maggie

Thanks, Megan! And thanks to k8memphis for the great website. I've never transported a gingerbread house farther than from the kitchen to the display site, and those are always tense moments. Take extra royal icing with you when you go, just in case you need to make repairs. I never consider gingerbread houses edible, because they sit out to dry, sit out on display, need to be hard for construction, plus they're covered, or at least glued with yucky royal icing (powdered sugar, egg whites and cream of tartar or some kind of acid for gloss). I hate eating raw eggs, creeps me out. But, fair warning, dogs love them! My golden retriever thinks they're better than Milk Bones. Does anyone else have photos?

Whew! It was painful, but I finally did it! It looks from the thumbnails that we're missing a picture of Krissy's round house, but I'll try to take care of that sometime today.

Well, I've been trying to post the photos for the past hour, but the photos come up blank when I preview the post. Sorry! I will try again tomorrow, but let me just say that the village is up, beautiful and well-photographed (take my word for it, for now). It's been a lot of fun, but Leslie and I both noticed how exhausted we were once it was finished. We had no idea how much it was stressing us out until it was done. k8memphis, do try to post your photos! I'll also download last year's village, the theme of which was: Let's all make our first gingerbread houses! And get it done, no matter how much we hate it! I've been reading tech support, and it seems as though lots of people are having this problem downloading pictures. I started a photo album, but made it private, and now can't make it public. Please bear with me!

Our gingerbread village is being installed today! After 4 months of planning, I am VERY excited! And ready to get it over with, and move on with the holidays. I will take photos today when it's all done, post them if I can figure out how, and will anxiously await others, doing the same. Tell us your stories of gingerbread happiness and heartache. We all have them, like the time the ring tailed cat came down from the mountain, pushed open the floor-to-ceiling glass doors and ate my very first one. Or just last year, when all of ours collapsed in the weird southeastern humidity I wasn't prepared for. Or my beautiful, faithful reproduction of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen West that no one in Detroit recognised. This year's theme is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was (I think) Leslie's idea, and we watched her sister's copy of the Jim Carrey movie to get inspiration. Now, as I look around my office at the houses ready to go, I am reminded of what an incredibly talented team of women I work with everyday. The houses have curves and weird shapes, painted with pastel hues of royal icing and slathered with Nerds and silver dragees. Leslie's made the mountain behind Whoville, as well as the most incredible Grinch, and Max, ever recreated in marzipan. If she ever tires of being in pastry, she has a career in claymation waiting for her! For as much as she's complained the last half of this year about the gingerbread, she's done an incredible job. Robyn's made a three-sided apartment building, Who Heights. Krissy made a circular house, that started out with, "What if I draped gingerbread over a bowl?" Erica tried to follow suit, but ended up with a completely different and beautiful house. Well, I'm excited! I'm on my way to work and will post the photos this afternoon. Your turn! Share your stories and photos! Happy Holidays!

We have this discussion in the bake shop almost weekly. Last week, the issue was dried banana slices for a garnish for Bananas Foster fried pies. I wanted to buy them and one of the pastry cooks wanted to find the perfect method for drying them overnight in the dehydrator. The week before that, there was the big controversy, "Why is the fresh pumpkin making the pumpkin pie gray and weepy? The canned never did!" When you have to feed hundreds of people at a time in a short period of time, you have to decide what's best. And yellow/white cakes are very, very difficult to make when they need to be sturdy, moist and delicious. Even RLB has never been any help to me with this, though I have a new favorite, her White Chocolate Velvet Cake. Yummy! and super moist, with a great crumb. But, again, it dries out quickly. I never have this problem with any chocolate cake in my repetoire, just the vanilla and white ones. Wendy, I also grew up with the pudding mix-oil fix for mixes. It works well, but I put it away after culinary school, thinking I couldn't ethically use it. And have had to suffer through a lot of complaints of dry white cakes. As for telling people, you have to be honest. It's the chemicals that make the cake sturdy and moist! Better living through chemicals! And using Sweetex in a scratch cake is just using more chemicals. Take a close look at the 50-lb. bag of AP flour, or cake flour. Chemicals there, too. Most Americans grew up with mixes, and expect that moist, sturdy, fake-vanilla taste. Give 'em what they want, but they still need to expect to pay you for what they don't want to, don't know how to or simply won't do.

