Patrick S

I don't have a recipe for you, but I think that dulce de leche and tres leches translate as "sweet milk" and "three milks," or something to that effect.

Sherry Yard has a recipe for creamy caramel sauce that uses creme fraiche, can be held for a long time in the fridge, and is the best-tasting caramel sauce I've had. You could use up several cups of your creme fraiche making a big batch of this sauce.

You won't need to refrigerate the cake if you're making it one day ahead. I think a lot of cakes taste better the next day, especially chocolate cakes, but I don't refrigeration will necessarily improve things.

I haven't used it myself, but Boyajian has a 5oz bottle of strawberry flavoring for $15US. I've generally heard positive things about Boyajian products. If you try it out, please let me know what you think of it.

Crepes sounds like a good idea for a cook-off, since there is an infinite variety of possibilities.

For the record, here are the last three PB fudge recipes I tried. The bottom left is Emeril's recipe from the foodnetwork site. This is the most photogenic of the three, and cuts into nice pieces with sheer sides. The bottom right is Alton Brown's recipe. This one has one big advantage, and that is that you can literally make it in 5 minutes, using only a bowl, a spoon and a microwave. It is very crumbly as far as fudge goes, but the taste is actually pretty good. On top is devinf's recipe. Its not as photogenic, but it is exactly what I wanted in terms of texture. It has a good peanut butter taste, though maybe not as strong as as the other two. Thanks again, devin! Next time I'll try a different peanut butter. I saw on Cooks Illustrated today that they had done a peanut butter taste test, and the Peter Pan I've been using placed near last in every test, while Skippy, Jif and Reese's placed highest. Peter Pan was 6th in the raw and sauce tests, and 7th in the cookie test. It was given a "not recommended." Reese's won the raw taste test, but was 7th in the sauce test and 6th in the cookie test. Skippy won the sauce and cooky tests, and was 3rd in the raw test. Jif came in second in the raw and sauce tests, and fourth in the cookie test. Skippy took the "highly recommended" prize.

Both methods are equally humane or inhumane depending on the skill of the person doing it. ← Well, you seemed indignant that this pig was slaughtered by gunshot and that it took a few shots to finish the job. You said it was "stupid cruel," and implied that cutting the throat is quicker. Well, assuming that there were only a few seconds between gunshots, I don't see how that shooting could be more stupid or cruel than slitting a pigs throat and letting it bleed to death in great pain. No matter how skilled the person cutting the animal's throat, death will not come instantly and it will be extremely painful.

Good point. I don't think this is an argument you can make. ← And its not an argument I did make. An argument has premises and a conclusion. What I made was a statement of fact (nature is cruel), and a statement of opinion (if I were a pig, I'd rather be shot by a human than eaten alive by a natural predator), not an argument. I didn't conclude or even imply that since nature is cruel, therefore cruelty by humans is acceptable. You read that into what I wrote.

Good point. If I were a pig, I suppose I would rather be killed by an incompetent hunter than be ripped apart, basically eaten alive, by the teeth of some predator. EDIT: This reminded me of a quote from Richard Dawkins from his book River Out of Eden, about the cruelty of nature:

I'm not sure I get your point. There are humane ways ethical farmers kill domesticated animals, and there are stupid cruel ways amatuer hobbyists kill domesticated animals. ← If you read my post above, you will see that I am talking about hunting animals, not slaughtering domesticated animals. You dont hunt domesticated animals. I'm thinking of things like wild boar and deer, not farm-raised cows and pigs. Its relatively easy to slaughter a cow or pig quickly and humanely, but not so for a boar or a deer. And I thought my point was obvious: that for most humans, for most of their existence on earth, before animal domestication or for animals that are not domesticated, getting the meat was and is often a brutal, drawn-out thing for the prey, and that the pig's end sounds pretty humane by comparison. I'm not saying that this was or is a good thing by any means, just that that is the way it was and is, and that if you think the pig-shooting described in the first post is morally unacceptable, or "stupid cruel", then you should probably be opposed to just about all forms of hunting as "stupid cruel" as well. A few gunshots to the head can be a lot more humane that cutting the throat. If you've seen an animal slaughtered by having its throat cut, you know that this does not bring about instant death, as evidenced by the violent thrashing and squealing and gasping. You can find plenty of videos of this type of thing on animal-rights websites. It may take up to a minute for the animal to loose consciousness and stop thrashing. That sure doesn't strike me as being any more humane than shooting, even if you have to shoot a few times.

Beautiful work, Josette. You should be proud! My 6-year old would love that castle-looking cake. Bkeith, your cake rocks too!

And last time I checked, milk was not "cow pus."

devinf, I tried your recipe tonight, and its easily the best one so far in terms of mouth-feel. Thanks! I did use more PB though, about 8ozs, as 3ozs seemed like a small amount. When the mixture reached 120F, I added the vanilla and stirred the PB into the mixture. It got firm really quickly and I had to press it into the pan.

