pastrygirl

I'm surprised to see so much wood in a chocolate kitchen. A little more trouble to clean than stainless or stone.

Cakes for my niece's 1st birthday party yesterday. Rainbow themed, if you can't tell the "good" cake: I was hoping that painting onto white fondant would be faster than kneading six different colors into it, but I think I was wrong. It was vibrant, at least! The smash cake: Everybody hand-pipes white chocolate sprinkles in six different colors, right? V 1, Cake 0

A couple of well-done funny faux commercials - Olive Garden & Taco Bell. https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/wjxzwn/lets-talk-about-these-weird-fake-commercials-for-taco-bell-and-olive-garden

Passion is over-rated, anyway. If you're going to cook for a living then it really helps to love it, but speed, consistency, and being able to take/follow direction(s) are more important. What field are you coming from? You usually want food cost 30% or below. @chromedome and @gfron1 have good advice. Yes, you should do inventory, and meanwhile check your invoice pricing to make sure you're up to date. Salad being un-profitable seems odd. Either they're putting way too many expensive goodies in, or they just need to charge more. Keep a closer eye on meat & cheese portions, and also consider switching a few more expensive ingredients. Now I'm not suggesting you compromise quality, just be strategic. Candied pecans may be a lovely crunchy bit in a salad, but they are expensive. Walnuts cost less, almonds even lower, then peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. Prices do fluctuate for produce and meat, too. Get to know what is in season, it is usually less expensive than imported or hothouse-grown. Do you offer staff meal? It can be a good way to use up odds and ends and discourage staff from making their own snacks, but it does take time and materials. What is the chef situation? Is there a chef or sous chef and your role is more organizational, or is it just you and a bunch of cooks? It takes time, you'll have to look at what comes in and goes out over several weeks - are you doing all the purchasing and receiving for the kitchen?. Maybe do inventory weekly for the next few months. Clean out the freezer and find ways to use excess product. Keep an eye on snacking and waste. Is food thrown away because they made too much and it went bad? Make a smaller batch, only enough for 2-3 days instead of a whole week.

I believe there is an element of timing as well - flipping the tortilla once the first side is cooked but not cooked through past the middle.

Oooh, good to know, I have a request for a mille-fuille cake coming up soon.

Another cake this morning - Disney Descendants theme for Babette, daughter of a chef colleague.

My older sister is turning 50 so I made her a cake because I'm so nice ... ... and put chocolate dinosaurs on it because sibling rivalry will never die

@RWood, Thank you again for the recommendation of Steve's GF pastry flour from Authentic Foods. I got a bag and made a cake and it was not gritty at all! It was a bit pasty, but that may have been due to all my other substitutions. I went full gluten-, milk-, and egg-free, using egg replacer and a combo of oil and cocoa butter for fat. I believe if I had used butter and eggs as usual it would have been even closer to "real" cake. (With so many substitutions plus winging it, I didn't have high expectations. I'm sure even vegan could be better with fine tuning.) I don't get many gluten free cake requests, but next time I do I'll use that flour. Do you think it's better frozen for storage or fine at room temp? Here's the cake, layered with strawberry jam and cashew/brown sugar/vanilla "cream"

Could you simply scuff them up with sandpaper to dull the shine? Otherwise, maybe 'chalkboard' spray paint? Personally I wouldn't worry about paint types. Obviously not lead-based, but the chance of much paint residue being ingested from rubbing off on a napkin is slim.

I think it depends on what kind of detergent, if any, is involved. Shouldn't be anything wrong with a rinse or gentle cycle without detergent.

Seeing is believing - Full disclosure: I did break a wire on the first cut, and a slab that I cut a few hours later when it was warmer did stick together more after cutting. Like so many things we work with, it's going to have to be juuuuust right.

So something like this, but polycarbonate? https://www.jbprince.com/flexible-silicone-molds/orange-non-stick-15-pyramids.asp I have one of these, the cavities are kind of huge so I never use it https://www.jbprince.com/chocolate-and-sugarwork/ridged-pyramid-18-cavities.asp Is there a preferred weight? How about a cone? https://www.jbprince.com/molds/cone-chocolate-mold-21-forms.asp https://www.jbprince.com/chocolate-and-sugar-work/pointed-cylinder-chocolate-mold.asp

lol, @Jim D. I have a whole fresh spool when I need it. I caramelize the sugar then add warmed cream, etc. For 90 pieces, heat 600 g heavy cream, 150 g butter, 170 g lyle's golden syrup (or whatever liquid sugar), salt and other flavors as desired. Caramelize 700 g sugar as dark as you like then add liquid*. I cooked to 258F, poured into a 9" square pan & cooled at room temp overnight. It was a nice mid-high 60's in the kitchen today, finally better pastry-making weather! I could see it not going as well if the caramel was soft and the kitchen is warm, or hard caramel and cold kitchen. And you probably need to wrap as soon as they're cut, they do stick together a little bit so I wouldn't cut them and leave them sitting around. But the caramel wasn't any firmer than the butter ganaches I make, and a far cry from the semi-solid gianduja that I've broken too many strings on. *I always do wet caramel and just keep an eye on it while I do something else.

