Patrick S

That's odd, becasue the first two batches I made were precisely the same in every way, except that the second batch I left out to dry, and the second batch had well-developed feet while the first did not. Your problem must lie somewhere else.

I use almond meal all the time. You will get a 'foot' if you allow the macaroons to sit out for 30 minutes to form a skin. That way, when the cookies heat up and you have thermal expansion, the cookies will rise upward rather than outwards from the center (which also causes cracking).

Its just a matter of personal taste. I've tried both Yard's and Herme's chocolate financiers, and though I liked Herme's better, I will not make either of them again. They are to me like brownies, only not as good. On the other hand, my wife loved them. I havent used Trader Joes chocolate, so I cant say what impact it may have had, but I used Valrhona and Callebaut for mine, both of which I love, so I know that chocolate quality was not to blame. Here's Yards choc financier: And Herme's:

Did that recipe run in the mag? If so, do you know what issue? I'd like to check it out. ← I dont think it has run in the magazine yet, though it might in the future. If you have an online subscription, the recipe is at: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=2004

There are so many great recipes and ideas on this thread, I'm going to have a hard time deciding what to try for my next soup. Very impressive! I dont make soup very often, but last night I made a french onion soup at my wife's request, using 'Henri's French Onion Soup' recipe which was recently added to the CooksIllustrated website. Takes a lot of time and attention to get the onions deeply, darkly caramelized (about 2 hours), but I'm amazed at the veritable rainbow of flavors that develops using so few ingredients. One thing I learned making this soup is that I need a new dutch oven. The caramelized bits kept sticking to the bottom of the pot and were almost impossible to scrape off.

I've used Wendy's banana cake as an 'fall-back' several times. But Ive also used it when I had plenty of time to bake whatever I wanted, because its a superb cake.

I haven't tried it, but I've seen some photos of creme brulee with a perfectly flat, uniformly colored caramel that I suspect must have been done in this way.

Its easier with a blowtorch. As Wendy said, the best way is to sprinkle a very thin coating of sugar, blowtorch it till you see it all melting, add another very thin coat of sugar, torch it till you see it melting, etc. This is the only way Ive ever gotten a semi-uniform caramel crust. Ive never succeeded with a broiler. For my taste, burned sugar on a creme brulee is a kiss of death. A tiny dark spot is acceptable, but Ive seen creme brulees covered with black. This probably is the result of holding the blowtorch a millimeter away from the sugar, trying to caramelize it in 5 seconds. So, take your time if you can. You can always apply more heat, but you can't unburn sugar.

I've used the recipe in Yard's The Secrets of Baking many times, and it is so good that I have no desire to shop for a new one. 3 cups heavy cream 1 cup sugar 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped 6 large egg yolks, chilled Preheat oven to 300F. Bring the cream, 1/2C sugar and bean to simmer in medium pan, take off of heat, cover with plastic and let rest for 15 minutes. While that's resting, whisk the yolks together in another bowl. After the 15 minute rest, pour the cream mix a little at a time to the yolks until complete, whisking all the while. Strain or pick out the bean. Pour into 6 ramekins. Put the ramekins in a pan, and cover 2/3 with hottest tap water. Bake 40-45 minutes. They're done when the custard jiggles but does not slosh. One thing I have done is bake the cremes in silicone muffin pans, then freeze them. After that, they can be unmolded like little hockey pucks onto a plate and brought up to room temp. I've frozen them for up to a few days and theyve turned out fine. My favorite variation on creme brulee is Kahlua-espresso. EDIT: The other half-cup of sugar is for caramelizing.

If we're including flourless cakes that arent actually flourless, I've had good results with this Chocolate Truffle Cake. If you make it, disregard the recommended cook time of 40-45 minutes. 30 minutes is closer to the mark. EDITED to fix link.

1. Go to http://forums.egullet.org/ 2. Click on 'ImageGullet' at the top of the screen. 3. Click on 'Create Album.' 4. Give album a name, etc. 5. You'll be transferred to your album manager. Click on 'view.' 6. Click on the picture you want to post, so that the picture is displayed. 7. Click on the 'Click for Actual URL.' 8. Double left-click on the URL, so it is selected. Right click on the box with the URL, and select 'copy' from the menu. 9. To post the image in a posting, click the IMG button which is with the rest of the code buttons. This will insert an IMG tag. Paste your URL, and then hit hte IMG button again. This will insert another IMG tag.

I've never tried this, but I've heard other people swear by topical cannabis extracts as well. And there is an abundance of research showing that THC and cannabidiol have anti-inflammatory, analgesic and immunomodulatory properties. So there may be something to it. But I admit I'm puzzled as to how it would work, because natural cannabinoids are exceedingly 'lipophilic' (fat-loving) and it is very difficult for them to diffuse past the fatty layer of skin known as the stratum corneum. In experiments where cannabinoids are delivered transdermally (i.e. in a patch on the skin), typically only the tiniest amounts are detected in the bloodstream (amounts far too small to produce a psychoactive effect). There are some newer, synthetic, water-soluble cannabinoids that are much better candiates for transdermal delivery though. It may be that the therapeutic effect of topical cannabis extract is not mediated by cannabinoids, but by some other compounds in the extract. I dont know one way or the other, but thats my 2 cents.

