Patrick S

They are composed of sugar, cornstarch, gelatin, and trace amounts of silver. Are they dangerous to eat? Well, when I last looked into this last, I couldn't find a single documented instance of anyone ever experiencing any adverse health effect whatsoever after occasionally consuming doses of silver comparable to those in a serving of dragees, which is on the order of a few tenths of milligram/serving. If you eat large amounts of silver, you can develop a condition called generalized argyria, in which the skin turns grey-blue. In the case of a small dose, it can be hardly noticable; in the case of large dose, you can look like a ghoulish smurf. The smallest doses which cause generalized argyria are reported to be between 4-40g. But assuming you pigged out on cookies with dragees, and consumed maybe 1mg silver, you'd still be getting only 1/4,000 of the lowest dose reported to cause argyria.

Two more recipes from the book: the far breton (a prune "flan"), and the honey brownie. The brownie was spongey but dense (I beat the eggs quite a bit), very moist (presumably because of the hydroscopicity of honey), and had an interesting flavor. The far breton was custardy and delicious, pretty much exactly what I expected. I'm not sure what to make next, but I'm definitely going to add the thumbprint cookies to the list!

Seems to me its a purely semantic issue. Trying to decide whats a cakey brownie and what's a dense cake is like asking what is the dividing line between short and tall, or light and heavy. Cake density varies along a continuum, just like height or weight. There's a great area there were you have something you're not sure to call it a cakey brownie or a fudgy cake. Doesnt matter to me what you call it, but you have an idea what it is, and its certainly an appealing texture for many people. The honey brownies in Dorie Greenspan's new book make for good cakie brownies.

Pot grates the throat as you swallow like dry parsley. Hashish in brownies goes down much smoother. But that's just what I heard... ← And butane-extracted honey oil works best of all. All the potency, none of the icky flavors or textures. A little dab will do ya, for sure. Pot can work fine too, you just have to powder it and let the cannabinoids dissolve into warm melted butter or oil, and then strain it back out.

While I was in Chicago over the weekend, my brother and I stopped by the Vanille Patisserie. We tried several things, including a mousse cake, a pastachio dacquoise, a tart citron, assorted macarons. One of my favorites was the Tart Maeva. It consists of passion fruit curd, banana cake and berry compote in a sweet tart shell.

As I understand it, the cacao mass of most chocolates (including unsweetened) is right about 54% cocoa butter/46% cacao solids, which is the natural ratio found in cacao beans. As long as you are comparing two chocolates with the same cocoa butter concentration in their cacao mass (i.e. no added cocoa butter), and including no fats other than cocoa butter (e.g. milk fats), it seems to me that you wouldn't need to do a seperate correction for fat content -- it would be included in the cacao mass conversion (since cacao mass is both the fats and the solids). In the example I gave above, for instance, 4oz of 100% and 6.15oz of 65% would include the same amounts of cocoa butter, provided that the cacao mass of each type had the same ratio of cacao butter/cacao solids. Unless I'm missing something? ETA: Does anyone have any good info on the cocoa butter contents of various "dark" chocolates? Im interested to see how much variability there is from variety to variety.

Maybe the following would work. First, calculate the cacao mass equivalents for the two chocolates. If the recipe calls for 4oz of 100% chocolate, use 4/0.65=6.15oz of 65% chocolate. Then, determine how much sugar you've added, so you can substract that from the recipe. For instance, if the 65% chocolate has, say, 8g sugar per ounce, and you're using 6.15oz of 65% chocolate, you'd subtract 49grams of sugar. For a variety of reasons, this is just going to be an approximation (e.g. some of the sugars in the 65% might be milk sugars, or the two chocolates might have different cocoa butter concentrations), but I imagine it will get you close.

Shalmanese thinks referring to yourself in the 3rd person is a bit pretentious . . . . ← . . . as opposed to having an avatar that says "Out of my kitchen NOOB!," which of course is not pretentious in the least.

