Patrick S

What is that?? sounds like a polimere(sp) is it synthetic sugar?? steve ← Yes, its a polymeric synthetic sweetener derived from dextrose, sold under the trade name Litesse.

The risk is certainly very small, just as it is with raw eggs and raw meat. Life is full of risks and its up to you which ones you want to take. But certainly the risk is also real, and certainly there are cases in France where people have become very ill from eating raw milk cheeses. The three examples below report outbreaks in France traced to cheeses: Desenclos et al, 1996. Large outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype paratyphi B infection caused by goats' milk cheese, France: a case finding and epidemiological study. British Medical Journal 312, 91-94. Goulet et al, 1995. Listeriosis from consumption of raw-milk cheese. Lancet 345, 1581-1582. Vaillant et al, 1996. Outbreak of Salmonella dublin infection in France, November-December 1995. Eurosurveillance 1, (2) 9-10.

Here's a recipe from SB that uses the unsweetened and sounds good. Frozen Chocolate Mousse Ingredients 4ozs 99% 2 1/2C cream 1C whole milk 6 large yolks 1 1/4C sugar 1. Melt chocolate and 3/4C cream in double boiler. 2. Heat milk to simmer and then remove from heat. 3. Whisk yolks and sugar together until you get a thick yellow paste, a couple of minutes. Add half the milk to yold/sugar mixture, whisk to combine. Then add the yolk/sugar mix to the rest of the milk, and whisk to combine. Now, put the yolk/sugar/milk mixture on the stove or over a double-boiler and, whiskly constantly, bring the mixture up to 175F. 4. Pour through strainer into bowl set over ice bath. Stire occasionally til cool. 5. Whip remaining cream to soft peaks. Fold melted chocolate mixture into cooled egg mixture. Fold in whippe cream. 6. Pour into individual ramekins (or whatever dish you like), and freeze, covered, for at least six hours. Take out of freezer a few minutes before serving to soften a bit.

I tried this and it was not thick enough to form a layer. I boiled two cans of sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours, scooped into a bowl and smoothed it out with an immersion blender. The result was homogeous and silky smooth, but too thin to use as a cake layer. It soaked into the cake, and some oozed out under the weight of the top cake layer. Maybe mixing in some powdered sugar would help.

Good point. I had never even heard of TB transmission via raw milk before this, though I was aware of the other, more widely-known pathogens like salmonella and listeria.

Right. But the recent FDA advisory, which was prompted by the recent TB cases in New York, pointed that TB is only one of several food-borne illness that can be transmitted via raw milk products, so I would think that discussion of those other illnesses --such as listeria-- is appropriate.

I tried the Scott Woolley cake one last time, this time using a cocoa I am familiar with (Hershey's). Its much better than the time I used Ghirardelli cocoa, and is definitely a good cake all-around, but I still have to say that overall, and especially with regard to flavor, I prefer the butter-rich 'She-Ain't-Heavy' cake. I think its at least partly due to my own quirky preference, in that I I have found that I personally don't like chocolate cake recipes with sour cream or buttermilk recipes. I'd rather add oil or milk for moistness and butter for flavor. One thing I should also mention is that the taste of this cake improved drastically over 24 hours. Last night I thought the flavor was not so good. Tonight it is much better. Its not unusual for the flavor to improve like that, but in this case the improvement in flavor was much more noticable than any cake I can remember.

Here's the FDA statement from march 14. It doesn't seem too hysterical to me.

I would bet that a disproportionate amount of knife accidents occur with chocolate, particular chocolate with high cacao percentages that are a b@#$% to cut with anything short of a large axe. Come to think of it, I wonder how a sledgehammer would do? I know this may sound stupidly obvious, but it bears repeating: always cut away from your body, particularly when you're working with something like chocolate that requires a lot of force.

Looks like moss-covered plant roots of some kind lying atop a cross-section of a tree.

Its hard to beat ChocolateSource.com for selection.

Peelzym is indeed a pectinase (i.e. an enzyme that degrades pectin). I can't find any studies specifically testing Peelzym specifically for toxicity, there are studies testing the toxicity and mutagenicity of pectinase-rich enzyme solutions derived from the bacteria Aspergillis niger which find a lack of toxicity even at high doses. ENZYMES DERIVED FROM ASPERGILLIS NIGER. WHO Food Additive Series, Review by International Programme on Chemical Safety.

