pastrygirl

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!

I had a random thought yesterday that I wanted to throw on the table for feedback: do you think a pressure cooker would have any applications for candying? I've never actually used one and am kind of scared of them, but I was thinking it might be an easy way to soften citrus peel or ginger. If you put your blanched peels and syrup in the pressure cooker, would it all caramelize from too high heat? Would the sugar stick the steam valve together and make it explode? I'm wanting to make a lot of candied ginger via a slightly faster method than Andie's (I am impatient, it is true). Is this a really bad idea and opposite to everything we know about candying, or do you think it might be worth a try?

Tapioca is like rice and other starches that undergo retrogradation (see McGee) aka get hard when chilled. I was playing with some big black 'boba' pearls recently and they seemed to get harder faster than smaller pearls, don't know why. But, same as rice, tapioca softens again when heated, so you could try either reheating your pearls to order in a basket in boiling water like the line cooks do for pasta, or you could re-heat a whole batch before service, leave it at room temperature, and hope the health dept doesn't stop in and have a problem.

This thread is confusing me. I use 2 tsp powder for a 2 quart batch of ice cream, I don't know if the flavor is 'bold' exactly, but unmistakeably there, and I love cardamom so it is not a flavor I am shy with. If I'm mixing powdered spices into a custard of any sort, I mix them into the eggs & sugar, otherwise they seem to just float on top of the cream. My experience with whole seeds and pods is that it takes way more volume of seeds/pods to get the same flavor. I don't know much about it but aren't there green, black, and white cardamoms? I've seen the staff use big black pods in Indian curries. We get whole pods of green by the kg and I grind and sift it, which is so tedious but the smell is worth it. Maybe one is milder and that is what the OP is using?

18 is on the high side, maybe if you own the place you'd work that much. 14 is more realistic. But not every restaurant does their best to burn people out, the first years of your career when you are paid hourly management will do their best to keep your OT to a minimum, so you may only work 9 or 10 hour days when it is busy and occasionally go home early when it is slow. When you get to be salaried, a few more hours a day might be expected. But not every day has to be a 14 or 16 hour day. You're right. if you have to ask, you probably don't want to do it.

When possible, I like to browse at Barnes & Noble in person then go buy the book for cheaper at Amazon. Buying books sight unseen really can be a crapshoot. For chocolates, Chocolates and Confections by Peter Greweling is awesome, everything you need to know about more kinds of chocolates and confections than you should be eating. It is a little technical, definitely professional level. No baked goods there, only confections. For chocolate baked goods, Maida Heatters Book of Great Chocolate Desserts is a favorite, but old and possibly not in print. Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme is a good one too, a few simple things and a few more elegant Frenchy style, with sexy pictures. Alice Medrich's chocolate books are good too, and a bit simpler. For bread, I like Peter Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice. It covers most types of bread and how it all works. There is also a thread or two about pastry books over in the cookbooks & references forum.

Just plain raw egg whites don't hold all that long whipped. If there is a good amount of sugar, that will stabilize them a bit, but 30 minutes might still be risky.

Awesome, I'll try it!

Keeping with the feuill de brick dough theme - is there any way to glue this stuff together and make it stick to itself? I am making chocolate spring rolls that will be a thick chocolate pastry creme rolled up in brick. Egg white seems to help a little, as did freezing them seam-side down, but I'd like a little extra security so chocolate doesn't ooze all over the fryer. Any ideas?

I thought I'd finally follow up on my trip. I loved both Melbourne and Sydney and hope I can go back sometime, maybe even get out of your fine cities and see the rest of the country. I love summer so was happy to have fresh peaches, strawberries, and cherries every day. My main reason for being in MEL was to take four days of chocolate classes at Savour school in Brunswick. Lots of tasting going on there, the classes were fun and informative and I am glad I went - I took home 3-1/2 kg of chocolate, which made a lot of people happy. I did get a chance to visit both Koko Black and Cacao, I found Koko Black's flavors a little more pronounced, a few of the Cacao chocolates didn't come through on flavor as well. For dinners, I loved Verge, even if it was a little bit slow between courses, but my server brought me some food magazines b/c I was dining alone and recommended a really nice wine. Dessert was something really light and fruity, strawberry I think. Nicely done. Also dined at Bistro Guillaume, where the French servers seemed to have decided I was an imbecile (I really do regret having tipped. I think it was because I was expecting an Aussie accent and was confused by the French one when ho offered to send the sommelier over. It went downhill after that). Peach melba for dessert with ginger (?) ice cream was simple and good and looked pretty. Another night, the bartenders at Ginger Boy convinced me to try the tofu cheesecake, but it was a little too much like regular cheesecake for me, nobody's fault but my own for being swayed. In SYD, I stopped in at Quay for a couple of desserts one night. The first was all light and tropical and perfumy, with coconut and lychee and vanilla and maybe rosewater. The second was the seven (8?) texture chocolate tart, which was super intense and kept me up all night after eating it. When I told the server I could only discern five textures, he humored me and took me into the kitchen to have the sous chef go through what all the textures were. That was cool. Also went to est. for the tasting menu. Nice food, especially liked the foie gras with beet/raspberry puree and sauternes jelly and a nice buttery prawn raviolo (separate courses, not together). First dessert was 'black forest' which was cherry granita, chocolate jelly, and kirsch whipped cream. A nice take on it. My second dessert was the passion fruit souffle. I love passion fruit but maybe I'm not a big souffle fan. It was a bit eggy and I would have liked more passion fruit. But the petit fours were nice, I'd like to know how they made the olive oil and vanilla jelly, it was quite surprising. Thanks again for the recommendations. Andrea

I've heard that they need to be roasted to denature whatever toxins are in them. They are not recommended to be consumed raw in more than the smallest quantity.

Not sure I understand the point of the exercise, maybe I am missing something. You would apply this formula to a new recipe before you made it so you know what texture to expect at the outcome? I would argue that egg yolks and egg whites do not contribute equally to 'moistness'. Aren't egg whites generally considered to have a drying effect on baked goods?

Send things back? Hahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahha. Not possible. We get stuck with some pretty random things sometimes. Chef orders dried kidney beans, Singaopre sends cans of baked beans in sauce. I order vanilla beans, get jars of instant vanilla custard powder (hey it has a picture of vanilla beans on the front, same thing, right?) I tried again to find any actual information on the Valrhona site, but all they seem to offer are pretty pictures. Not that there is anything wrong with pretty pictures I think I might try a box of the mystery milk chocolate just out of curiosity. I usually only use milk for ganaches anyway, my current preference for enrobing is the equatorial noir 55%. Thanks, guys, if I do order some I will try to remember to follow up in a month when it gets here.