pastrygirl

Not yet. Re-designing my packaging for a new bar would add another few grand to the project and I still have a few thousand units of packaging to use. I think a bigger bar would be better in some ways, mine only about 1-1/4 oz. I'd like to charge more and fit bulkier inclusions or multiple layers.

If you want to get serious about tropical & sub-tropical fruit, you just need a little greenhouse My brother built one out of old storm windows, it's maybe 5' x 4' x 4' and full of happy, fruiting citrus plants, including my yuzu that I keep trying to kill when I am allowed to take it back home. We're in Seattle, zone 5.

I like a challenge! I've looked into custom molds through Tomric in NY and the polycarbonate is less than $10 per mold but the die tooling is $200-300 plus possibly some design time. So if you want 100 of them to build a brand or product around it would be worth it, but not for a few molds for the hobbyist (unless you are a very wealthy hobbyist)

La fleur de chocolat does have a photo of the actual mold on their Facebook page. Find them and scroll through their photos, it's about 2 years old. No markings that I can see in the photo but maybe it will help. Here is the link to their FB page http://bit.ly/1SqhYV9 and a screenshot

It generally arrives in temper, but solid. You'll need to melt and re-temper it if you plan to use it in a liquid state.

@Lancelot that one looks a lot flatter than the one in the OP

Vegetable oil may be all or part corn oil. Your oven isn't straining at 450f. It's just nice and hot. What do you mean by it collapses? Rises really high then totally sinks in the middle? You might be using too much leavening. No reason why you couldn't try yeast.

Sounds like many sick and vocal celiac sufferers spoke up in that case, and it's more like food tampering than simply not updating your menu. Spring mix instead of local handpicked baby lettuces isn't going to cause people physical pain. It does seem odd to simply be a repacker of bread though.

Ok so I guess if you're substituting with glucose not adding it you're fine but I don't see why you need glucose. The caramel is 2:1 so it should be really runny. Maybe your cream reduced too much? Some water will boil off but I'd guess you would want at least 300g of caramel. Or can you add less fondant?

Just add more cream. Caramelized sugar is going to be hard crack no matter how you get there. Adding glucose is adding more sugar and may have thrown the cream:sugar ratio off.

Stirring the sugar after it has cooled might cause it to crystallize. That's how fudge and fondant work, though I don't have much experience with either. So I'm not sure but i do know that stirring sugar at a different time or temp can change things drastically. At 150f, hard crack sugar wold have thickened somewhat. And since you're not adding pure alcohol, rather liquid that is 20-50% alcohol, the water in the liquor might make the candy sticky.

Ok so for $120 you get meat for a gluttonous feast for 8-10 goose lovers. Still way less expensive than many other premium meats!

I guess I hate scraping out a blender jar more than I hate scraping out a food processor. To each their own.

Alcohol evaporates at 170f (ish, I don't recall exactly but it is well below the boiling point of water) so you might get some flavor but not the booziness. For storage, airtight is key. You may wish to individually wrap the candies in waked paper or cellophane.

Check out Francisco Migoya's books, he's a modern master.

Wild guess, I admit. 11.67 # whole, if you get at least 60% yield there would be 6 or 7 pounds of meat on that goose. It wouldn't be gluttonous feast proportions, but even at 1/3# per serving you should be able to serve a fairly large party. Is there so much fat the yield of meat is far lower? How many servings do you get from a 12# bird?

I use a food processor to mix natural peanut butter before using it. I can't imagine trying to deal with peanut butter in a blender. I also make hazelnut paste, cheesecake, graham cracker crusts and cookie butter in the FP. It is the best tool for some things, and not that hard to clean.

Yes, $10/# isn't that crazy for premium ingredients, even here in Seattle wild salmon and halibut can go over $30/#. Also many cheeses and wild mushrooms - the goose just seems like a lot because it is a relatively large animal. And the bones decrease the yield, but if you were having a dinner party for 15-20, could save the rendered fat and use the bones for stock, it might not seem overly dear.

I feel ya. I have a 7 cup Cuisinart and its really tiny, so when I use the restaurant's robot coupe it is like a double-batch dream world. I too look for excuses to justify buying my own $1k+ robot coupe. But the voices of reason here are probably right. A $200 larger processor will most likely suffice, and now you've freed up $800 for other new toys!

Eggs turned out pretty nice.

Retail or wholesale? Fruit puree prices depend on the flavor and as I'm sure you know couverture prices vary widely per the brand and formulation. My main wholesale suppliers in Seattle are Merlino Foods and the Peterson Co, if you look through their catalogs and select some items for which you would like prices, you may be able to call or email and get that info. Otherwise, I pay around $75 for a 3kg bag of Valrhona, and the Felchlin couvertures I use are $6.17/# for Sao Palme 60%, and $10.26/# for Maracaibo Creole 49% from the suppliers mentioned above. I paid $2.35 per pound for unsalted butter yesterday at Cash & Carry, but that was on sale, it is usually closer to $3 and high-fat or specialty (plugra) butter is more.

Puff pastry needs a solid fat so it will roll into thin layers. Also, filo and puff pastry are completely different. If you want to make filo and brush it with oil instead of melted butter before layering that will work fine.

Saturday was good, Sunday was a lot of lookers, just something to do after church I guess. It's the cotton candy and cherry kool-aid pickles that make it clear it's not a strictly curated event!

I'm waiting to depart ABQ, so I thought I'd share a few notes. Sadies on 4th - really loved the spicy salsa and fresh crispy tortilla chips. I had a combo with a tamale and a braised pork rib, the rib was meltingly tender. Good flavors but an old-school gut bomb in terms of all the cheese melted over everything. Monica's el Portal - lunch before going to the museum. Nice fluffy flour tortilla on the burrito, but the carne adovada was rather dry and under-seasoned. Mary & Tito's - another lunch, good beans in the burrito but otherwise not very special. 2000 Vietnam - had a combo bun for dinner with an assortment of really delicious meats. I would have liked more vegetables and herbs but otherwise was happy. Karibu Cafe - weird disconnect with the manager, but really good jerk chicken wings and pretty good chicken curry. Lentils were bland. Artichoke Cafe - finally someplace with a freaking salad on the menu! I know nothing grows in the desert, but still :slight_smile: Ceasar salad was well executed, duck breast on farrotto with orange-cassis coulis was a highlight of the trip. Out of my frozen dessert trio the rosemary brown butter ice cream was my favorite, the red chile caramel ice cream was disappointing, and the passion fruit sorbet was too intense to eat, tasted like the pastry chef had poured a jar of Perfect Puree passion fruit concentrate into the ice cream machine. El modelo - grabbed a few bites on the way out. Smelled amazing, I was wishing I had kept a cooler to pack full of tamales to bring home. Red chile chicken tamale was another highlight, but the carnitas in a brown paper bag were dry and disappointing. I guess carnitas aren't really a NM thing, it's all about the adovada? And the Chocolate and Coffee fest, where I was all weekend - huge event, tons of attendees but sales did not live up to other large chocolate events I've been to. My booth was next to Ohori Coffee, who kept me awake yesterday with their nice strong pour-over. I was kind of surprised that there were so few higher-end chocolatiers (maybe four or five of us?) but I guess it is just a different market from Seattle. I don't know if I'll come out again next year, but it was a good excuse to get out of the rain and have a mini spring break.

Im guessing less than a cup. Two cups heavy cream at 40% fat minus most of the liquid.