Patrick S

Fondant.

Thanks, gfron! Its about 6" in diameter. I was pretty happy with the taste. I think acidic fruits like passion fruit, lemon and orange work pretty well with white chocolate. Plus, I just like the color of the passion fruit.

I tried making a jaconde cake for the first time, and it went relatively well. This has a jaconde base and border, a crunchy white chocolate layer on the bottom, white chocolate/Grand Marnier mousse in the middle, and passionfruit gelee on top. BTW, I'm not infatuated with white chocolate -- I was given several pounds of it as a gift and have been looking for ways to use it.

yes, you can achive a very good result with a coffe grinder. I have a good recipe but I am not allowed to post recipes in this forum, right? And I don't like to post in the recipe box, I find so unpersonal. So the greatdane, if you want pm me and I will translate it for you. ← I have tried with a food processor, and ground for like literally half and hour, and still never got a result as creamy (or delicious, IMHO) as Nutella, so I would be surprised if a coffee grinder makes a big difference. But I'm willing to try anything, so please do post the recipe! The ingredients you can post as is, just put the directions into your own words. ← Patrick, I think you used Gianduja, in a recipe recently, and I am wondering if I use the recipe that were talking about here, if that would work in any recipe requiring Gianduja? ← Hmm. Well I've used Gianduja chocolate before, but not recently. And I haven't tried Franci's recipe yet, so I can't say how soft it turns out. So, maybe/maybe not. I'll be sure to post how the recipe turns out for me after I try it, though.

Thanks so much for posting the recipe, Franci. I look forward to trying it soon. If it really does give a result as creamy as Nutella, I'll be delighted. Coffee grinder (good for extra-fine ground like espresso) will give you a better result than food processor. For this recipe I have to thank Mr. Fabio Fongoli, Cocoa butter 30 g (optional) cocoa powder, good quality 100 g white chocolate 400 g dark chocolate or bittersweet 200 g hazelnut paste 200 g (use coffee grinder to make the hazelnut paste) rice oil or grapeseeds, anything with light taste about 200g Melt in a bain marie all the ingredients except the oil, very carefully. Then add the oil out of the stove. It will look very runny, but if you give it a little time, will harden. If you refrigerate it gets too hard, better to keep it outside. I had to increase the amount of oil a little bit to get to the right consistency, but do not add too much or with become grainy. Far better than nutella. ←

yes, you can achive a very good result with a coffe grinder. I have a good recipe but I am not allowed to post recipes in this forum, right? And I don't like to post in the recipe box, I find so unpersonal. So the greatdane, if you want pm me and I will translate it for you. ← I have tried with a food processor, and ground for like literally half and hour, and still never got a result as creamy (or delicious, IMHO) as Nutella, so I would be surprised if a coffee grinder makes a big difference. But I'm willing to try anything, so please do post the recipe! The ingredients you can post as is, just put the directions into your own words.

Is glucose isomerase actually used as a substitute for invertase in chocolate making? Chemically, it does not do the same thing as invertase -- invertase splits sucrose into glucose and fructose, while glucose isomerase actually converts glucose to fructose. This is the same enzyme that is used to make high fructose syrup from glucose corn syrup.

I'm definitely going to try this. I've tried reducing strawberry puree to make the flavor more intense, but the cooking alters the flavor for the worse. I also tried Boyajian strawberry flavoring, and that just didnt taste right at all. So I'm thinking freeze dried berries might give the added intensity while preserving the flavor of fresh berries.

Starting with roasted hazelnuts and a food processor, you're never gonna get the smooth creamy texture you get in Nutella. At least, I never could. You gotta start with a premade paste, like Desiderio said. Unfortunately, both hazelnut paste and hazelnut praline paste are so expensive.

I didn't care much for the CI cake overall. The strawberry syrup with kirsch was good, as was the cream cheese whipped cream. But I didnt like the sponge itself cake very much.

I haven't found one I really like, and I've tried a lot.

I think I speak for Miracle Whip lovers everywhere when I say that our failure to convert you to Miracle Whip is a truly crushing defeat for us, and has us questioning our very sanity. ← I dunno Patrick S as today is 6-6-06 and given the sentiments of some that MW lovers are indeed in league with Satan, anything is possible! ← Miracle Whip, as the name implies, actually repels the forces of evil.

Brilliant. You might also want to keep in mind that fruits and vegetables are 75-90% water.

I think I speak for Miracle Whip lovers everywhere when I say that our failure to convert you to Miracle Whip is a truly crushing defeat for us, and has us questioning our very sanity.

Ok, NOW I see what you're saying. Its monday, and I'm a little slow on the uptake. So, the advantage of invertase is that you can invert the sugar that's already present in the chocolate, rather than adding more (invert) sugar.

Proud devotee of the tangy, miraculous spread myself. Mayo's good too, but I prefer mw.

Sorry, I still don't get the distinction. Invert sugar is sucrose that has been split by intervtase into equal parts glucose and fructose. Invertase is an enzyme that splits sucrose into fructose and glucose. In the first case you are adding sucrose that has already been inverted. In the second case you are adding an enzyme that will invert the sugar. The only reason that invert sugar is sweeter is because of the free fructose (which is sweeter than sucrose), and when the invertase you add to the chocolate breaks down sucrose, it will also create free fructose, which should make the chocolate sweeter just like it would if you started with invert sugar to begin with.

How would using invertase produce an end result any different than what you get using invert sugar? Invertase just inverts the sucrose already present in the ganache, so the end result is the same as just using invert sugar to start with, right?

That's true with the absorption of the energy, but the magnetron, the piece that actually creates the microwaves, is not particularly efficient. Nor is it tremendously inefficient. It just lives in a milquetoast world. ← That's true, but I was referring to cooking efficiency, not the efficiency with which magnetrons convert electricity to microwaves. The conversion of electricity into microwave energy is not particularly efficient -- its about 60-70, whereas heating elements in an electric stove convert essentially all of the energy into heat. But for practical purposes (and energy conservation purposes), that's beside the point. What's important is how much energy you have to use to cook something, and in terms of cooking efficiency microwaves beat conventional ovens by a wide margin.

If thats true, then its scary how misinformed your physical sciences professors are -- as I pointed out, no conventional electric oven is even close to being as efficient as the microwave, for reasons that should be fairly obvious to someone with a background in physics.

Thanks, Tweety. You are too kind!

Little tarts with bittersweet passionfruit ganache and poached apricots.

Microwave ovens might be power hogs compared to lightbulbs or something, but they are miracles of efficiency compared to regular electric ovens. In fact, nothing else really even comes close. According to this article, the 'energy factor' of microwave ovens is 57.5%, compared to 10.9% for a standard electric oven, energy factor being defined as the fraction of total energy used by the appliance that is actually used to heat food, as opposed to say your oven or your kitchen. As an example of energy used to cook a specific dish, this page estimates that a casserole cooked in the microwave would use about 0.36KWh, while a regular electric oven would use about 2KWh. Of course I prefer my casserole cooked in the oven, but I'm not under any illusions about its energy efficiency.

According to this article on Weber Virtual Bullet:

In addition, only plastic wraps made from polyvinyl chloride would even contain any DEHA to begin with. This would exclude many plastic wraps, such as Saran, which is made from acetyltributyl citrate.