pastrygirl

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?

What to make when it's sweltering? Trying to think of heat-proof confections for the summer. Every week I make 7-800 little bite sized treats that we give with the bill at the restaurant. Truffles were great for the winter, but it's getting too warm in both the kitchen and the dining room to produce and hold truffles. Last summer I made pate de fruits, which hold up well, but which I'm pretty sure gave me a splatter burn every single time I made it. Too much pain. Ive been working on some gelatin gummies that I like and that don't hurt, but they seem to get droopy in the heat as well. I've been adding agar to help the texture, maybe more agar and/or cook the syrup to a hotter temperature? How do hard candies hold up? Nougat? Humidity can be an issue but I'm more concerned about heat. Cookies are an option, especially easy to pipe or slice and bake. Amaretti? Has anyone tried cutting shortbread with the guitar? Candied nuts seem a little too simple - what else besides chocolate would make them special? What are your favorite treats that stand up to heat?

Scooping ketchup. For when salsa just isn't sweet enough? Why would you need to scoop your ketchup? Are they intending it as a dip, or for easier measuring? Scooping mayonnaise also available. http://sirkensingtons.com/theproducts.html

You don't use a lot of cremodan, something like 0.5% by weight, and I don't believe it is meant as a substitute for eggs or a balanced recipe, more as insurance that the texture will stay good over time. I use about a tablespoon of cremodan and 400 grams egg yolks per gallon of ice cream base. Works for me, but if I'm doing it wrong, I hope someone will enlighten me!

Totally an intern job! I rarely make more than 3 batches in a day, I just throw a ladle in the bowl and give it a few good stirs in the first few minutes then a few more later. I rather enjoy ice cream day

Agree with Minas that ganache is by definition chocolate. Are you opposed to white chocolate? It does add a lot of sweetness, but otherwise doesn't interfere too much. Or maybe you could thicken up some coconut cream with pure cocoa butter. Do you want it smooth or chunky? What do you plan on using it for? I was looking at Bob's Red Mill Coconut Flour in the store today, never tried it, but it looks very fine and could be used as a thickener. Maybe some combination of coconut cream/milk, coconut flour or coconut cream powder (two totally different products as far as I know, but things I would try if I was on your quest), and cocoa butter? I love coconut, so please report back on your experiments.

What do you consider to be a big batch? And what is the capacity of your ice cream machine? I always make a gallon of custard at a time, but my machine only fits half at a time. I don't find ice baths particularly tedious at that scale, just part of the process. I have done a 1-1/2 gallon batch a few times, but larger isn't practical for me mostly because of the equipment I have to work with - not enough big bowls. Plus, the larger volume of dairy I scald, the more likely it seems to scorch.

I find two additions of each wet and dry is usually "little by little" enough - half the dry, then half the wet, then the rest of the dry and the rest of the wet. If you add all of the flour first it will get too thick and be over-mixed by the time you beat all the liquid in to loosen it up. If you add all the liquid first, it won't emulsify well into the creamed mixture and will separate and look curdled. How did your cake come out?

Doubtful. Last weekend, having in my possession some sheets of frozen croissant dough and plenty of canola oil, I decided I had to fry some up and try them. I thawed a croissant sheet, cut it into doughnut shapes, proofed the doughnuts, then fried them at 350F until nice and brown. Of course I tested a few holes first, and tossed them in powdered sugar. I liked the crispiness once the holes cooled. As for the cronuts, some got a lemon curd filling and lemon glaze, some got a hazelnut filling and white chocolate glaze, and a special few got a bacon fat-sriracha glaze and plenty of crumbled bacon (it was essentially a dare). Don't get me wrong, they were good. They were rich, with the flakiness of laminated dough, and everyone who tried them seemed to both marvel at the concept and enjoy them. But wait in line for hours or pay a scalper? No. I suppose there is appeal in the novelty and the over-the-top-ness, and they were fun to make once, but either a croissant or a doughnut makes me feel kind of gross afterwards, I really don't need to try deep fried croissants again any time soon.