pastrygirl

Flageolet beans should work too.

CR Sockeye for 24.99 and king for 31.99 @ west Seattle Thriftway. That store is convenient for me but does tend to be more expensive, I'll have to make a point to go to met market instead next time.

Come on now, Stan, you should know we take our brownies very, VERY seriously around here!

I use this one and like it: http://www.shopchefrubber.com/product.php?productid=8692&cat=0&page=1 Only $9.

Last summer I was making a dessert where combining the two worked well for me. I think I was having a hard time getting the right texture with just agar, so I added some gelatin and it was firm enough to handle without being too crunchy/crumbly like agar can get. It was a layer of strawberry balsamic agar/gelatin topped with strawberry chiboust, cut, then stacked with crispy layers to make a napoleon. I needed the agar firm enough to cut and handle but soft enough to get a spoon through. For a thin layer covering a half sheet pan: 500 g strawberry puree 100 g water 50 g balsamic vinegar 1 tsp agar 1-1/2 sheet bronze gelatin IIRC, it was a somewhat thick strawberry puree, which is why I added water, a thinner base like perfect puree wouldn't need it. I hope that gives you a starting point.

I really enjoy Trinidadian rum punch. It's one of those things easily adapted to personal taste, you can add more or less of any component. Here is how I make it: juice of 1/2 a lime about 1-1/2 tablespoons simple syrup 1-1/2 to 2 oz decent rum - currently Appleton Estate splash of sparkling water or club soda ice few dashes angostura bitters freshly grated nutmeg

Tempering chocolate. Did my best to avoid it for years, then finally decided it was ridiculous that I was so scared of it.

First the good: Ginger rum. Mixed gold luster dust with cocoa butter and painted it in part of the mold. Sort of interesting effect, with how much shinier the part with the cocoa butter is, like gloss and matte finishes on the same piece. Cherry-chambord. Colored cocoa butter painted in with a brush. The bad: I made these 2 weeks ago, and today the cherry chambord above were about half imploded in the tops, similar to some previous imploding I had on another flavor Hazelnut, collapsed. The first time this happened with the hazelnut, I thought the shells were just too thin. Now that it has happened again, and also with another flavor, I clearly need to change how I make them. The ganaches this has happened with are softer cream ganaches. I am thinking that the centers are drying and contracting and pulling on the shell until it goes concave. Should I agitate my ganache once cool to induce crystallization? Should I not use cream ganache, only butter? Or simply change the formulas?

That's funny, I was just thinking about that the other day when I sampled an artificially flavored coconut cookie. I was in love for a minute, but decided I do prefer real coconut.

It may simply be drying out, or if you changed chocolates recently, you may need to adjust your ratio for the new chocolate. I add some honey or corn syrup to my glazes, and haven't noticed any cracking problems, but my stuff isn't sitting uncovered in a display case, either. Did it work better with the schokinag? If it is only in certain display cases, what is different about those?

If you're going to add significant alcohol, you need to reduce the sugar or add solids to get the same frozen consistency. In my experience, chocolate ice creams are good with extra alcohol to balance out the added firmness from the chocolate. Otherwise, I don't normally add more than a few tablespoons of liquor to a gallon of custard base.

Hot food, hot plates! I usually do warm them, especially if I've put any effort into cooking something nice. It is endearing to me that my not-that-into-cooking boyfriend has picked up on this and will put plates in the oven for me if we are cooking together.

me, too

If you want almondy-tasting almond milk, make your own with toasted nuts to bring out the flavor. At my last job, we had a couple of VIP regulars with multiple allergies. At first, it does seem like there is nothing you can make, but if you start focusing on the ingredients you CAN use instead of the ones you CAN'T, the ideas will flow a little faster.