Not so much the what but the how. I have always been utterly convinced that cutting caramels on my guitar would be a disaster. I had this image of a sticky mess with a ton of broken strings then having them all stick back together anyway. So I've cut thousands and thousands of caramels over the years one at a time, by hand. Six strips per pan then each strip into 15 pieces. This morning when needing to cut three more pans after doing two yesterday and dreading not only the cutting and wrapping but all the carefully tucking into boxes, I decided to face my fear and cut caramels on the guitar. Other people manage to do it; I needed to try it. I started slow, with one strip of 15. Lo and behold, it worked! The next pan, I cut the six strips on the guitar then two at a time for 30 pieces at once. Tomorrow I'll spread out all the wrappers and try the whole pan at once - two cuts instead of 89. I'm a new woman. The hours I'll save! The profit I'll make! The less I'll resent caramel eaters! I mean, I still have to wrap each one of the little fuckers, but cutting 30+ at once ... why oh why didn't I try this sooner? It's never too late to try something a new way. Work smarter, not harder! And how much is a caramel wrapping machine?

In addition to what Jim said, it can also be used to make "chocolate" out of other ingredients. For example, I made a batch of raspberry white chocolate by grinding freeze dried raspberries, sugar, and cocoa butter together. Regular white chocolate is sugar, dry milk, and cocoa butter. As long as you temper it, the cocoa butter will add structure to whatever you mix in. You can cook with it like any other fat. As noted above, the Mycryo fine granulated CB is recommended for high-heat saute-ing in savory cooking. CB can also be useful when cooking for special diets and vegans.

They should still be good. A half pound is about a year's supply of vanilla beans for me. I've had some get dry and brittle towards the end of the bag, but still smelled/tasted good.

Merlino Foods in Seattle. They are generally super nice and fair so I'm sure it's market price. I'll have to stop dumping so much of it into my vanilla cupcakes ... or maybe everyone is getting lemon or gingerbread cupcakes this fall instead! If or when the price goes down, we must remember to stock up

Today I paid $81.62 for a quart of Nielsen-Massey vanilla extract. It was even more expensive than the 3kg bag of Valrhona Dulcey on my order! In early June, the same item from the same purveyor was $56.74. I know price spikes happen every few years with vanilla products but ouch! Just felt like sharing in case anyone wanted to commiserate.

I was in the kitchen this morning so got a photo of the Felchlin CB bits. Teaspoon for scale. I tasted it too, didn't notice any particular chocolate flavor, just neutral fat.

How much do you want? I could sell you some, PM me to discuss price and shipping.

Yeah, it's weird that Mycryo isn't really aimed at pastry chefs. I believe it is thoroughly deodorized for that reason. I haven't tasted the Felchlin CB just plain, will have to do that! I did already use it with some freeze dried raspberries, that was bad form of me to not taste it first But the raspberry chocolate came out nice.

Mycryo http://a.co/fhqokiX Or I just got a big bag of Felchlin CB chips from Albert Uster. It's not a fine powder like Mycryo, more like mini chocolate chip size https://secure.auifinefoods.com/cocoa-products/cocoa-butter-100-grated-7500210000

Oh my I know it's a fair ways from Houston, but hopefully the hurricane situation doesn't keep people away. Good luck!

News to me too. Prices never seem to go down! http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/swiss-scientists-ruby-chocolate-new-flavour-barry-callebaut-a7930046.html I share the skepticism of the "expert" in the link above, who noted that Valrhona made a similar claim about Dulcey being a revolutionary fourth type of chocolate - blonde. So that makes Ruby the fifth, no? It is interesting how the chocolate makers are expanding their options so rapidly these days. 10 years ago, Valrhona had like 5 products, now they have all these estate and single origin and even added another formula of blonde chocolate. Plus, didn't they have one that was made form some albino cacao or something? Barry-Callebaut and Felchlin have both jumped on the blonde/caramelized white bandwagon, and Felchlin is introducing some new vegan crap that they aren't even allowed to call chocolate - from their facebook post: "Do you know all about our recently launched ‘Vegan Choc’ - The real alternative to a chocolate for a Vegan lifestyle? Produced with cacao butter from the Dominican cacao beans & rice milk powder, our Vegan Choc Blanc 38% has a full-bodied finish with vanilla, well balanced with a touch of almonds and coconut & our Vegan Choc Brun 44% has the harmonious cacao notes with a touch of slightly toasted hazelnuts rounded with a spicy finish. Our Vegan choc is an organically certified confectionery mass which is not classic couverture nor chocolate but still tastes exactly like chocolate."