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peppermint extract is made by maceration. soaking the peppermint in a solvent.

how hard is it to mix bread in a kitchen aid for eight minutes. if you don't have a kitchen aid, I suggest saving up some money for one of those, they make life great. with a kitchen aid and your simple oven, you can make any kind of bread, any shape any way you want. and the bread machine cant do really much else, you can do endless things with a kitchen aid, not to mention all of the attachments. bread machines have always seemed like another unnecessary gimmick to me.

d-o-n-t b-u-y a b-r-e-a-d m-a-c-h-i-n-e! thats like buying a machine that pumps water out of the ground when you already have a hose attached to your house.

yea, but...... you still need a measured recipe to go off of. heres your recipe, throw some water in a bowl, then some eggs, then some yeast sugar and flour and just add randomly until it feels right????????????? no, come on now lets not try and split some seriously thin hairs here. you need a recipe, weight is the best. instructions will guide you to proper finish. nothing is perfect but try to establish it as close to perfect as possible. use your percentages, address the situation as follows to keep an eye out for certain things. back off on 10% of the water and gradually add a little more until dough is formed properly. I don't expect everyone to be able to do it, but you can actually create a formula to be perfect with all atmospheric conditions as well as temperatures of products, room temperature and also protein content. Who wants to do all of that math I don't know, I don't really mind it but its unnecessary for me. You do however need a formula if you want to be accurate. That is why we have steps and instructions. Do this if that, then that if this, or this if that as well. That seems very simple to me, I guess everyone wants to be grandma. Though my grandma made great fudge, if I showed her how to use my formulas she would be lost, and if my pastry cooks tried to make her recipe, they would all make it different. please, just use a proper recipe, and for the love of god, pay attention to the ingredients.

There is no written recipe for experience. So my comment stands, its a BAD recipe. find a proper formula and alter as you see fit, my hand is not your hand, my hand full is not your hand full, there could be a 200% difference, especially if the "hand" is not the only measuring tool. 1 egg to a hand full of flour can be a HUGE! difference. why do I need to explain myself?

sounds like a horrible recipe.

which don't really contain cocoa powder. so im at a loss as well. And cocoa powder doesn't really give body, its kind of like dissolving cool aid powder you know.

i dont know what you are doing but I suggest you just exempt the cocoa all together, figure out the weight of the rest of the ingredients and add a certain percentage of another flavoring ingredient to infuse (ie vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, fruit etc). Depending on what type of vanilla you are using it will probably be something around 1% to the entire recipe.

why would you want to do that? just get a vanilla cake recipe. that seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

With a spatula, a pot, and a bow. Also, preferably with a big piece of marble as well. If the ganache is emulsified properly, then how can a machine increase its shelf life. I can understand that people think the ganache may be smoother with a machine, but I have seen no difference, in fact I have tasted a few machine made ganaches that tasted kind of spongy and or flaky, I did not care for that at all.

it seems so unnecessary doesn't it? How hard is it to make ganache properly? Why do you need a food processor? I personally do not think it makes the ganache any better what-so-ever, so why waste your money, even on the electricity to use it? why?

x-y-l-i-t-o-l

hibiscus is considerably acidic, thats why. Next time steep it in water that has been subtracted from the liquid base and mix it in cold right before churning.

I would keep the chocolate on the minimal side. Maybe make a chocolate ice cream to go with whatever else.

Vanilla? Long Pepper? Juniper?

it will work. Freeze a mixing bowl, once the ice cream is finished fold in frozen pieces of cheese cake. -or You can bake cheesecake, freeze it, cut it up, dry it out,brown it in the oven, soak in milk and cream, freeze it, thaw it, strain it, mix with yolks and sugars, and churn it. emmmmmm, cheesecake flavored ice cream.

how about.... watermelon seeds.

not degrees and percentages in general. The two examples given are not parallel.

those degrees and percentages don't add up very well. Ron, in the future I would pay more attention to percentages of sugar than degrees of baume or brix. I don't even have a refractometer or densometer, but all my frozen products and syrups seem to be right on every time because I pay attention constantly to my percentages.

if he bought a no dairy mix that you just whip then its probably dried and or contains sodium alginate or LM Pectin with calcium salt to make it whip, that is not an alternative to milk. You do not need to increase the fat, water will do just fine or just about any other liquid you want to throw in there. The butter is what makes it divine, milk is just for flavor and maybe a little help on the browning side.

I suggest you take a look at some sanitation and health codes to get a better idea of what is proper or improper. If what you are asking is that 'egg white powder is less dangerous than egg whites' then the answer is most definitely yes, to some extent. If you have a solution of water and egg whites with the egg whites consisting of about 10% the entire volume then that is very close to raw egg whites. Though the second egg white powder is hydrated it is just as likely to start gathering bacteria as raw egg whites. What you have to pay attention to is not "raw" or "dryed" egg whites, its the water activity. The greater the water activity the higher the risk for bacteria. So yes, if you are making a product that has relatively high water activity then I would refrigerate it. But marshmallows, unecessary considering they have been cooked, stabilized and have minimal water content. But marshmallow cream, I have no idea because I don't know your recipe and how you are making it.

this is pretty common. You are a pastry chef, you are going to see this plenty more in the future. In fact in my rising I believe this was the issued most forewarned to me, even by my father continuously who happens to have been an exec chef and rarely sees the need for a pastry chef. You are at a country club, and you are the outsider. Unless you are doing remarkable and interesting things you will continuously be bothered by your savory counterparts. Don't let yourself develop a complex over it, but you pretty much have two choices, buck up and take it by doing what they want you to do or you are on your way out, their terms or yours, you decide. I also wanted to add that I don't mean to make it clear what is the right decision. Everything is contextual and provisional, it will be up to you to decide whats important for you. I am sure they will find someone to do what they want them to do if you leave, so look at all your variables and think about what is most important to you and what is realistic as well.

I have never had anything like that happen to me but I would be a bit surprised if the air was coming from the buttercream itself. I wish I could take a look at the cake itself to get a better idea but I wouldn't be surprised if the sodium bicarbonate did not get dispersed properly, and if there were bits that did no hydrate through the baking process they would still be hanging on in pure form never converting to carbon dioxide. So I would think that after breaking the cake down and coating it with the buttercream you may be exposing some of the BS to moisture thus starting the chemical reaction slowly at room temperature. That would explain why the air is bulging at small and specific places and not in a large web or lines around the cake where the layers are. But then again, its just a theory.

why are you using a food processor for ganache? It incorporates air........

Ok, just to let you know italian meringue, if made properly, will always be more stable than a swiss meringue. now that thats out of the way.... Any time egg whites whip there is not much holding the water and the proteins in suspension. Infact the more you agitate the proteins the more it wants to push water out. The only thing keeping the water in is the constant agitation, once it stops the water wants to fall. Now, sugar and egg whites. Sugar can help suspend water molecules by dissolving and lining the proteins while they whip. The sugar can only hold on so long as well. The higher the temperature the sugar is cooked to the stronger the meringue. Thats why nougat holds up longer than italian meringue. Meringue plus humidity. Remember that sugar is highly hygroscopic and will continuously pull in moisture from the air diluting the sugar and weakening its ability to hold the meringue. Soon the sugar and water molecules will start to slide out of suspension leaving the proteins to dry out. Next time you need to use meringue to hold up for a while, stabilize it with a little bit of gelatin or other hydrocolloid and your suspension will stay much much longer.