Patrick S

Agreed. Best sticky buns ever, I say.

I have used the lemon juice method to make a substitute for corn syrup, and it seemed to work fine. And while acid hydrolysis can be used to create an almost completely "inverted" syrup, the process would not be easy to do at home, and requires too much acid to be palatable (not so much a problem in a manufacturing system where the acid can be neutralized and removed after the inversion process). And for some reason, the process tends to produce a syrup that is not 50/50 as you would expect, but somehow contains disproportionately more fructose. Here is a link to an old paper (~1945) that examines many of the variables involved in producing inverted sugar using the acid method: Some observations on the acid inversion of sucrose PDF file

Their cases are open in the back, but covered on top and in front.

I made a passion fruit curd once, using a frozen sweetened puree. I made little tartlets with little discs of banana cake, topped by strawberry jam, topped with the curd. Mine turned out a little too sweet, but were still good. I was trying to duplicate something called the tart Maeva I had at Vanille Patisserie in Chicago, which was delicious.

Some cake decorating stores carry it too.

If you do decide to order online, you can get a 1kg bag of Callebaut for $20 from ChocolateSource.com.

The hot fudge pudding cake from Cook's Country is quick, easy and pretty delicious.

Well, if the problem is not failure to disperse the eggs into the other ingredients --and I doubt it is if you are mixing the eggs with the sugar first-- then the coagulated bits are probably a result of overcooking.

If you beat the eggs really well before you add the other ingredients, that will help. Your eggs should be beaten as if you used an immersion blender and the curd will come out nice and smooth. ← Or, beat the eggs with the sugar before adding the other ingredients. This makes for a more viscous mixture, which helps the egg whites get evenly dispersed. Thinking literally about it, of course, you actually want the egg whites to coagulate to some extent -- that's what forms the gel that makes a curd thicken and become a curd, as opposed to a sauce. You just want the egg to be evenly dispersed before it coagulates, and control the degree to which coagulation occurs. ← That's what I've been doing, actually, but I still got a lot of coagulated egg whites (not curd)--at least, it seemed a lot to me, since it was only the second time that I've made lemon curd. Which was why I asked. ← Hmm. What temperature are you cooking your curd to?

I haven't tried them, but the recipe does look a little sweet. Plus it seems to have very little salt to balance out the sugar -- 1/4t salt to 1.25C of sugars.

If you beat the eggs really well before you add the other ingredients, that will help. Your eggs should be beaten as if you used an immersion blender and the curd will come out nice and smooth. ← Or, beat the eggs with the sugar before adding the other ingredients. This makes for a more viscous mixture, which helps the egg whites get evenly dispersed. Thinking literally about it, of course, you actually want the egg whites to coagulate to some extent -- that's what forms the gel that makes a curd thicken and become a curd, as opposed to a sauce. You just want the egg to be evenly dispersed before it coagulates, and control the degree to which coagulation occurs.

It would seem so. Wikipedia gives the following values for flour protein content: 9-10% Pastry Flour 10-11.5% All-Purpose Flour 11-13% Bread Flour If those values are correct, then a 50/50 mixture of pastry and bread flour would have between 10 and 11.5% protein, exactly the range given for AP flour. Since pastry flour is made from soft wheat, bread flour from hard wheat, and AP flour from a mixture of both, mixing pastry and bread flour is just like making AP flour.

I agree that it would be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that you could kill or injure yourself if there was an accidental ignition, most butane has impurities in it that you probably wouldn't want to consume. You can demonstrate this with the mirror test -- discharge a butane can onto a mirror and wait for the butane to evaporate off, usually you'll see some white residue left behind. I don't know what this petrochemical residue is, but I doubt that consuming it would be a good idea.

No, the verdict has been in for years -- plastic wraps do not contain dioxins and therefore can not leach them into food. Further, most wraps are made of polyethylene or polypropylene, which do not contain chlorine and do not produce dioxins even when incinerated.

The dough shouldn't look shaggy, and I don't know what went wrong there, but its normal for brioche dough to be a little sticky and look and feel more wet than a dough with much less fat, so thats not necessarily a bad sign. Once you refrigerate the dough, it will get firmer and be easier to handle and shape. If I were you, I'd just proceed with your recipe. It may not turn out picture perfect, but unless something's gone really, really wrong, you're still likely to end up with something delicious.

I have a talented baking friend who addresses leaky springforms in this manner: cut a piece of parchment larger than the bottom of the pan; place the parchment over the bottom disk while the pan is disassembled, and reassemble the pan while catching the overhang of parchment between the ring and the disk. My friend swears it works, but I' haven't tested it yet. ← That's what I was suggesting also, though I didnt explain it as clearly as you did. It works fine if you have a tiny gap, plus it makes it easy to transfer the food.

The breadcrumb and EVOO idea is a good one. I'd use the bottom of a measuring cup or ramekin to really press the crumbs down firmly, and make a better seal. Depending on how bad the seal is, another thing you can try is laying a sheet of parchment over the bottom of the pan before clamping the top on. If its a tiny leak, that could seal it.

couldn't resist patrick! ← I'll let you in on a little secret -- strawberry ham is the next big fad in molecular gastronomy. It will be appearing on the menu at Alinea next month

Having used half of my brioche batch to make the sticky buns, I made a loaf with the other half. I had a slice this morning, toasted, with some strawberry ham. Larger image on Flickr: #1

This weekend I finally made the brioche sticky buns, leaving out the pecans to appease the little one. They are awesome. And despite their buttery, sugary richness, none of us could eat just one. Larger images on Flickr: #1 #2

I also doubt that it would make any difference, because whether you start from a very dilute syrup or from dry sugar, you're going to end up with the same amount of water by the time you get to caramel temperatures. Effectively all of the water will have been boiled off before the sugar will start to caramelize at ~320F.

I've been dieting for a couple of months, and have pretty much completely deprived myself of desserts. This week I reached my target weight, and decided to celebrate with some doughnuts. These were filled with strawberry jam. Recipe here.

Hi Becca, I would think that the best way to add the citric acid would be to add it to the water that you use to bloom the gelatin. I don't know how much you should use, but for a point of reference, there is 1g of citric acid in 20ml (4 teaspoons) of lemon juice, so 1g of citric acid should give you the equivalent acidic boost that you'd get from 4t of lemon juice.

I don't have any tips for stabilizing the souffles, but what I do is, set up the shoot while they are baking, using a stand-in of some kind for the souffle so I can get the exposure and lighting the way I want. Then, when the souffles are ready, I can take them out, swap out the dummy, and immediately and get the shot I want before they deflate.