pastrygirl

I'd add a little milk to soften it, and more powdered sugar to taste.

But you know, of course, that it is a matter of proportion. Chocolate is a system of solids dispersed in fat. Ganache is an emulsion of fat dispersed in water. Add a tiny bit of water to chocolate, and it seizes. Add enough water to chocolate, and it emulsifies. You have to have enough water to change it from a fat system to a water system. Water is not always bad for chocolate, but the wrong amount at the wrong time can really screw it up. I have to agree with Curls, I think there is not enough liquid in the recipe. Sounds like it was quite firm when you tried to form the truffles, and 10oz white chocolate to 2oz sour cream/coco lopez is a lot. Doesn't explain why it worked the first time, but I bet another TB or two of liquid would help.

The Opalys is designed to be thicker and more opaque, primarily meant for molding. I just got a case of it but have not used it yet. The Valrhona literature I have says the Opalys has 10% more milk and 10% less sugar than the Ivoire. Ivoire: 35% min cocoa, 43% sugar, 21% milk, 41% fat. Opalys: 33% min cocoa, 32% sugar, 32% milk, 44% fat. So maybe the additional milk solids are throwing things off?

Definitely a question for the chocolate doctor! My guess - Valrhona is higher fat than a lot of other chocolate, and when you have all that fat not very warm and you stir it, it's not happy. So you are supposed to melt the chocolate and cream of coconut together, then stir in the sour cream? Or melt the chocolate alone then stir in the coconut and sour cream? I think just more heat would help. Melt the white chocolate, warm the cream of coconut, combine, then add sour cream. Did you use Valrhona Ivoire? I'm surprised that didn't melt well, it is usually so fluid. Maybe there was some moisture in the bowl and it seized? The flavor combo sounds really delicious (I LOVE coconut!), can you share the recipe?

In the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi, they talk about aging certain fish before it is ready to be served. I was so surprised, I thought sushi was all about extreme freshness.

Now THAT looks interesting, and maybe even I could do it if I've got the concept right: Make a ricotta filling and roll into balls. Bury the ricotta balls in flour and refrigerate for a few days. Pull the balls from the flour and add to boiling or simmering water. That's it? The article says the ricotta balls are "packed in durum flour" and then buried in flour. What exactly does packed in flour mean ... rolling the balls in flour and pressing the flour into the cheese filling? So, if I've got the concept, could the ricotta filling contain leafy green vegetables, like spinach, kale, beet greens? The pic shows the balls laid out in the flour in what seems to be a sheet, in a single layer. Might burying them in a bowl work, and maybe having two or more layers (just thinking about space requirements in my small kitchen). We make these where I work, we call them gnudi. We make ricotta, drain it so it is fairly firm, scoop into small balls, and bury in semolina. The prep cook will put a couple of layers in a hotel pan with semolina in between. The gnudi stay in the semolina in the walk-in for 2 days, then come out of the semolina, shake off the excess, and dry in the walk-in for another day or two. The ricotta needs to be firm/sticky enough enough to hold together, and not overly moist.

Is that the Guinness Stout gingerbread, or something different? I've made the Guinness one many times, it is excellent, and needs no help at all (except maybe a Guinness). Haven't made it in years, thanks for the reminder. But you've raised an interesting question, for me at least. How are you distinguishing between a quick bread and a cake? Yes, the Guinness one. I'm using 'quick bread' to mean something that is intended as a relatively unadorned snack rather than as a filled and frosted layer cake - typically loaf cakes like banana bread, pumpkin bread, pound cake - you might put a simple glaze on it, but that's it. We could argue about mixing methods, but I doubt we'll come to consensus (not all cakes start w/ creamed butter and sugar, etc). Cake is all in how you use it? What's the difference between cake and muffins, besides most people feel better about eating muffins for breakfast? (Or coffeecake, just not cake!) Pierre Herme's lemon loaf cake is pretty good, too, if I recall correctly.

Gramercy Tavern gingerbread. Maybe more of a quick bread than a cake but still delicious naked.

3 eggs seems like too many compared to the rest of the ingredients. Could it have been only yolks? Where did you find the original recipe?

Oh we're tough all right, but we're not elite athletes. I recently got an activity tracker because I was curious to see how many calories I actually expend in a day. I feel like I'm constantly running for 9-12 hours a day and am generally exhausted by the end of a shift. But it turns out that even though I'm constantly moving, it's not intense athleticism. Over an average work day, I walk about 5 miles (back and forth to the oven, dish pit, etc) and climb 40 or 50 flights of stairs (walk-in and dry storage both upstairs from the kitchen) but have fewer than 10 "very active" minutes, with 5-6+ hours of light activity and 3-4+ hours of moderate activity.

A little brown butter in place of some of the coconut oil would be nice flavor-wise.

I think 2 oz is plenty big enough for a dinner roll. The other question is whether to only make 1 per person. Is it a buffet? Family style? So many people are avoiding bread these days, but others may want an extra. Your batch will make 34 two oz rolls, or if you go slightly smaller you can get 40 of fifty gram rolls (1-3/4 oz). I think 175 to 200 of fifty gram rolls would be plenty.

They are a Canadian thing, I've never seen them here.

http://www.hudsonchocolates.com Not a restaurant, but awesome. Hudson Chocolates is open Saturday afternoons - they post on Facebook about 'open shop' days Saturdays 1-6.

I want to say poele or poeler, because I know I've heard cooks call it something that sounds like pwa-lay, and poele is what google turns up as a cooking term, but the search results don't really support it (it means frying pan or to fry). This is also what you do to duck breast while it is rendering skin-side down - keep spooning hot duck fat over the flesh side to cook it at the same time. I guess that's kind of frying. Unless you mean monte au buerre, but that is adding butter to sauces to emulsify and thicken just before serving.