tapioca or rice pudding with coconut milk, almond milk, or a fruity or herbal syrup and fruit - or cornstarch or rice flour based pudding water based chocolate mousse - see herve this chocolate chantilly thread caramelized rice krispies could be a garnish for something soft, also crispy fried rice noodles roasted or poached fruit with sorbet - if you have a pacojet or very good blender you can get a rich creamy sorbet using nuts chocolate dipped dried fruits and nuts, nondairy truffles, pate de fruits, and turkish delight for petit fours agar jellies can be difficult to get just the right texture - hard to get a prefect panna cotta mimic, but firmer cubes of a fruit based agar jelly could be a useful component

5 or 6 years ago I finally bought a KitchenAid for home use. Seemed silly not to have one, being a pastry chef and all. Got a shiny red 6 quart Professional 5 plus, which I can't stand to use because it is SO FREAKIN' LOUD. Every time I use it, I am incredibly tempted to call KA and attempt to have a conversation while standing in front of it. It has a loud, horrible high-pitched whine that makes me want to leave the house while the mixer is running. I hate my KitchenAid. Why is it so loud? No mixer I've ever used professionally makes such an awful noise.

I find it odd that one of the rationales for smaller packaging is that it is 'greener'. If the smaller package contains less food, forcing people to buy 5 or 6 smaller packages to yield the same amount of product as 4 of the previous size, is it really greener?

I'm looking for the best organic chocolate for industrial (restaurant, wholesale chocolates) use. I recently got some samples of TCHO chocolate, some of it organic, produced in San Francisco. I initially liked the flavors of the samples, then ordered 25# of the organic 66% and am not sure I'm liking it so much, in flavor or fluidity. It is thick and very cocoa-y. Another supplier carries an organic Callebaut 70% but won't break case and I'm reluctant to buy 55# without sampling. Has anyone used the Callebaut? Locally we have Theo, an organic, fair trade bean-to-bar manufacturer which is great eating chocolate, but they don't use the usual distributors (except I think you can get nibs) and I've heard negative comments about buying wholesale from them from a friend in the ice cream business. I suppose Felchlin Cru Sauvage should be organic by default, if it is harvested from wild trees in the Amazon. I bought a few bags and I'm pretty sure I like it better than the TCHO, but haven't tried tempering it yet. What other organic chocolates are available wholesale, and which do you prefer?

I too take meds with these guidelines for an empty stomach. So if Fat Guy needs to take his NOT on an empty stomach, would that be within 2 hours of a meal? An hour after a smaller snack? Or just take with some sort of food?

I work at a restaurant where we are expected to have one drink a day, and I think many people do. We recently instituted payroll deductions for the end user tax we would pay on a shift drink. I get screwed on it because I usually only have 1 or 2 shift drinks a month, but a deduction is made for me five days a week. When I mentioned that to the GM, he said I'd better start drinking more. Funny how the restaurant industry is expected to drink, not just allowed.

Taste the puree once it has the sugar in and see how you like the sweetness. I don't know how forgiving pectin NH is, but hopefully you can adjust the lemon juice more or less to taste.

Does the cream of tartar do something special for the caramel, or is it just there to prevent crystallization? Have you tried leaving it out?

I read it as 10 g of something about as sour as lemon juice, so the substitution would need to be a solution, not straight acid. If I had only powdered citric acid and no lemon juice I would make a solution with the citric acid approximating the acidity of an average lemon, and use 10g of that. Start with 1/2 or 1 tsp powder to 1 TB water, taste and adjust? I haven't used citric acid in a while, and don't have a good idea of how sour it is. Is that the whole recipe, 300 g sugar, 1kg puree, acid, and pectin? That doesn't sound very sweet to me, not compared to most pate de fruits. The recipes I use have close to equal weights of sugar and puree/juice.

I like the way you think

I don't feel like copying it all out right now, but Harold McGee says that (at least in bread) staling happens much faster at just above freezing (refrigerator temp) than at room temp or frozen. Things happen to the starches to make them hard and taste stale. So you really don't want to be storing your baked goods in the fridge. Sounds like the 'must immediately freeze cupcakes' thing is just a quirk.