Thanks, Wendy! I've been to their website and ordered my copy. Nice website, too. I hope they can light a fire under PA&D to get them back on track, as well. Getting September's issue in November has become typical for them, but it's the only magazne we've had, until now.

Ummm...am I being dense, or are you being unclear? What is the name of this wonderful magazine and where did you get a copy?

The sous chefs from Blackberry Farm are hitting NYC next month to eat all we can eat in 3 days, and I want to see (and eat!) the best tea service there. Any suggestions? And what bakeries should we not miss?

What is up with the dessert? Didn't they hire a new Pastry Chef as well? Are there photos of this? Was it served in courses? Ice cream and sauce? Just doesn't get my tastebuds going, y'know? I'm with Gifted Gourmet! Let 'em eat cake! Especially Red Velvet! With blueberries and cream cheese frosting (get it? the FLAG? theirs, too!). Only I would mix in Pecan Pie, with the pecans from Texas; something with pralines from New Orleans; something with apples from the northwest, like a crisp or a pie. They could have done much better, I think.

This is all good advice for tippingvelvet, to which I must add: Oh, no! We don't mind when people offer to help! Here! Roll out this lavosh! We all hate to do it! Make 200 dinner rolls for dinner service! It's really good practice! How about pulling those 30 creme brulee in the boiling water bath out of the oven for me, huh? Free labor is good! $20/hour? Surely you jest! I suppose if I did the math, I might make somewhere close to that, if I worked 40 hours a week, but it's really more like 60-70, and it's taken me 9 years to get to this, anyway. I totally agree that in your situation the best solution is to trail, take some classes and do a little pastry on the side. Good luck! Keep us posted!

I was sitting in my jammies, realizing I had an extra hour to gather inspiration for the day(damn the daylight savings time!), when I came upon your post. Amazing! Xavier Le Quere is also my favorite. What beautiful stuff! I'm ready to go forth and conquer the pastry world this morning! I have to say that I always enjoy seeing master pastry chefs making stuff with less-than-perfect edges. It makes me feel better about the things I made towards the end of the day that weren't exactly square, a tiny bit rough, or just plain "rustic." But then I looked at Patrick Roger's absolutely perfect chocolates, I thought, yeah, I've got a way to go...Thanks!

l love Bread and Jam for Frances, and Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My son credits his passion for food to Almanzo Wilder's food memories, captured by his wife in the story of his childhood. I know we could rarely get through a night's reading without wanting a snack!

We feature their demerara sugar in a cake with roasted pineapple and black pepper ice cream, so very yummy. You definitely need to give the sugar more to time to combine with the other ingredients, or it will weep out later. It takes a while to melt, for the crystals to break down. I could see that being difficult in a pumpkin pie, unless you heated the cream with the sugar in it before you add the rest of the custard ingredients. Have you tried the muscavado? It's delicious. It's great for the sugar you caramelize on creme brulee.

YUM!!! I made them for brunch this sunday, frying them for beignet, instead of using the tired old recipe I inherited from the previous pastry chef. I added cinnamon, vanilla and apple chunks and served them with a syrup that was half maple syrup and half a steeped cinnamon-brown sugar simple syrup. They fry up perectly round with a delicious crisp crust. I haven't used the recipe to make cream puffs yet, but I will soon, probably for a pre dessert. Thanks for the recipe, Anne and Pinchet (albeit unknowingly!)! I multiplied it by 12 and got enough, using a one-ounce scoop, to feed Bolivia. Next sunday, I'll only multiply it by 8, for two portions per guest, several for each line cook, sous chef and server.