Yes, I've made salt & pepper caramels, toasted whole black pepper a little in a dry pan, crushed, then steeped in cream before proceeding. I have szechuan pepper & honey caramels on the menu right now, I like the flavor but I wish they were more tingly-numbing. Maybe the butter fat interferes with that? I finish them with a little extra salt & ground szechuan pepper before wrapping. Pink pepper or Indonesian long pepper could be fun too.

Thanks. Lacking the Champion juicer that is frequently recommended as a first step, I processed the nibs in my Cuisinart for a while until they turned slushy. Seemed to work fine, and I'm happy to not have to spend another few hundred $$ on a juicer.

Kerry, I just got a wet grinder and brought some ingredients home to play with. Will I ruin it if I put cocoa nibs in it without getting them into a paste first, or will it just take longer? I have some Valrhona nibs that are fairly small already, like grains of rice or smaller. Thanks!

I like the smoked almonds idea, but I would not go sweet with them. Or you could smoke some of the tomatoes. Chervil or tarragon and a little salty cheese would be great too.

Yes, you would have to remove the silpat before cutting, but if you don't want to deal with flipping the slab, leave it on parchment. You should only need a few dots of chocolate on each bar, and you can trace the size of the bars on the back of the parchment in sharpie so you know where to spread the foot. Chocolate is such a pain sometimes!

Nope, that's exactly the right way to do it.Yeah, you're good. Weird that you noticed such a huge difference, I don't notice much. The base does seem thicker but I haven't felt like the cremodan interfered with flavor. I dunno, I was perfectly happy with my ice cream for years before using stabilizer, I only use it now as insurance against iciness.

Are you using tempered chocolate to glue your bars together? Should set up quickly enough. Have you tried silpat instead of parchment? Not sure if tape would stick better or worse, but I do appreciate the non-wrinkling nature of silpat. I haven't done layered slabs in a while, but I think I used tempered chocolate and silpat. Can you tape the bars to each other instead of to the paper? Then you only need to glue down the first set of bars.

Those Sicilian almond cookies sound good, I might have to play with them. Sounds a bit fussy, but I like anything with a long shelf life! For now I'm going with the pillow/butter mints. No cooking or baking required. I've done 2 batches mixed up in the kitchen aid with the paddle then smushed into a ganache frame (parchment under and over and use a rolling pin to level it out). I let it crust over a bit then cut it on the guitar (anything that can be cut on the guitar is a plus!), just need to work out how long to let it crust and see whether both sides need to firm up before cutting or just the bottom. We'll see how the feedback is, but for now I'm loving these! Thanks, Minas! I made another batch of nougat last weekend, cooked it a little less firm and used rice krispies coated with cocoa butter as my inclusions - good, easier but still a pain to cut and neither batch held their shape very well. Too much a labor of love for something that doesn't hold up. I will have to try pulling hard candies one day when I have time. I should have some citrus oils somewhere, and I have peppermint oil. It would be fun to be able to add that to my repertoire. Thanks for all your ideas!

How much did you add to what volume of custard base? It shouldn't be sticky. Dosage is 0.5% Honestly I'm not sure if that is supposed to be by weight or volume, maybe it says on the canister? If you have a gallon of custard, that is 3.78 liters, or 3780 ml. Half a percent of 3780 is about 18.9, which would be a little less than 4 teaspoons, assuming a 5ml teaspoon By weight, lets say that gallon is 9 lbs (a gallon of milk alone is 8, so lets be generous when considering dissolved sugar). 9 lbs is 4090g, half a percent of which is about 20 grams. If I recall correctly, a tablespoon of Cremodan weighs around 12 grams, so either by weight or volume you're looking at between 4 and 5 teaspoons of stabilizer per gallon of base. You can try less than that but I doubt you'd want to use more.

Thanks for all the ideas. Humidity is somewhat of an issue - this is Seattle and it has been warm and muggy the last few days - but the greater one is it being upper 90'sF in the kitchen during dinner service. It's better in the dining room, but still warm. Definitely not caramels! I already have some on the menu, and there is no way I am going to individually wrap 700+ a week! I did some R&D today... I made a nougat from Chocolates & Confections with almonds, pistachios, sour cherries, and figs. Turned our great, but a little firm and a major pain to cut into squares. I may try a softer batch. Is it better to let it sit, or can you cut it as soon as it's cool? My lemon cookies seem like a good option for now. I made a brown butter Russian tea cake type cookie with some lemon zest and juice, patted the dough into a ganache frame, chilled, cut on the guitar, baked, and rolled in powdered sugar. Easy enough, tasty, pretty, and should keep for a few days. Less successful were the lemon drops and the agar jellies. Recipes from Greweling. I have zero experience with hard candy so I didn't pull it, just deposited it into small hemisphere fleximolds. What types of flavoring is used for hard candy? Can you use liqueurs? Is there a way to use a confectionery funnel to portion them without having to spend considerable time later trying to remove a cone of hard-crack sugar from said funnel? Agar jellies didn't seem to set up very well, were flaccid and sticky. I re-formed them with more agar, we'll see tomorrow how that worked. Marshmallow would be fine if I didn't hate marshmallow. I make it every now and then, but usually end up throwing it away in disgust. Nougat is good because it's chewier and has lots of stuff in it. And s'mores and rice krispie treats are fine, just not plain cold marshmallow. How about nougat rice krispie treats?