered it with buttercream for a client who insisted on it for their wedding cake. I think I would want to update the fruitcake with interesting dried fruits rather than the day-glow cherries. Sun-dried cherries or blueberries, or hazelnuts or macadamia nuts. I think people object to fruitcake because there's no cake in it (which is why it could double as a doorstop!) or it has weird bits of fruit that aren't delicious. I know that when I tasted the Harry and David version a few years ago, I thought it was awful. It was like a wedge of candied fruit - no cake to be found anywhere. And it was heavy and dense but not in a good way.

I agree! Beautifully done challenge, Cheryl. Will you be putting the recipes on recipegullet? I'd love to do the Indian Pudding for Thanksgiving! I love this cranberry tart; I have a similar recipe that I got from Epicurious. It is a huge seller, people love it. Nice job!

Every holiday season, I seem to get obsessed with the idea of a "holiday" cheesecake - last year it was a Peppermint Cheesecake along the lines of peppermint swirl ice cream. This year, I'd like to try a Gingerbread cheesecake because I've been scarfing down Gingerbread cookies! Anyway, not one of my cheesecake books have a gingerbread cheesecake recipe (there's plenty that call for a gingersnap crust; I'm looking for the cheesecake to be gingerbread flavored; I may do a chocolate crumb crust). When I did a google recipe search, I came up with the same recipe a few different times. It's a basic vanilla cheesecake marbled with a molasses/spice swirl. I'm planning on trying it, but I wondered if anyone here had already done this or something like it. Another alternative is adapting Emily Lucchetti's spiced vanilla cheesecake recipe. Any ideas? Have you tried this before and are willing to share your recipe?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! How cool is this?! Great job, girl!

Could it possibly work as a marshmallow? Maybe a toasted corn marshmallow? Go for five different textures of corn in dessert perhaps? (I'm fascinated lately with the marshmallow recipe so now everything looks like a marshmallow....)

This question made me remember (fondly) a meal I had in the UK at an Indian restaurant some many years ago. I was there frequently on business and most of my colleagues knew that if they left the choice up to me where to eat at night, it was going to be Indian and I would invariably get Chicken Tikka Masala. They were very kind, and we all ate Indian all the time! I forget where we were that night, but the sauce was so good I would have eaten in on the proverbial turkish towel (I think it was Diamond Jim Brady who said something like that - whatever he was eating was so good, he'd even eat it if it were slathered over a turkish towel.)

Very nice! What will it take to bribe you to do a demo on the tea caviar?! Does that look like fun or what?!

Admittedly I am very bad at math and am not even going to try to figure out what the ratios are for the batches I make, so if I give you the numbers.... Small batch size for the 6 qt mixer: 17.25 oz sugar (14 oz in the pot with the water; 3.25 in the whites) 12.5 oz whites 40oz (2.5#) butter Normal batch size for the 20 qt mixer: 41.5 oz sugar (31 oz in the pot with the water; 10.5 in with the whites) 30.5 oz whites 98 oz (6#) butter So the instructors are saying that the ratios for Italian meringue bcrm is 2 parts sugar to 1 part whites and a maximum of 3 parts butter to 1 part sugar - yes? This would mean that for 12 oz of whites, they tell you to use 24 oz of sugar and 36 oz butter? (what do your instructors say about minimums? For all I know, these numbers above could represent minimum amounts, these are formulas I got from my own instructors. These are batches I make on a regular basis because of the mixer size.)

You could reduce some of the sugar in the syrup; but if your relatives thought it was much too sweet to begin with, I'm not sure that will help matters. Did you use an alcohol to flavor it (I'm thinking if you used a sweet liqueur that might have taken it over the top)? I use IMBC as my "house" buttercream in the bakeshop (I don't add the alcohol), but no one has ever mentioned it is too sweet. Sometimes people feel it is too rich because of the butter (it's usually clients who prefer the confectioner's sugar/butter variety that find IMBC too rich by comparison) but for people who ask me for something sweeter, I go for a different formula entirely. The Classic/Neoclassic are both richer (due to the yolks) so maybe that might be worth a try. The other alternative is to use the pastry cream buttercream in the Cake Bible, that is less sweet than the Classic/Neoclassic and Mousseline ones.

In addition to using the ground, dried scraps for garnish, use them for the basis of your cheesecake crusts instead of crumbled oreos - or at least it will stretch them. The caterer I share with will sometimes use my scraps to make trifles; you could do the same with yours and sell individual cups of trifle (use a plastic cup with a lid for portability in individual servings). Or some sort of a riff on tiramisu using the cake layers instead of biscuit. If you make tarts, maybe you can get a thin sheet of cake to use as a layer between pastry cream and a fruit topping (RLB uses this technique in her Pie and Pastry book). I don't have the book at home, but Bo Friberg's book has a recipe for Rum Balls, which is a use for scraps. And when I really have a busy week, sometimes we make hotel pans of trifle and bring them to the local homeless shelter or day care center.

You could always ask her yourself - she regularly responds to questions and comments on her blog. It's "Real Baking with Rose" at RLB Blog Have you ever tried just holding back on the bp by 1/2 tsp or so? Scale out what you think you should use and then subtract in 5 gm increments and see what that does for you.

This is also a smaller size, but from the looks of it, you could use it to imprint an entire sheet of gingerbread... squires kitchen brick impression tool

I agree, you should just get a second mixer! Plus, another bowl for whichever one turns out to be your favorite. The amount of time you spend washing the only bowl/beater/whip you have is a waste once you get another bowl. For two or three years, I only had one bowl for my 20 qt Hobart (at the bakeshop). I kept thinking I couldn't afford to buy a second bowl (at $200) but as soon as I decided I *had* to, I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I have two whips and two flat beaters. I can start a second job and have it running while I wash the dirty bowl/beater and the amount of time it saves me is incredible. So... I vote for getting another mixer and a second bowl!! :

In addition to having the mousse more fluid than firm, I use a 2.5x3" cake pan to press down very lightly on my ring molds and 3" pans. You might want to consider getting a cylinder of solid wood (like the head of an old fashioned meat pounder) or something similar and use that to "compress" the mixture. It would work better if you were pressing against a layer of biscuit or cake.

Why do you want a tilt-head mechanism? Is that the only reason you're considering a second mixer? You could always sell your existing KA and buy something else and not invest in a second set of bowls/beaters..... I have two sets of bowls and beaters and whips for my KA; comes in very handy.

Yes, and not a lot of my experience with it is good. I have a 7 qt 1000 watt model and regret buying every time I bring it down from the shelf. It doesn't incorporate ingredients well because of the conical shape of the bowl; it is prone to stall after beating egg whites for 15 mins at speed 6 (not a huge load) which is why it is ON the shelf. I have two KA 6 qt models that I beat the daylights out of (no pun intended) on a daily basis and they have yet to complain or stop. Twenty years ago I bought a 5 qt KA and that is still going strong as well. I agree that Kenwood/DeLonghi is a reliable brand - I didn't go with the Kenwood because it had no handle on the bowl at the time.