Okay, hold on a minute! The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger, out way before Rose Levy Berenbaum's, is not on anyone's list, and I'm afraid it MUST be! It is our most frequentlly referred to book in my bake shop. Beth knows her way around a loaf, I have to say. Also not to be missed are her Bread for Breakfast and Breads of the Southwest. The directions are easy to follow, the breads are delicious and there are breads for all occasions. Personally, I think Breads From La Brea Bakery is not for the faint of heart, or for people who have other things in their lives to do other than bread. I make one of her breads regularly, but maybe my oven just isn't cut out for her methods or I just don't have the patience for a three day bread. Lovely read, though. And I must take up for the Tassajara Bread Book. Heavy and cloyingly sweet? Are you sure you're following the directions? Cut back on the sweetener if you must, or add a little salt, but the basic bread recipe is my "little black dress" of bread. Dress it up with all unbleached AP, or dress it down with every whole grain in your cupboard, but the four hours you must spend with this bread is worth every second. And that's just time hanging out with it, not working it. Make the sponge by stirring 100 strokes (it's so relaxing!), let it sit for an hour. Add the rest of your ingredients, knead to a smooth and lovely dough. Rise once, gently deflate, rise twice, gently deflate, form loaves, turn on the oven, and by the time the oven in hot, the loaves are ready. It's one of my favorite things to make on my day off from baking, because it's effortless and rewarding. The four risings insure that the grainiest of loaves will hold together through slicing, and put up with sloppy sandwich fillings. And the carrot cake is the best in the universe, no exaggeration.

We've done a little of that. It does seem like it happens accidentally, and I have even done it accidentally! But, I was just wondering if anyone had done anything else. The booklet says you can make sorbet from just fruit, but I haven't tried it yet. And yes, our service center is in Commack, NY. We're in Tennessee! But they do allow FedEx trucks in east Tennessee. Thanks for the info!

What's this about servicing once a year? Does that mean if you use it every single day? What if you're only an occasional Jetter? When we got ours, we had great plans, and we played with it a lot until one of the pm platers didn't put it all together one night and stripped the rotor or something. $350 later, and 2 weeks! it came back, good as new, and now we only use it for emergency vanilla ice cream spinning. Are there people out there being more inventive? What are some of the crazy things people are doing with it? And where do you FedEx it for emergencies (just in case!)?

Am I too late to help? I just spent a couple of days in Nashville, and we ate a fantastic cheeseburger at Rotier's on french bread for lunch. The waitresses call you "hon," always a plus. It's across the street from Vanderbilt on West End. Last visit, we went to Fat Mo's, a drive through, for burgers, which were great, but no one called us hon. We just waited in our car until they handed us the food so we could eat it on the my son's front porch. We had really good chicken at Prince's Hot Chicken, where the "mild" is kind of hot and the "medium" hurts. It's in northwest Nashville, but I really don't know how we got there. I was simply the driver. But the best meal was at Cafe Margot in east Nashville. The place is always packed, reservations are a must and her food is spot on. Nothing's on the plate that doesn't belong. It's Mediterranean influenced. bistro-like and delicious. If you've already come back from Nashville, go next time you're there.

One of my favorites, not for recipes, but for the decorating ideas and good pictures of them, is Dede Wilson's The Wedding Cake Book. I tried a couple of the recipes, and they weren't very good, but the details on structure and how to transport are very helpful. The Cake Bible and The Perfect Cake by Susan G. Purdy are the books I pick up most often when I need recipes.

