pastrygirl

I do find that the powdered colors don't seem to dissolve completely and was a little concerned about that. Chocoera, I use the lemon jelly in place of the jam in butter ganache. 80 g lemon jelly, 40 g butter, 120 g tempered white chocolate, 1 TB lemon juice.

Lemon butter ganache. Lime, actually, but they call limes lemons here. I made a lemon (lime) jelly with some pectin and sugar then used Greweling's butter ganache formula, adding more lemon (lime) juice at the end instead of liqueur. A little too much on the yellow side for my aesthetic, but good flavor, nice and tart.

Yes, the finger technique, first the green, let set, then the white, let set, then 55%. Of course I also have lots and lots of really ugly chocolates I'm not showing you guys. The last two times I've tried to hand dip, my temper has been off, bad bottoms happen too often, and my experiments with pate de fruit using some new pectin of uncertain formulation are not bad exactly but not quite right either.

They'll show you around, maybe have you mix or portion a few things, see if you seem to get it, see how you move. Is it bread or pastry or everything? You must bake a lot at home to be applying for this job, if that is the case, don't freak out. Professional kitchens will do things differently, so pay attention and follow directions, an established business has standards and needs to be consistent. Have fun and good luck.

Watch out, soon you'll want everything to be pretty shiny colors, it is addictive and brings out your inner abstract expressionist . I picked up a tub of Cacao Barry pure cocoa butter and the colors on vacation in Australia in February. The colors are Roberts Confectionery, www.robertsconfectionery.com.au oil based powder color but I bought them from Savour school in Melbourne, www.savourschool.com.au. I just got little 5 gram vials to play with, they were maybe $7 Australian each. The recommended dosage is 10 grams color per 100 grams cocoa butter but I didn't weigh, just eye-balled it. Now I'm trying to think of flavors to make that match the colors - lemon, blueberry, apricot...it's a slippery slope! Chef Rubber in the US also has oil-soluble powder colors as well as already mixed colored cocoa butter. You'll just have to find the best exchange & shipping rates. At least it is light weight!

I would ditch the immersion circulators and accompanying vacuum machine and get a nice fryer, good sized grill, and a second oven/range to do traditional braises. Some things can be cool sous vide, but if you are going for affordable comfort food, even if it does have a twist, is your clientele going to care whether it was braised 18 hours sous vide or braised 8 hours in a regular oven? Have you looked at combi ovens? Might be more versatile than the immersion circulators and there are some you can program to do all kinds of things. I have a Houno combi that I actually hate because I suspect it is smarter than I, but it is programmable for roasting and braising and steaming and keeping warm. Besides, 6 burners and a grill is not a lot of heat. You're still going to need a burner to heat up all your sous vide bags, more if you are going to sear those meats, that leaves you with 5 burners which is really not much. How many seats are you looking at?

I had thought I lost my marbles yesterday, so that's where they went!

Peppermint bonbons. I have to admit, I've been skeptical about colored cocoa butter, and have felt that it is sort of trendy and over used. Seriously, does everything need color? But then I got some, and have realized how much fun it is to play with! These were wiped with green, then a smear of white chocolate, then filled with dark. Filling is a light caramel ganache with peppermint liqueur.

Thanks for all the ideas. I've decided this marzipan that I have is weird stuff. If I add just a little liquid it gets totally soupy, I'm thinking it is far more sugar than almonds (no % listed). Admittedly, I haven't baked much with marzipan, just almond paste for frangipane. We did have some leakage from improperly sealed stollen at Christmas, does normal marzipan melt and ooze when hot? I tried Ann Amernick's wellingtons, which were disastrous, and a test batch of frangipane that was a little too loose but I can fix that. Today's test recipe of bonbon filling is a winner, I think: 200 g marzipan, 75 g white chocolate, 50 g butter, and 2 TB amaretto made smooth and gooey in the food processor. Soft enough to pipe and self leveling when just blended, but crusted over for bottoming pretty quickly. I did not even melt the white chocolate, the friction of blending was sufficient.

If you can find a recipe for ricotta cheesecake or ricotta pie, that might be closer. Either way, I think you would want to puree your cottage cheese first to get it as smooth as possible. I think it would be a little looser than cream cheese, so you might want to reduce the other liquid or maybe drain the cheese a little to get it the same thickness as cream cheese.

It might be my unrelenting taco cravings talking, but I might have to go with corn tortillas. Not that I wouldn't miss salt-topped rosemary sourdough, seeded baguettes, or warm potato bread slathered in butter. Either way, it would be a sad life that had only one kind of bread in it.

Wow, that is one intense cake!

Almond croissants or frangipane would be good. The season for small, mediocre fruit is almost upon us , there will be tarts. I made some 70% shells and filled them with a mix of marzipan, white chocolate, and hot cream blended in the food processor. They are still runny this morning, I think they need more marzipan but have potential, will keep working on them.

I have several kg of decent enough but pretty sweet marzipan leftover from Christmas and need ideas for using it up, besides just dipping it all in chocolate. Not that chocolate would be bad, but I need more ideas than just that. Any ideas/good recipes for cakes, cookies, petit fours, etc? Or how to do a soft marzipan filling that could be piped into molded shells? I had one such bonbon back home last summer, maybe a little cream, white chocolate, and marzipan?

But do the bride & groom want the cake 'buddhist-themed'? Something waaaay more subtle would be to do 108 of something (little balls) around the edges. 108 is significant somehow. Something we do for our guests - who, granted, are rarely actually Buddhist - is make paper prayer flags and stick them on top of the cake. They are not too tacky. See two most recently uploaded photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037087@N02/ Or I agree that lotuses would be nice. All hail the jewel in the lotus - om mani padme hum.

