Patrick S

Well, no one to my knowledge has yet created a transgenic corn cultivar with blowfly genes, so that evidence couldn't possibly exist. For those transgenic cultivars that do actually exist -- like Bt corn-- there is an enormous amount of literature.

If the show Fear Factor is any indication, the answer appears literally to be 'nothing.'

I value freshness, taste and other "sensory" qualities of food, and my limited experience with organic produce has not convinced me that it is superior in these respects. I do not worry at all about the nanograms of synthetic pesticide residues on normal produce, don't see them as a significant health risk, and therefore will not pay the much higher price for produce that doesn't contain them.

Has anyone tried the chocolate bouchons? If so, what did you think?

In my online personals ad, I describe the potential Mrs. Fresser thusly: She has the brains of Marie Curie and the body of Jane Russell. Maybe even the sarcastic wit of Elaine Boozler? ← I'm sure you were suprised by the tidal wave of interested replies from single physicist bombshells?

I made the cake again a couple of times and I agree about the jello. Actually I didn't mind the flavor so much but I think it did give a little rubberiness to the cake. So I did what you did -- reduced the puree. I think I ended up using about 2C of almost jam-like reduced puree. This worked great, and made the flavor much stronger. I need to tweak the recipe some more, but I wanted to say that I thought reducing the puree is a great tip. ← Have you tried working with any of the LorAnn flavored oils, Patrick? I picked up a few bottles last month (haven't had a chance to play with them yet). I'm guessing a few drops of strawberry oil could sub for the flavor provided by the jello and solve the problem of rubberiness. ← No, I haven't tried LorAnn oils. I see them all the time, and have wondered if they are any good. Once you use them, let me know what you think. I see that Boyajian also has a natural strawberry flavoring, and I've heard good things about their products. Anyway, the cake I made with just the super-reduced puree actually had a pretty strong flavor, and texture was improved too but now it might actually be too delicate, so I might try using more flour or AP flour instead of cake flour. The reduced puree also made the cake purple-pink in color, oddly enough.

Yeah, the only nougat I have made is extremely chewy, like taffy, and wouldn't work at all in a cake.

According to the Wikipedia entry for malted milk, "Malted milk is malted barley, wheat flour and whole milk evaporated into a powder." And several web sites discussing wheat allergy (example1 example2 example3) list malted milk as a wheat-containing product. Is it possible perhaps that some do and some don't?

I made the cake again a couple of times and I agree about the jello. Actually I didn't mind the flavor so much but I think it did give a little rubberiness to the cake. So I did what you did -- reduced the puree. I think I ended up using about 2C of almost jam-like reduced puree. This worked great, and made the flavor much stronger. I need to tweak the recipe some more, but I wanted to say that I thought reducing the puree is a great tip.

chiantiglace, I'm interested if you have a 3M-like chocolate nougat recipe that you are willing to share.

It will be just fine with an almond crust, and you can make it a day in advance, no problem.

Cool, thanks JustKay!

Doesn't malted milk powder have wheat in it? The ingredient list I posted from the the manufacturer's web site doesn't include wheat (unless I missed it), and the allergy information mentions that 3Ms are made in a facility that uses peanuts, but doesn't mention wheat.

FYI, here's what 3Musketeers website says about the candy bar: Sounds like chocolate is added to Italian meringue, right? If you wanted to go the marshmallow route, you could just reduce the amount of gelatin to make it less firm.

A whipped milk chocolate ganache would be something like 3 Musketeer filling.

Cookman, or anyone who wants to learn how to use ImageGullet, check this thread out.

I feel your pain, David. I had the same experience before looking at strawberry flavor compounds (Dreidoppel, I think) that Wendy recommended a while back. I would love to try some of these, but it would be a huge waste to buy a kg of it.

Its not what you asked for, but banana cake and banana bread with orange zest are great ways to use bananas.

← Sounds delicious, and looks Dali-esque.

Makes perfect sense! Thank you for explaining.

I tried making honeycomb from the recipe in the latest Chocolatier magazine. Basically it is a honey and sugar syrup cooked to hard crack stage, and mixed with baking soda so you get a honeycomb-looking candy. I must have made it right, because it looked just like the picture. But it tasted horrible (too much baking soda), and was practically inedible.

I'd say that's almost backwards. It's really more of the cooler your butter, the more whipped it is, the paler and thicker/volumous/not dense your product. ← You're confusing me, Wendy! But then, I confuse easily. A few posts ago you wrote: I took that to mean that a warmer butter would produce a more yellow lemon cream (the temperature of the curd shouldn't change -- its supposed to be 140F). Sorry if I misunderstood!

As your know, the lemon cream calls for softened butter, not melted or whipped butter. Do you think that lemon cream made with butter that is softened to, say, 70F will be noticably more yellow than lemon cream made with butter that is softened to, say, only 50F?

Thanks for the eye candy, Ling!

The warmer the butter, the more yellow the lemon cream? Interesting. I haven't heard of that phenomenon before.