I totally agree with Steve's advice, going to college, getting real-world experience, and yes, chefjillm, you are completely correct as well: culinary schools really need to require at least six months work experience. I am so tired of trying to train these externs from the CIA who come in through the revolving door, thinking they're already chefs, waiting for their FoodTV contract. We can't teach them anything because they already know it all. They have no sense of teamwork, no sense of others' space in the kitchen, no idea how hard it is to work in a kitchen. They work dirty and selfishly. I spent last night plating desserts with an extern who is on his last of 18 weeks, and he hasn't learned a thing, but is still convinced he knows everything. His extern meal is Tuesday, and he spent every free second last night talking about how his meal isn't going to reflect what he's learned here, because that's not the kind of food he's "about." And when crunch time came, when all 10 tables who were seated at once ordered desserts, he fell apart. The people I have enjoyed working with the most have gone into pastry because they left their teenage-chosen line of work to do something they really love, because if you don't love working in pastry, there's just no point to being in the bake shop. I always reject applications from new culinary school grads who say, "I love to bake for my friends." Well, the guests are not your friends, sweetie. They want the best quality for the least amount of money. They want a birthday cake for Aunt Rose to serve 12 with fuschia and teal frosting, and they want it now. And if they don't get it now, they're not paying for it. Some of the replies to this discussion have sounded very bitter, and I guess mine is sounding that way, too. But I absolutely love my job. I work in the most incredible place, with amazingly gifted people. I now have my dream job, after 9 years of moving around the country to get more experience, working endless days and nights, suffering through a few executive chefs who "used to bake" (which means they have one dessert they will force you to make for every event possible!), until I was lucky enough to be able to land this job. This is where I will make a name for myself. But it took me nine years and tens of thousands of hours to get here. I went to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, where I had always wanted to go. I cashed in everything I had to be able to do it, but when I returned to the states, I was offered the first six jobs I applied for. It still opens a lot of doors not possible if I'd gone to an American school, but I know some of the schools here are just as good. I've taken a class at the French Pastry School, and I would love to go back for more. As with any profession, a student only gets out of school what they put in. So, yes, please advise the teenager to study other things, work in a real bakery or restaurant, see other places. Life is too large to spend it in a windowless, flour-filled room with no air conditioning if you don't absolutely, completely love making something as transitory and unnecessary a pleasure as dessert.

That is my point, that you're not making anything; you're stacking donuts. If I was allowed, or asked, to make the donuts, different ballgame altogether! I make a mean donut! It's the going to Harris Teeter at 6 a.m., renting the shoddy three-tier stand, stacking KK's and draping them with florist ribbon the bride brings in that makes me feel like I could have done something more fulfilling with my life But last week, I designed a dessert with Caramel Corn as a garnish! And I felt guilty for using microwave popcorn to make the caramel corn, but it was all we had. It was delicious and beautiful, and not at all snobby!

I think we need to band together as pastry chefs with morals, values and standards to put a stop to this. I had to do 3 of them in my short/interminably long ten-month stint as pastry chef at a nameless hotel in Chapel Hill, NC. They're disgusting, tacky and an insult to our profession. What are these people going to tell their children, when they ask about their wedding 20 years from now? "Oh, we had the most beautiful pile of doughnuts for our wedding cake..." Jeez, makes me so glad I sold my house, cashed in my IRA and used my son's college fund to go to culinary school. Now, cupcake stacks, I could get behind!

Do you mean to tell me that you all in the UK are watching this at the same time as we are in the US? And that there was more to last night's show than the recap? I turned it off after the chef took "option 3." Pomegranate seeds...did he even try it himself? Would that explain the gaps in his teeth? So, anyway, what happened in the last 5 minutes? Did the chef get fired? Did the owner make it? Did GR bare his chest one more time?

The reason you use a water bath is that it keeps whatever you're cooking in the water bath from becoming hotter than the boiling temperature of water, and over-cooking whatever it is you're cooking. If the creme brulee or flan or cheesecakes or whatever were actually cooking at 325, they'd be scrambled in no time. If you checked the internal temperature of the creme brulee when they're set, they'd be about 185 degrees.

Right, I wonder if you dried the dough out in the pan (it will pull completely away from the pan as you stir), or if you added the right amount of eggs. When you stuck your finger in the paste while it was in the mixer, while you were adding eggs, did the dough flop over like a "bird's beak?" Because it should have. Also, it's really important to not open the oven door the first 5 minutes, at least. They build up steam while they rise, and if you open the door, they get a rush of cold air and that can make them collapse.