Patrick S

I have only ever used a chef's knife to cut caramel. I always let the caramel cure overnight, loosely covered or uncovered. If the caramel is very soft, I refridgerate it. I cut with a chef's knife lightly oiled, and make sure the blade is clean before each cut. Here are two examples of the results I get: A batch of Herme's lemon chocolate caramels that turned out a little too soft. These had been refridgerated: Here's a of batch of caramels made from Flo Braker's recipe in Sweet Miniatures. These were neither too hard nor too soft, and were cut without refridgeration.

I'm curious too. You can't get that perfect an edge with a spatula and turntable, can you?

Calipoutine, I just made that pie this week! Except that I used all one kind of apple (it's what I had). But it turned out fine, if a bit to the tart side because of the apples. ← I tried that a couple of weeks ago also. I used store-bought pie crust though, rather than the all-butter pastry, which I'm sure is great. It was good, but I like a bit of caramelly gooey stuff in an apple pie. This pie filling was all apple, with no caramelly goo.

I understand completely! I went ahead and ordered some, and I'm looking forward to experimenting.

I'm eager to hear what you think of the beans you bought, bripastry. Have you used tahitensis beans before? I haven't, and I'm curious to hear about their flavor, since the vendor says they contain "very little vanillin."

In the U.S. at least, pretty much no one defines dessert as being limited to the options of cheese, petit fours and fruit. 'Dessert' is used as a synonym for the sweet course.

This is what the Cook's Illustrated lemon cheesecake used. I liked it better than graham crackers or vanilla wafers. 5 ozs Nabisco Barnum's Animal Crackers 3T sugar 4 Tunsalted butter, melted Pulse the crackers to fine crumbs. Add sugar, pulse a couple of times. Add butter while pulsing and keep pulsing til the mixture looks like wet sand.

I changed the image URL so we can see the full-size image!

The mother and I did the flowers. She bought them and then we both put them on the cake. I was a little nervous, but I tried to think every step out ahead of time, and it all worked out well. The hard part was resisting the urge to swan-dive into the buttercream. I made 12 cups of it to put on the cake, and all I had was a little left on the beaters and utensils.

The recipe Paula Wolfert posted elsewhere in this thread is simple and delicious. As for the molds, I only have the tin molds, so I can't tell you what the difference is between copper and tin. However, the tin molds seem to work perfectly so I don't know what the advantage would be in paying almost 3 times as much for copper.

And the pictures are . . . where? ← I am no Chefpeon or K8memphis or JeanneCake in terms of cake decorating, and I doubt I'll ever even be close. I didn't even do any flowers or anything like that. But here's what it looked like:

I'm eating cake-leveling scraps from my first ever wedding cake, a 3-tiered white cake with vanilla buttercream which I made for a coworker.

An emulsion is a suspension of drops of one liquid in another liquid, which in cooking usually means a suspension of a fat in water. Emulsifiers, then, are substances that facilitate the formation of or stabilize an emulsion. I've never used any but would be interested to experiment with them just to see what kind of effects they have.

Thanks for the tip! At that price, they have to be worth a shot. I see a lot of vanilla bean creme brulees in my future. . .

A couple of recent meals: French onion soup: Cabernet beef stew: Roast chicken, onions and potatoes: Apple pie for dessert:

This anecdote is not really an old wives tales, but is similar. When I was very little, my grandmother induced a metaphysical panic in me when she told me that the water wouldn't boil if we kept taking the lid off and peeking at it. I asked how the water knew we were peeking? "It just does," she said, not willing at that time to explain things like thermodynamic or the laws of physics. So for a little while I was left thinking that the water knew when we were peeking, and was just shy about boiling when anyone was looking. It was childhood animism at its finest.

So the point of exposing egg whites may be the reconversion of s-ovalbumin to the more-stable-foaming ovalbumin by carbonic acid formed when CO2 from the air is allowed to dissolve into the whites? I wonder if this has anything to do with why cream of tartar, which of course is a salt of tartaric acid, makes a more stable egg foam? I also wonder what fraction of the ovalbumin in dried whites is converted to s-ovalbumin?

This is probably too obvious, but . . . scales. Every serious baker should have a good digital scale. EDIT: Oops, Chefpeon already mentioned scales.

Great idea! Bacon grease injection sounds like something I have to try next time I smoke a pork butt.

I have not tried very many recipes to be honest. In addition to Yard's and the CI recipe, I have tried a citrus bar from the book Celebrate with Chocolate, which includes a little orange and lime too, and a white chocolate cream cheese icing. They were good too, but I think I like the CI version best, certainly I like the crust better.

Just type in "lemon bars" in the search field at the top of the CI homepage, and it wil be the second result you get. Otherwise, just click here. EDIT: Oddly enough, if you search for lemon bars with the words in quotes, you get no result.

I tried Yard's recipe in january and was not won over. I did try the Cook's Illustrated recipe yesterday, and liked it much better. They are actually quite addictive -- I had a hard time staying away from them. I even ate one this morning, and it is quite rare for me to eat anything, particularly anything sweet, before noon.

Don't soak the breasts in lemon juice---you'll denature the proteins and make the meat tough. You can brush on the juice while grilling, though. ← Of course you wouldn't want to marinade chicken in lemon juice all by itself, but I use lemon juice in chicken marinades all the time with great results. In fact, my favorite chicken marinade right now is balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, dijon, garlic, and olive oil.

Patrick, Lindt discontinued the large white chocolate bar. They still have the smaller plain white bar (100 gram, 3.3 oz) and the one with coconut. I stopped by a Lindt store today to check this out ... and also to buy a few truffles for the drive home. I am new to this forum and love it. I hope my occasional two cents will be useful to others. Ilene ← Thanks for the information, and welcome!

I had Lindt white chocolate before and I thought that was good as far as white chocolates go, but now all I can find from Lindt are white chocolate bars with coconut. I don't know if they still sell plain white chocolate at all.