Living in the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom, I really wanted to find a Bhudda mold for chocolates and make little chocolate Buddhas to give at turndown, but that idea was ix-nayed by the GM as potentially offensive. The staff members I asked seemed uncertain, which probably meant they didn't want to say no but found the concept too weird to be enthusiastic about. Google 'eight lucky signs'. You could do a ring with one of each around the bottom layer, you'd have to make them out of paste or fondant or something - or you might pick one that seems appropriate for the wedding and work that in somehow. There are the pair of golden fish, the conch shell (symbolic of the melodious sound of the dharma), the dorji (stylized lightening bolt), the endless knot, and I forget the others. Each is symbolic of something, health, strength, longevity, prosperity, whatever. You can probably tell I have not reached enlightenment yet I agree that ribbon would be a good way to get the dark blue in. Blue buttercream just doesn't sound good. But a huckleberry or blackberry curd filling could be tasty.

For oat scones, you can probably buy oat flour somewhere, or you can make your own by putting regular oatmeal/rolled oats in the food processor for several minutes until ground fine. I like about 20-25% oat flour, but you could do more (I think a cafe I worked at eons ago used 50/50 oat flour). They are good baked with a dollop of jam on top, or add the jam halfway through baking so it doesn't ooze all over. Another bakery made a 10 grain, slightly sweet roll, with jam baked inside or not. Pretty crunchy-granola style, but a big seller in that location. Are 'rise and shine' muffins the same as morning glory? Carrots, zucchini, pineapple, raisins, walnuts, kitchen sink? Yeah, you need a separate prep slave for those. Jamie Oliver has a great pumpkin (butternut squash) muffin recipe on his website that I've been using, slightly modified. They are easy (if you have a food processor) and you could probably make them healthier. I have a couple of granola bars on our picnic menus in the same vein as Rob's, using puffed rice (aka rice krispies), oatmeal, and either hazelnuts and prunes, peanut butter and chocolate chips, or dried pineapple and coconut. I use a little white chocolate thinned slightly with oil to help glue things together. I haven't tried freezing them, but they keep in the fridge at least a week.

If your cream has too little fat to whip, you can melt a little unsalted butter, then whisk in the cream, chill, then whip. RLB has directions in the Cake Bible. For the 25% cream I have here, I add about 40 grams butter to 1 cup cream, and that whips. I have experienced frozen cream (38% fat) that would not whip, even tried heating it to melt the fat globules then chilling it again, but no dice. Some cartons got frozen but some didn't, so unfortunately I don't know which will whip and which won't. At least it is still good for ice cream.

Sounds a bit risky, but would be cool if it worked. Is the panna cotta still liquid enough to pour below about 85F? You wouldn't want to melt the chocolate.

I'd think of regular spring roll wrappers first too, but we happen to have a bunch of brick in the freezer that the other chefs aren't using right now. The brick is a little more delicate, which is nice. I tried again today, the cornstarch didn't do much, but beaten whole egg seemed to do the trick. Ahh, eggs, is there anything they can't do? So going on the menu today, chocolate orange spring rolls served warm on circles of white chocolate with an apricot jam/marmalade mix dipping sauce. We'll see how it competes with the warm chocolate/caramel sauce/malted milk ice cream dessert.

He is a genius, isn't he? A veritable culinary idol. What, no celery?

I just took a class where we capped the truffle shells by piping a bit of chocolate into an extra tray (the ones the shells come in), then flipping it over on top of the tray of filled truffles, sealing them all at once. Pretty clever. It might work for David if he buys a couple trays of pre-made shells that are the same size as his. photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11037087@N02/...57614866602288/

Yeah, that would be bad, I suspected there might be a good reason not to try it. I tried your steaming trick for some old tough ginger, it probably could have used more than the hour I gave it. Wouldn't mind speeding that step up. I know, I know, good food takes time, take the time to do it right. I wonder if there is a way to fix a rice cooker so it stays on. Rice cookers are the one easy to find electrical appliance here. Rice three times a day, yes, pot roast, no. I could do it stove top at one or two lodges but burners are at a premium at the other three. Or maybe overnight in a well-wrapped hotel pan in a low oven - works for duck confit, how about pastry confitures? Thanks for saving me an airlift to the closest burn ward!

You want a good firm contraction of your chocolate to make the transfer stick. So it needs to start in a good temper and then cool correctly to get best contraction. Sometimes putting it in the fridge can help with that contraction. If the room temperature is suitable, leaving the transfer sheets overnight will give a good contraction. ← in my experience, my chocolate was too cool when i was working with the transfers and this happened. if you look further up in this thread, i'm pretty sure i posted photos of the problem. after contacting pcb, they responded that temperature was probably the issue. so, work at the upper temperature range for your chocolate (of course, still in temper). they shouldn't need to sit too long on the chocolate, but you'll get best shine and transfer if it sits for at least a couple of hours. ← Thanks! I figured that was it. I'll keep working on it. On the other hand, my apricot & white chocolate geodesic domes colored with orange cocoa butter turned out great and soooo shiny, too bad I then dropped my camera and broke it

I'm having trouble with some transfer sheets I picked up recently. They are not transfering to the chocolate completely and leaving splotchy, ot so impressive designs. Is my chocolate too cold? Am I taking them off too soon? How long do they need to sit on the set chocolate before taking them off? Could the sheets have been compromised? I bought them in Oz and they had a long trip back here, but I don't think they go overheated, the designs still look good on the sheet. Help!