Here's a brownie recipe calling for 99% from Scharffen-Berger's website that may be worth a look: Karen's Working Parent No-Fuss Brownies If you're really wanting to showcase the chocolate, a hot chocolate drink is always a good choice. The warmth really intensifies the taste experience. Plus, you tend to savor every sip, so a few ounces goes a long way. Plus, you can sweeten it to taste if you find it too bitter at first.

Yes, I'm pretty sure Neil's recipe called for 1-1 potato starch and powder sugar.

Good job, lannie! Now, if only you could email me a bite of that thing. . .

I made this cheesecake last night, and its very good. I followed the recipe, except that I used vanilla wafer crumbs rather than graham cracker crumbs for the crust, I baked in 4.5" springforms, I used a waterbath and a longer baking time (I cooked them to an internal temp of ~150F), and I used a different procedure to make the bananas on top (included some nutmeg and cinnamon also). Oh, and also I did not wrap the cakes in chocolate, as I felt chocolate would be out-of-place. These are great cheesecakes. The crust is slightly chewy and has a banana taste because it includes some banana. The filling is extremely smooth and creamy.

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Did you ever notice Ray's habit of constant, wild gesticulation? I mean, a lot of people 'talk with their hands,' but for her it approaches a martial art . . . . the constant slicing, chopping, slapping. Check out the intro to one of her 30 minute meals episodes.

Welcome, Chantal!

Well, some of it is present naturally in soils and trasmitted to cows who graze on grasses growing in those soils. I don't know about the relative contributions of each of these sources to dairy iodine though.

I find it highly ironic that peppers started producing capsaicin to scare off hungry mammals whose complex digestive systems destroy the seeds, only to have seemingly irrational humans becoming perversely attracted to the pain they produce. As a result, a fairly innocuous plant indiginous to a small area of central America has now been spread to 6 of 7 continents with thousands of variant strains in less than 500 years. Pretty successful reproductive strategy... ← Same thing with delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol! Cannabis produces this stuff (presumably) as a deterrant, yet today we have millions of cannabis enthusiasts worldwide (over 100 million people worldwide who have tried it), cultivating and breeding these plants for the highest THC content.

