cmflick

Make me a maybe, rather than a yes.

Sounds great. For those of us without a guitar, what size was each of your slabs?

What size slab does Nick's recipe make? Looks like it would be pretty big.

The copy that I ordered was directly from Amazon France. It came in a little over a week to the US.

No, I didn't boil after adding the cream. Should I have? As soon as the cream was stirred in, I poured the caramel out of the pan into a bowl to start cooling.

I just received my copy from Amazon France today and it's hardback. I thought that for the price it would be softcover, but was pleasantly surprised.

I finally tried to make the flowing caramel recipe from the Chocolate and Confectionery Conference today. Using the instructions that Kerry gave I ended up with a very soft caramel, but much too thick to pipe into molded shells once it cooled down to a temperature that wouldn't melt the shells. Any ideas what I could have done wrong? I thought that this was a caramel for filling shells.

I just ordered it last week from Amazon France for shipping to the US. Shipping was EUR 10.90. Here's the breakdown in price: 1 ex. de : MACARON [broché] de Pierre Hermé, et al Etat : Neuf - Nouveau Vendu par : Amazon EU S.a.r.L. EUR 26,92 Articles : EUR 26,92 Livraison : EUR 10,90 ----- Total HT : EUR 37,82 TVA : EUR 0,00 ----- Total : EUR 37,82 ----- Montant total pour cet envoi : EUR 37,82 -----

I have made the Boiron mango and guava ganaches for molding quite a few times and think that they are quite excellent. They have also been very popular with people that get chocolates from me. But these are the ones that are made with white chocolate. The fruit flavors come through very strongly and you really can't taste the white chocolate. The ones that I made came from Boiron's Journal du Fruit from Autumn 2006 at this web site. Incidentally, they also make an excellent macaron filling.

Has anyone used this Cacao Barry white chocolate for molding? I had pretty good luck molding with it. It actually seemed a little more fluid than the 64% Cacao Barry chocolate that I usually mold with. I've used Callebaut white chocolate in the past and it was too viscous to easily mold. The taste seems good, but I'm not one to judge since I'm not fond of white chocolate. The ganaches that I have made with it have been good. The block that I received is labeled in English "White Chocolate and Colored Decoration". I'm curious as to what they mean by "colored decoration" on the label. There is nothing in the white chocolate than the standard white chocolate ingredients, e.g., cocoa butter, milk powder, sugar, lecithin, vanilla. I'm thinking maybe they're just suggesting that you could color the white chocolate for decorations. I've never seen white chocolate labeled this way before though.

When I was in pastry class we made these and called them brioche royale. It was brioche dough rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with raisins, then rolled up, sliced and baked. There is a recipe for snail rolls in Raymond Calvel's Taste of Bread that uses croissant dough to make something similar. He also calls them "schneckes". Calvel also has a recipe for brioche royale which is similar to what I described, but he uses candied fruit in place of raisins. The brioche royale that I have made is indeed very tasty.

I think that the chocolate got quickly sucked down in as it was churning and piled up on the dasher, thus forming a clump. The ice cream machine was still turning, but it had really slowed down and I was afraid that if I left it going I may damage the motor. I think that it all depends on exactly where on the surface that you pour the melted chocolate. I poured where the ice cream was being pulled down thinking that it would mix faster, but that may have been a mistake as it seems to have led right to the dasher! I'll try again with an alternate technique. It's a learning experience.

Kerry, where did you get your copy of Pierre Herme's Macaron from? Everywhere that I have checked says that it is temporarily out of print.

Today was toasted coconut with stracciatella mixed in. The chocolate is the perfect complement to the coconut. Only problem was that my 1 1/2 quart Cuisinart ice cream processor was not happy about the stracciatella. The chocolate became one giant lump and nearly stopped the machine. Luckily when I pulled the dasher out, it was easy to break up the chocolate by just stirring for a moment with a spatula. Now there are flecks of chocolate throughtout as it should be.

I roll out pastry dough between sheets of heavy plastic wrap, e.g., Freeze-Tite wrap. It's easy to transfer to a tart pan then because you just peel off the top sheet and flip it over with the bottom sheet still on. The bottom piece of plastic wrap then just peels off. I haven't had any problems with sticking, but it is key to start with cold dough and work fast.

The latest was the date, rum and pecan ice cream. Another excellent one. It was hard though to get the dates to evenly disperse through the ice cream, though. They were really sticky.

I made the dried apricot/pistachio (p. 75) ice cream yesterday. Excellent.

I just got this book last week. The first ice cream that I made was the fresh fig ice cream (p.80), since figs are in season. It's good, but I'd never had fresh figs before (only in fig bars) and decided that I'm not really wowed by them. The mix was really thick before churning, i.e., you could turn the bowl upside down and nothing would fall out!

That looks amazing. I'm probably one of the few people around who likes fruitcake and I love the idea of a chocolate fruitcake. Definitely on my list of things to make. I take it from the recipe that this is a cake of English origin. Is that true?

I've made this banana/caramel ganache quite a few times. Caramel and banana go well together. 114 grams glucose 286 grams sugar 114 grams heavy cream 229 grams banana -- cut into thin slices 389 grams milk chocolate 69 grams cocoa butter Cook the glucose and sugar to a light caramel. Add cream to deglaze, followed by bananas. Mash bananas well in caramel. Pour mixture over milk chocolate. Mix thoroughly. Cool to about 88F and pipe into shells. I use dark chocolate shells. It's thick to pipe and could probably be slabbed as well. This is based on something that I saw elsewhere, but I lost track of where the original recipe was.

Interesting idea that it may be related to the apple. I used a Granny Smith apple as they called for and squeezed it pretty dry in a towel. I also wonder if it could be related to whether you're using fresh or frozen blueberries. It seems that the people having better luck with the pie setting are using frozen berries.

I made the CI pie yesterday and was not impressed at all. I followed the instructions exactly and waited 10 hours to cut the pie. It was basically crust with a blueberry sauce. There was no firmness to the pie at all. It's now about 22 hours since the pie was baked and it is still very fluid. I used fresh berries and ground instant tapioca as the recipe called for.

The book is more than a cookbook. It's David Lebovitz's account of relocating and adapting to life in Paris. It's very entertaining with the usual Lebovitz sense of humor. There are recipes scattered throughout the book, some sweet and some savory. I've made a couple of things and all have been excellent.

Not as pretty as many things in this thread, but very yummy. Chocolate/coconut marshmallows from David Lebovitz's new book The Sweet Life in Paris.

She did say that there were still some unmelted bits to provide seed crystals, so maybe it doesn't heat all that fast and 4 minutes was only enough to melt most of the chocolate but not all. ← I don't get it either. Even if there are unmelted bits to provide seed crystals, wouldn't you have to do some sort of cooling with agitation to temper the chocolate. My impression from the video was that at the end of the 4 minutes the chocolate was tempered. Maybe I missed something.