MelissaH

Darn you. Now you've got me craving Nutter Butters!

Breville didn't used to be excepted from the BB&B coupon. When we got our smart oven, that's how we did it. But now, they are specifically listed as an exemption.

Looks lovely. What's inside? What's your crust recipe? We found all kinds of berries at last night's farmer's market and I now need to figure out what to do with them all!

I'm talking zero-radius vs. larger radius corners, in a stainless steel sink. We're being careful with our sink depth, because we really don't want to have to redo all the plumbing back into the wall!

The time has come to replace our laminate countertops with solid surface, which means it's time to replace our sink with an undermount version as well. My husband just asked me whether I wanted a sink with rounded corners, or one with square corners. I don't have a clue. Which do I want? Pros/cons of each? My knee-jerk response is that the rounder the corners, the easier it will be to keep clean, but I have no data points for comparison. What do we need to consider in my choice of corners on our new sink?

Do you do anything while you're there other than work and cook? (And, just maybe, sleep a little bit every now and then?)

If 80 people are coming, I'd think you'd need at least 80 of each item, even if it means making fewer different items, unless you're absolutely sure that half the people attending won't want to eat half of what you're serving. Even if other people are bringing food, I'd still say you'd be better off scaling back the variety and upping the quantity. It's a case of 40+40 not equaling 80.

I like the constant party idea. Invite the neighbors, or the co-workers, or the kids who are helping to move seven academic departments (over 100 people) into a brand-new building, or the friends, or all of the above, and feed the masses. (All kidding aside, I don't have an egg but I do have a Weber bullet, and if I want to smoke something that I know is going to take forever-and-a-day, I try to cook it the day before, so I know it will be done, and I won't keep my guests all starving. Reheating for a target time is easier for me to control.) /hyperbole

I'd be concerned about putting a baking sheet under a bundt pan. Some recipes need to be baked in a pan with a hole so that warm air flows through the hole, thus helping to cook the cake both from the outside of the pan AND from the hole. If you put a baking sheet under the bundt, you destroy that airflow and it adversely affects the baking of the cake.

Droste is available in my town on a good day, but when it's available it's outrageously expensive. I now order my dutched cocoa online, from either Amazon or KA.

Hershey's did, in fact, make a dutched cocoa at one time. I forget what they called it, but the container had a shiny silver label on it, and it was easily the least expensive dutch-process cocoa I could find in the supermarket here. But the silver label cocoa vanished about the time the Special Dark cocoa powder appeared. I don't find the two to be interchangeable.

I take it this means you've recovered from the chocolate weekend, and are ready to eat again after the meal Saturday night?

I'd sooner say that two loaf pans would hold the batter from one bundt pan. If a recipe is specifying a bundt pan, it's often because it needs the air circulation you get from the hole in the middle to bake properly, if you do the whole thing in one pan.

I've never seen it butterflied. I live in upstate NY.

We first tasted speculoos spread in Belgium nearly two years ago; I think it had been around even before then. I first noticed it in the U.S. shortly after we returned from that trip. I love the stuff. My husband, who adores speculoos cookies, doesn't care for it.

Lotus sells their speculoos here under the name of Biscoff (and they are familiar to anyone who has flown Delta airlines, possibly the best part about flying Delta these days). We can also buy Biscoff-brand spread, which claims on the label to be nut-free. Both are readily available at even the one yucky supermarket here in my town.

No photos here, but I'm adding my loud voice to the chorus of thanks. Kerry, it was a marvelous weekend, and I'm really glad I was able to come and stay for the whole weekend this time. I can't remember the last time a whole table laughed so much while eating dinner—and it's probably a good thing the beaver was not served earlier in the meal because I don't want to know what other jokes might have come out. I wish I got to play with chocolate with other people more often!

I'm on Verizon for my mobile phone needs, and I know that in the right parts of Niagara Falls (mainly in view of the river) it's possible to pick up an American tower. As long as you're picking up an American tower, your phone doesn't care that it's across the border. So if you're concerned about racking up international charges on a U.S. phone, keep it off but once a day, drive somewhere there's a clear view across. That said, text messages to and from Canada (for me, anyway) are covered on my plan. YMMV.

Y'know, if you're going to make some of that so-called "cassoulet" without duck, you could just send that horror show to me, and I'll make it disappear. Here in the sticks, I doubt that most people will know (a) what cassoulet is, and (b) that it's "supposed" to contain duck...or is that goose, perhaps? You know your audience, and will best know whether they will expect to find duck in something you call cassoulet. If your audience isn't a stickler for names, don't worry about it.

10 AM is also too early for me and my friend. But we'll be there for the show and tell. We'll be looking for somewhere to eat dinner before that, preferably not too expensive. Anyone got ideas? Anyone want to join us?

I would argue that, depending on who you're inviting, there's no such thing as too cheap for a wedding registry. I've been to several weddings where we don't know the bride or groom all that well (but work with the parents) and depend on the registry to guide our gift choices—either to get something directly off the list, or say, "Oh, they've registered for X, but I bet they'll also enjoy having Y." And then there was the wedding where the registry didn't include much in the price range we were planning to spend, and the few things that were less than $200 per item apparently went quickly. If you anticipate inviting people who are students, or who have recently been students, or who may incur significant travel expenses to get to your wedding, or may otherwise not necessarily want to spend a lot of money, you may want to have some less expensive items on your list so they can give you something tangible. After all, people can always put together a collection of less expensive items if they have more money to spend. That said, one of our favorite wedding gifts was a second bowl for our KitchenAid stand mixer, which my sister bought for us and had engraved with our names and wedding date. If you're specifically looking for bar tools, don't forget about shakers and spoons and zesters and measuring devices. Maybe an atomizer, if you're the sort who prefers your martini with just a spray of vermouth over the top? Let me, too, add my congratulations to you!

Is there a complete schedule somewhere, that I just missed? (Are we that far yet?)

Wish I'd known you were going to be stopping, as I would have joined you for sure!

Lisa (and JAZ), the thesis is still available here: http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2009/03/the_cake_biblein_the_beginning.html I'd also wonder about the amount of leavening. Rose Levy Beranbaum makes a big deal in the Cake Bible about the amount of leavening that layer cakes of a particular size need. (IIRC, the short story is that the larger the cake, the less leavening, proportionately, they need.) I don't know how this translates across to a loaf cake. (However, the science teacher in me sees this as an ideal case for "combinatorial cooking" in a class setting: each person or group of people uses a different but prescribed amount of leavening, and the end results can be measured by the class!)

If you have a pressure cooker, you might consider doing one of the Modernist Cuisine vegetable puree soups where you quickly pressure cook the vegetable with some baking soda, and then puree it and thin it into a soup. The broccoli soup is a real showstopper, if nothing else because of its electric green color.