Doc, I have nothing but the fondest feelings for you, so please don't take it personally if I take a moment to disagree with the idea that we humans have developed adaptations to natural plant pesticides that make them less harmful to us than synthetic pesticides. First, and probably most important, the plants most of us eat on a regular basis simply have not been a part of the human diet for very long. In fact, agriculture in general is a very, very recent development when seen in the context of all human prehistory. For most of us, our diets of plants is very different today than it was even 500 or 1000 years ago. Gold et al(p. 28) put it very well: After all, we still can get cancer from viruses, sunlight, heavy metals, certains foods, stuff we've been exposed to from the beginning. Secondly, adaptation is always reciprocal between predator and prey, in this case plants and the animals that feed on them. This is the concept of the evolutionary 'arms race.' Adaptation is met with counteradaptation. Just as there is selection pressure for the animal to develop resistance to the plant pesticides, there is also selection pressure for the plant to develop a counter-adaptation to the predators adaptation. If it were really possible that animals (whether ourselves or plant pests) could develop perfect resistance to plant defenses over time -- then there would be no such thing as endogenous pesticides, because none of the chemicals would still be effective as pesticides! I don't think I've explained this very well, but what I'm trying to say is that the plant is adapting to its predators just as much as its predators are adapting to it. If it stopped doing that, it would cease to exist. Thirdly, the toxicological evidence doesn't seem to support the idea that natural pesticides are less harmful than synthetic pesticides. In particular, I'd point you to chapters 5 an 7 in the Gold et al paper I linked to above. Chapter 5 addresses the "misconception" that "the toxicology of synthetic chemicals is different from that of natural chemicals," while chapter 7 addresses the "misconception" that "synthetic chemicals pose greater carcinogenic hazards than natural chemicals." Gold et al give what I think is a masterful and completely convincing refutation of the idea that natural chemicals are less harmful than synthetic ones. I'll give a brief summary of some of their points, but you'd really have to read their paper and their references to understand all of their arguments. One point they make is that our defenses against toxic substances are general rather than specific to each chemical. Many of the same mechanisms our body uses to protect us against natural toxins also protect us against synthetic ones. This is a very important point. The most remarkable toxicological finding, though, in my opinion, is this: in standard in vivo rodent carcinogenicity tests, a similar proportion of synthetic and natural chemicals are found to be carcinogens. This is really amazing to me, and of course completely contradicts the "common knowledge" that natural chemicals as a group tend to be "safe" while synthetic chemicals as a group tend to be "dangerous" on a weight-for-weight basis. The Carcinogenic Potency Database shows that 79 out of 194 commerical pesticides, or 41%, are carcinogens in high-dose rodent tests, while 37 out of 72, or 51% of natural pesticides tested so far have turned out to be rodent carcinogens in the same tests (see p. 32 in Gold et al). There are actually estimated to be about 10,000 natural pesticides and their breakdown products in our diet, but only recently has anyone began testing them. Again, the whole idea that synthetic chemicals are somehow fundamentally different in terms of toxicology just doesn't seem to be true. One last thing on this subject -- I'd highly recommend anyone interested in this stuff check out the HERP index in Gold et al's article. HERP stands for Human Exposure/Rodent Potency. Basically this is a ranked index of various carcinogenic hazards. The ranking is straightforward. It reflects the ratio of the dose humans recieve in mg per kg of body weight to the dose in mg per kg that has been shown to be carcinogenic in rodent tests. So, for instance, if you are eating 10mg per kg of body weight per day of chemical X, and the rodent tests show that chemical X causes cancer in rodents at doses of 100mg/kg/day, then the HERP rank for that chemical is 10%. The methodology is described in detail in Gold et al's papers on the subject. Now, what is amazing is how high on the index many natural chemicals are compared to the synthetic chemicals that are usually the focus of concern. For instance, caffeic acid from coffee has a rank of 0.1%, caffeic acid from lettuce has a HERP of 0.04%, and hydrazine from mushrooms has a rank of 0.02%. All pretty low, right? Well, now compare these HERP values to the HERP values for the synthetic pesticide residues. For instance, DDT and its metabolites have a HERP of 0.00008%. The highest HERP ranking for any synthetic pesticide of pesticide breakdown product is for ethylene thiourea, a breakdown product of certain fumigant, which has a HERP of 0.002%. Ethylene dibromide (EDB), a fungicide which was banned due to concerns of residues, had a HERP of 0.0004%. Toxaphene had a HERP of 0.0001%, chlorobenzilate a HERP of 0.0000001%. And these are at the synthetic residues with the highest HERP rankings. In that light, it seems very odd indeed that we spend so much on synthetic residue monitoring, but no one bothers to test produce for levels of endogenous, natural pesticides which are present in much higher amounts and are just as likely to be carcinogenic. I mean, I have yet to hear anyone demand that we allocate any significant resources to monitoring caffeic acid levels in lettuce and potatoes, or allyl isothiocyanate in mustard, or benzene, 1,2,5,6 dibenzanthracene, 4-methylcatechol, isoprene and benzo(a)pyrene in roasted coffee, or glutamyl-p-hydrazinobenzoate in mushrooms, or 8-methoxypsoralen in celery, etc, etc, ad infinitum. And that is where science comes in. Claims are a dime a dozen. The trick is going out into the real world and accumulating the data you need to actually test any given claim. The claim that survives the observational tests survives, and those that don't . . . don't. It can be hard work evaluating which claims are true and which aren't, but certainly it is possible. Not only is life expectancy up, but both the incidence of cancer and the death rate from cancer has dropped. The incidence of some types of cancers have increased, but the overall incidence and death rate from all cancers has decreased. See: Jemal et al, 2004. Annual report to the nation on the status of cancer, 1975-2001, with a special feature regarding survival. Cancer 101, pp.3-27. And in any event, epidemiological studies have long shown that those who eat the most fruits and vegetables --and who are thus exposed to the highest levels of synthetic pesticide residues-- have significantly lower rates of cancer. That doesn't mean that the residues are responsible for the protective effect, of course, but it does seem hard to reconcile with the idea that the residues are a significant risk factor for cancer. Its been fun, yall!

God job adapting to some difficult constraints! Oh, and it all looks delicious too!

Sure. There's no reason why you couldn't use a 13x9, or a couple of 9" rounds. Just adjust your cooking time accordingly.

I tried the Frog Comissary cake recipe linked to earlier in the thread. Instead of the pecan cream filling in the middle, I just used more of the cream cheese icing. I also included raisins and a little crushed pineapple. This one is definitely moist and heavy, and I like it quite a bit.