pastrygirl

That's awesome. Especially since I just posted a pic of some super tasty pizza on Facebook.

I've made white chocolate genoise a few times by using a mix of melted white chocolate and oil instead of the melted butter. Not sure how much the white chocolate really added to the cake, though. It was subtle.

As you can tell from your searching, there is no hard set of rules, just what the market will bear. I'd be happy to share my experience with you. I've been make chocolates in my spare time using the kitchen of the restaurant where I work for the last year and a half. I then sell bonbons to the restaurant at 90 cents each (well, actually $1.10 minus a generous friends and family discount), and they sell on the dessert menu 2 for $4. This is higher food cost than normal (target food cost is 28%), but they figure it is easy plating. The catering division charges $5 for two chocolates because, well, that's catering. I also sell small bars to another restaurant, retail is $3 and I charge $1.40. Prices are based somewhat on my food cost and labor and somewhat on what seems fair so that both the restaurant and I make enough money for it to be worth doing. My food cost is higher on the bars (40-50%) than on the bon-bons (25-30%? haven't calculated in a while). Some days are more worth doing than others, but I figure it is all about learning. Lots of molds that come out well = a good day. Having to re-temper or lots of defects = making minimum wage that day. I'm trying to steer away from hand-dipped because they are so tedious and aggravate my carpal tunnel issues more than molded. I think even with polishing and decorating time, molds are faster, and the more molds you can do at once, the better. I'm convinced there is high potential for chocolate to be pretty profitable, you just need to find enough customers to justify doing enough volume, and be efficient about production. Right now most of my profits go to buying more molds and toys, as I can afford them. So far I don't offer retail boxes, but I know what you mean about how expensive they are. If you are offering the boxes wholesale, I'd just add the cost of the box onto the wholesale cost. The retailer would then adjust their mark-up accordingly. A nice presentation box adds value. Where are you getting your boxes? I just got some pretty nice ones from papermart.com, clear plastic with a frosted edge that were less than a dollar each.

BB, yes liquid glucose is essentially the same as US corn syrup, just a little thicker viscosity, and maybe made form wheat (the patis france glucose syrup I use is made from wheat). You don't necessarily want to add the extra liquid in liquid glucose, so the atomized should be better for ice cream. I use 600g granulated sugar plus 100 g atomized glucose to a bit more than 3 liters dairy and 400 g egg yolks.

Is there going to be a giant barbeque? They can sell tickets and get the state back in the black

I have one of the 'curve' molds, have only used it a few times but it's cute and they came out fine. Like other folks, I too tend to reach for my rounder, easier to polish shapes. Chocolate is fussy enough without having to do intricate mold cleaning and polishing But overall quality seems high enough.

Mmmm, purrrple... What's the flavor?

Dark chocolate bunnies with milk chocolate passion fruit caramel centers.

I would think you really should refrigerate it. Potatoes are a moist low acid food and ideal breeding ground for whatever might want to replicate in them. Plus isn't there dairy that might go sour?

I searched a little about ice cream last night and it appears that contamination after it is made is the most likely source of illness. Salmonella is of course something to be aware of, but if you don't cook your custard to 175F it's not going to thicken anyway. I get pasteurized egg yolks by the quart, but only for convenience. You might want to use a thermometer to make sure you get up to the right temperature if you use fresh eggs.

OK, that makes more sense. As for presentation, a little caramel sauce or fruit puree plus a tuile or other small cookie instantly adds value. Caramel sauce keeps for weeks in the fridge, and you can freeze fruit sauces in pints or smaller so you don't have to make it fresh every time. I think individual desserts also tend to look more expensive, so if you could do the mango pudding in individual cocktail glasses, maybe even layer it with something for contrast, it will look great (or at least fancier than a scoop out of a big bowl of pudding). Fresh fruit or berries, or large flakes of coconut tossed in simple syrup and toasted until crunchy would be nice on the pudding (keep the crunchy stuff separate and add just before serving). It sounds like you have a great relationship with your friend and really are doing this out of love for her and for baking. That's awesome! Westie, I'm curious about the ice cream thing. I'm in WA state, and I have heard that there are weird/strict rules about ice cream production and getting certified as a commercial dairy, BUT this does not seem to apply to restaurants who make ice cream in-house, only when it is packaged and intended for retail sale. I've made ice cream and sorbets at all my restaurant pastry gigs here and in CA over the past decade plus and no health inspector has ever even blinked about it. Heck, I'm not sure they even bothered to look inside the freezer. How does ice cream end up carrying food borne illness? And since you can buy pasteurized liquid egg yolks and dairy, shouldn't that be pretty easy to prevent?

Wow, your confidence is underwhelming! I hope you are a better baker than you claim, otherwise how are not pretty and not necessarily successful desserts a boon to the restaurant? What do you know you make really well? Do you have a great cheesecake recipe that you can make different flavors and change up every few months? Can you make a great pie or ice cream? Nothing wrong with simple, but to has to be GOOD. Dessert is the last course and last chance to make an impression, you want people leaving happy. You probably wouldn't want to work more than a few days a week, so think of things that keep well. Cheesecake, creme brulee, flourless cake, trifle, ice cream, all keep several days (assuming proper storage). Lighter cakes, many mousses, and fruit tarts will have a shorter life span, as they dry out and shrink and such. As for pay, if you are not used to production baking it is kind of you to not want to charge your friend top dollar for labor. How about something like minimum wage plus a little bit of trade? Say 10% of dessert sales per month becomes a gift certificate for you, possibly also redeemable in the form of wine from the cellar, if you drink and if your friend has a nice wine list. Also consider that dessert tends to be lower food cost than other courses. Food cost on 6 ounces of creme brulee and a couple of small shortbread cookies is about $1, and depending on the place you can sell that for $6-8. Of course you don't want to waste ingredients, but remember that wholesale prices are lower than what you are used to paying. You think this would be fun to do for a while, but what if it gets really popular? Are you willing to put in more time if there is more demand? And what kind of restaurant is it that doesn't have dessert?