Alright, the last three items on my lemon kick are the lemon bars and lemon pudding cakes from Yard's The Secrets of Baking, and miniature tart shells filled with Herme's lemon cream. The lemon bars are not extraordinary. The pudding cakes are made with Yard's lemon curd. 1/2 milk is mixed into the curd, then 2Tb flour. Whites and sugar are whipped to a stiff meringue, and then folded into the curd in three additions. The mix is poured into buttered and sugared ramekins and baked in a water bath at 325F for about 25 minutes. The bars I think are fairly underwhelming. I like the citrus bars from Celebrate with Chocolate much better. Of all the lemon desserts I've tried, only the lemon cream has earned a permanent place in my 'repertoire.' Everything else has frankly paled in comparison. The mouthfeel, the color, the lemon taste -- everything is just as it should be. Also, I'm not as sold on the Ina Garten cakes as I thought I was. They're not bad, but when I did side-by-side with the Ligurian cake, my impression of the ligurian cake improved while that of the Garten cake diminished somewhat.

Good job!

I made stovetop creme brulee once, and wont do it again for that very reason. It firmed only to a pudding consistency. However, Dani Mc mentions using a foil tent, so he must have done his creme in the oven.

I used the recipe from Payard on the FoodNetwork site. The apples in the first tarte were quartered, those in the second were halved. In the first tarte, the apples were standing upright when I started cooking them. In the second, the apples were layed in two concentric circles, slumping over a little so that the rounded surface was resting partly on the bottom of the pan.

Well, I guess it depends on what we mean by caramel. Caramel can mean just caramelized sugar, or it can mean caramelized sugar to which butter and cream have been added to make 'caramels.' I think in the first sense, both butterscotch candy and toffee are caramel candies. Actually, now that I think about it, I guess butterscotch isnt a caramel in any sense, since it is not cooked past 320F. Toffee though could still be considered a caramel, since it is usually heated well past 320F. EDIT: Scratch that. Though sucrose and glucose start to caramelize at 320F, molasses in brown sugar caramelizes at a lower temp (230F), so I guess both could be caramels in the sense of being flavored by caramelized sugar.

Actually, there is another major reason why eating cannabis is extraordinarily inefficient, a reason that is common to many other drugs. The reason is this -- hepatic, or 'first-pass' metabolism. When you eat cannabis, the THC must first pass through your stomach and then the liver, where most of it is degraded by DMEs (drug-metabolizing enzymes) to inactive metabolites, before it can ever reach the cannabinoid receptors in the brain and exert any psychoactive effects. This is in contrast to inhalational delivery, in which THC merely has to diffuse across a 0.5 micron thick capillary membrane in pulmonary capillaries, straight into the systemic circulation. This effect is not something unique to THC, but is common to a lot of drugs. Here's something I wrote on the subject about 2 years ago, based on my review of the scientific literature of cannabinoid pharmacology.

From your description, this was an oil extracted from cannabis using alcohol as a solvent. By far the best oils are derived using a butane extraction, which yields a superpotent (90%+ THC by weight) oil that looks just like honey and has the same viscosity.

You could wash it if you are going to use it in food. The THC is contained in glandular trichomes which are waxy and are not going to be washed away, so long as you are gentle. Cannabinoids in general are almost completely insoluble in water.

No. Quite the opposite. Nausea is quite common in the first hour or so after eating shrooms.

I made my first two tarte tatins last thanksgiving and christmas. I loved them. I made them with the freshest, most perfect Braeburn and JonGold from my sister-in-laws family's orchard. The first one I thought had too little caramel, the second slightly too much. I had a little problem depanning the second one, so a few of the apples were jumbled. Next time I want to try the idea I read earlier in the thread about drying the apples a little. First one: Second one:

I'm no expert, but I think the main difference is just that butterscotch is made from brown sugar instead of white. Both toffee and butterscotch candies are made from caramelized sugar.

I have a few cups of lemon syrup, and I think the curd needs a little more sugar anyway, so I think it might be prudent to thin the curd with some lemon syrup, freeze it, and whip it into a sorbet. As the saying goes, when life hands you blackberry-lime curd, add lemon syrup and make lemon-lime-blackberry sorbet . . .

Tonight, the blackberry-lime curd and the citrus curd from The Secrets of Baking. The citrus curd is flavored with 2 lemon's worth of zest and equal parts lemon, lime and orange juice. The curd is heated to 160F, cooled just a bit, and the butter is added with an immersion blender. These pictures show the curds still cooling, at about 65F, not fully firm. The ras lime curd has a beautiful red-puple color, and the flavor is interesting, but not really inspiring, to me. The citrus curd though is very nice. Included also is a pic from my last batch of lemon curd, just because I have a good photo of it. EDITED due to the realization that 'organge' is not actually a fruit, or a word.