It seems to me that the term "pate a bombe" is commonly used to refer to both a product or ingredient (a sweetened egg foam produced by whippping egg yolks with hot sugar syrup), and to the method by which that product/ingredient is produced (whippping egg yolks with hot sugar syrup). Wouldn't it be correct to say, for instance, that "pate a bombe is an ingredient in some buttercream recipes."

Yolks beaten with hot sugar syrup.

That's a great price -- in fact, that's about the same, or even cheaper than, Pepperidge Farm puff pastry. Its too bad that Fresh Direct only ships to such a limited number of areas.

Hi Seth! Long time, no see. Here are a couple of things I've made from the book recently -- the caramel pumpkin pie and the tart tatin. I wasn't going to post pictures, because I used a store-bought crust for the pie, and because I didnt bother to get a good picture of the tart tatin. But I decided to anyway. I enjoyed both, but the tart tatin (which I did make with Dorie's good-for-almost-anything pie dough) has long been one of my favorites. I made it in a cast-iron skillet this time, and I got these wonderful crisp caramelly edges on the crust. So good. Flickr: #1 #2

That looks and sounds awesome, Elie -- I'm have to try that soon.

I think you probably mean "artificial" instead of "chemical," as all the ingredients you listed are indeed composed of one or more chemicals.

I don't see how. By the time a sucrose+water solution reaches the hard crack stage, 300-310F, the solution is already 99% sucrose. By the time the sugar reaches the temps at which you get a dark caramelization, 350F+, essentially no water is left. I make caramel all the time with water, and it turns out hard and brittle, just like it does with the dry caramelization method. Chewy is a sign that the caramel has absorbed some water. As it absorbs even more, it will become saucy, the way caramel on creme caramel should be. The thicker the caramel layer, the longer it will take for the caramel to get past the chewy stage into the saucy stage. Let the thick chewy caramel sit long enough and absorb more moisture, and it will eventually become saucy.

In my opinion, the most likely cause is the one you mentioned -- simply putting to much caramel on the bottom. I've done exactly the same thing. I don't think that the lemon juice has anything to do with it.

As I recall, eGulleteer Scott123 knows a lot about this -- hopefully he will be around sometime soon.

Try a google search for "ice cream"+"freezing point depression," and you'll find lots of good information on this.

Call Dufour Pastry Kitchens at 1-800-439-1282 to find a retail source or have some shipped to you. They will do overnight shipping. Some Whole Foods Markets carry this also.

I dont think the oven temperature is too hot -- 300F is what I use (with a water bath, of course), and I get silky smooth custard every time. I don't think that failure to temper the cream into the yolks would account for the souffle-effect either. Too much egg white could do it, but you'd have to be pretty sloppy seperating your eggs to get much souffle. Based on glennbech's description, I would agree that the problem is almost certainly the beating of the yolks+sugar, and then the yolks+sugar+cream mixture. This would incorporate lots of air bubbles into the custard. While most materials expand when heated, gases in general expand much more than liquids or solids.

I'm partial to the sound of French words: genoise, pate sucree, caramel au beurre salé. . .

Check out this recipe from Nick Malgieri -- it seems to fit the bill.

I, on the other hand, find Nutella to be completely delicious, far better than any homemade hazelnut chocolate spread I've made.

Wow Patrick this look so good to me: the oozing glaze and the moist bar. I can't wait for my copy. And i'm definitely looking forward lots of baking. ← Good to see you on eGullet, fanny! Welcome. The applesauce spice bars really are good. I usually dont eat very much of what I cook, but I ate a lot of these.

Patrick, I like this technique. What do you use to cut the circle of dough which has the correct diameter? ← I use a set of circular cutters, like this. You can also improvise and cut your dough out with things like lids, drinking glasses, large prescriptions bottles. Plastic caps from, say, pan coating spray works pretty well as a cutter.