The caramel layer would definitely help, OTOH, I've made cheesecake in a regular cake pan and it unmolds fine once it is well chilled and solid. The solidity of the custard may be a factor, and may require either very thorough chilling or a slight reduction in liquid/increase in egg (especially whites) to solidify. Once upon a time I did a banana genoise with a layer of spiced creme brulee baked on top. The main problem I had was the cake wanted to float, I never thought about baking it with the cake on top. Anyway, I did not find that the cake overcooked, because it was soaked with custard which either insulated it or just made it so moist you couldn't tell. It makes sense that your stovetop custard ended up curdled after baking - custards are delicate, the eggs simply didn't need to be cooked twice. The addition of starch a la pastry cream will inhibit curdling, but of course affect the texture. Good luck with your chef, it is hard to create something according to some one else's vision, especially when that some one else doesn't really know how baking works.

I have a tiny bird's beak that I hardly ever use except to peel kiwi That curvy part is used for carving-type tasks like turning new potatoes into seven-sided footballs and otherwise torturing food. The blade does look a little wide for that, and a bit awkward that the curve is in the base and not the middle. You wouldn't use that to cut a carrot into discs for stir-fry, but if you wanted to cut your carrots into short lengths and turn each piece into a football, you could.

Maybe just proof of how jaded I am after 13 years as a pastry chef, but I'm disappointed with this book. I was lured into buying it by the above discussion of complex multi-component professional level recipes. Yeah, a few, but also a lot of really simple stuff and repeats from PH's other books. Baba? Tiramisu? Tarte tatin? Squash muffins? Opera cake? Trifle? Eh... yawn. These days I look to cookbooks first for inspiration and secondly for recipes (which I usually adapt to my needs anyway). Not much inspiration found tonight. The grapefruit/ginger/berry combo does sound good, and I may try stenciling macaron or some of his mousse filling recipes. It's a pretty book, but nothing revelatory, and a lot of basic/classic stuff.

Crazy. Maybe the milk was past its prime? I've had some separation a few times when heating the milk, water, and butter for pate a choux, and figured maybe the milk was old but continued anyway. Separated pastry cream isn't going to fix itself, so you have more of a problem. This happened after adding the yolks and starch? How much did you deviate from your usual proportions?

Broccoli is one of those things that goes from great to terrible with just a few minutes of overcooking, so I'm not sure I'd recommend hot holding. Slightly undercook and reheat if necessary. I made the mistake of trying to keep some brussels sprouts warm on low heat while the rest of dinner cooked... they ended up in the compost. Awful.

You use tempered but still liquid chocolate and mix it with room temperature to slightly warm (but not hot enough to throw the chocolate out of temper) ingredients. It sets up much more quickly and maybe more firmly than the same ingredients combined in the usual heat cream and pour over chocolate to melt method.

Kerry, I wanted to thank you again for the reminder that the rejects can be re-purposed. Management hadn't eaten too many of the cracked ones I had left in the office, so I took them back and melted them down with a little cream and another splash of bourbon. That plus a the extra filling I had saved ended up being the perfect amount to fill two molds of 32. All came out perfect, shiny, and sell-able! As with so many aspects of cooking, it's not about never making mistakes, it's about knowing how to fix them. Thanks!

Good point! I guess with a single flavor you could just add a bit of cream and a bit more flavoring to make up for the additional chocolate in the shells, and use that as the filling for the next batch. I'll try to remember that next time catastrophe strikes. Usually my first impulse is to throw the rejects against the wall

Nice try, but I think piping on top of molded and often even dipped pieces is so ugly.

Ooh! Ooh! I have some! It was about 77F in the kitchen yesterday afternoon, but I needed to make bonbons, and I wanted to make them fast. I cast the molds and immediately set them in the cooler, before they had even start to set. I'm guessing this was where I made my mistake, because a few mornings earlier I made several rounds of larger hemispheres that got a brief chill and came out fine, but were chilled after they looked set (and it was only 71, so there was a smaller temperature difference). I noticed a few of the cracks as I was filling the molds, put them back in the cooler to set the ganache, capped, and turned them out to reveal a mix of about half cracked and half not cracked in both of the molds. 33 to sell, 31 for management to eat. Ouch. Just when I start to think I know what I'm doing, chocolate has a way of keeping me humble.

Yes, and no filling, not a layer cake.

Wow, I expect more from the NYT. The candy/deep fry thermometer she had would be useless for tempering chocolate because candy thermometers are for much higher temperatures and don't even register below 100F. Then she leaves dipped items on a wire rack to drain and harden? And they are not going to harden around the wires and get stuck? I'm skeptical...

is that a retail price? I get Valrhona cocoa powder for $6.89/kg or $3.13/lb from my restaurant's supplier. I have to agree with Sebastian.