Here's a pic of some cookies made with that chocolate Italian meringue I mentioned. They're not the prettiest --they get kind of bumpy when they cook -- but the are most definitely chewy. Lochina, if you're still looking for a recipe, you should definitely give these a try. Sandwich a couple together with some ganache or Nutella, and you're all set.

If you're horrifed at a pig getting shot and needing more than one shot, you probably will want to avoid hunting any of your own meat the old-fashioned way, with spears or arrows, the way people always did it before the invention of the gun. :) The pig's demise was probably blissful compared to the way most prey die at the hands of hunters. If you're using arrows or spears certainly there is no gaurantee of a quick, painless death for the prey. Most likely you'll just cause bleeding and the animal will bleed to death over the course of a few minutes. If most hunters waited for a gaurantee of instant death before taking a shot, they'd never catch anything.

I'm using Peter Pan, which is pretty creamy, but not as creamy as Jif. I happen to have a lot of it though. devinf, thank you for the recipe, I will try it!

I kinda sympathize, but it would be hard for me to be too outraged without feeling like a complete hypocrite. I'm sympathetic to the PETA-esque view that you really can't claim to be "respecting" an animal all that much when you rip it out of the water with a hook through the mouth, hang it up to die of suffocation or bash its head against a tree, and then cook and eat its corpse. I'm not sure you can claim to be respecting an animal even as you deprive it of its very existence. In the everyday meaning of the word respect, I wouldn't consider this a respectful act no matter how much was done to avoid unnecessary suffering. I guess I would feel like a bit of a hypocrite scolding the kids because I also continue to buy milk and beef and chicken taken from animals that I know good and well were not treated with any real "respect" when they were alive. I mean, I'm not sure that a fish getting poked with a stick at or near the moment of death is any less respectful to me than the everyday living conditions imposed on chickens on the chicken farm, or ducks and geese that are force-fed to produce fat fois gras fodder livers. These are the large-scale, industrial equivalents of the kids with the sticks, though the sticks are replaced with ridiculously small cages, injectors and clippers and force-feeding devices.

You can add some fat to meringue without totally deflating it, so long as you start with a very stiff meringue and mix the fat in just till combined. For instance, The Cake Bible has a recipe for Chocolate Italian Meringue that includes a couple of ounces of melted unsweetened chocolate mixed in at the end. It holds its shape pretty well when you pipe it, and is chewy and delicious too.

I don't make fudge for myself, but a lot of people I know really love it and ask me to make it for them. I have found recipes for chocolate and vanilla fudge that I am happy with, but not one for peanut butter fudge. I have tried Gale Gand's, Emeril's, and Alton Brown's. They are all ok, but none yields a fudge as creamy as I'd like. Does anyone have a recipe that yields a very creamy-textured peanut butter fudge?

Among the dutched cocoas (which were judged to be best-tasting in all the taste-tests: shortbread, devil's food cake, pudding, pudding cake, and hot chocolate), the top-rated was Callebaut, which you can order online for about half the price of Valrhona. Valrhona actually was ranked lower in preference than Callebaut, Droste and Schokinag. Possibly that reflects that most people prefer a simpler chocolate taste. I've used Valrhona cocoa in lots of things, and its clearly one of the best. But I personally don't think it is superior to the extent that I would twice as much for it on a regular basis.

Its a matter of personal preference, but I've tried pretty much every type of cocoa in cakes and found that I do not like the flavor Scharffen Berger or Ghirardelli or other natural cocoas very much. Incidentally, when Cook's Illustrated did their cocoa tasting a couple of months ago, Scharffen Berger came in dead last of all cocoas, while Hershey's, which sells for 1/3 the price, came in second among the untreated cocoas. So I say, if you need to use an untreated cocoa, you could do alot worse than Hershey's!

For Derby day, had cheese pizza again, and espresso Kahlua tiramisu for dessert.

I remember Burger Chef, though only vaguely, because they went to burger franchise heaven when I was a little kid (to be with Burger Queen and Druthers). If you're in the mood for nostalgia, check out JSF's Burger Chef page and Burger Chef memories.

I agree re the Magi-Cake strips. But then, how can one disagree about brownies with an eGulleteer named browniebaker? I also have experienced more of a differential when using a glass baking dish, but that might be just me. ← Believe me, it's not just you! I love my Pyrex, but not for brownies. Glass heats up too fast, cooking the edges quickly. ← Isn't the problem really not that glass heats up so fast, cooking the edges quickly, but that glass cools down so slowly -- and keeps cooking the edges after you take the dish out of the oven? Glass actually has extremely low thermal conductivity compared to most metals, so it take a long time for the inside of the dish to get hot, but it keeps imparting heat to the brownies for a long time after you take it out of the oven.

How about the McGriddle? Sandwichs on pancake buns with built-in syrup globules. Very innovative.