pastrygirl

how about mac & cheese? peanut butter cookies?

Poor Canada, it's not their fault there's so much USA in the way. The farther north you go, the lamer the Mexican food!

Far more twee than anything I usually make, but I had a request for Hello Kitty themed wedding cake, so I ran with it. Hearts and a veil to make it seem more wedding-y. Sour cream butter cake with coconut buttercream (IMBC with a can of coco lopez and some toasted coconut) and marshmallow fondant.

Proper? Bah! Sounds like fun, I say. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

There's no hood or exhaust fan? FWIW, in my house the electric range has a fan 24" above the burners. I think that would be a little low for a cabinet, especially with gas. Have you considered a pot rack? Some models attach to the wall and extend out, some hang from the ceiling

How about home-brewed ginger beer if you can find a valve top that fits (or whatever you need so it doesn't explode when you open it, not awake yet)

I've always been a bit skeptical of the flour theory.

If you add too much cream the milk won't curdle, but up to a cup of cream per quart/liter of whole milk should be ok. You can also stir in a little cream after draining the curds if they seem dry.

No, because I don't much like bananas. Since bananas are not juicy, on the up side they won't add much liquid, on the down side, all that starch and fiber will probably affect texture. I'd be inclined to caramelize ripe bananas in a little sugar to break them down, then puree with rum or lime juice to get smooth banana-ness. Banana liqueur does exist, but is probably artificially flavored.

Little too small for that, I think. The ones I've used are more like this: https://www.amazon.com/Bucket-Lid-Wrench-Plastic-Buckets/dp/B006RXPV4Y

In WA, or at least Seattle (this may be a county rule rather than state), all restaurants serving anything remotely rare need to have a disclaimer on the menu that eating raw or undercooked food may be hazardous to health. Some places get pretty creative with their wording, which can be amusing.

@DianaB I've never used a serrated knife for supremes, I like a slightly dull paring knife so it slides against the membrane without cutting into it.

If you want to keep the chunks, maybe just add more of the pineapple puree so you're adding enough liquid and see what happens. 240g? Also, is your puree raw? If so, that may be part of why it takes so long to cook. Try bringing your chunky puree to a boil to start breaking down all the cells and releasing all the juices instead of waiting for that to happen in the caramel. I haven't cooked with pineapple in a while, but I vaguely recall caramelizing the fresh fruit for a dessert in the past. Despite how fibrous pineapple seems, it is quite juicy and cooks down a lot once you add heat and sugar.

Do you strain your puree or is it pretty thick? Commercial fruit purees are pretty runny, and will have a higher water content. If you have a lot more fiber/pulp in yours, it could be throwing off the proportion of water. Though with cooking to a temp that shouldn't matter so much, but excess plant mass might contribute to the scorching. I dunno, wild guess - maybe try it with canned pineapple juice, or reduced pineapple juice? Or strain your puree through a chinoise if you don't already. Perfect puree has a caramelized pineapple, which is sort of weird IIRC. I haven't used other brands of pineapple. purees

That's not much to go on. Is it a Middle Eastern custard that this FIL makes? Does this friend know much about desserts, such as the difference between creme brulee and creme caramel? And you have your baked custards, your stirred custards, and things like zabaglione/sabayon that could be considered either custard or mousse. So I doubt we can recreate the FIL's delightful dish without more information, but yes, you can do various things to make custards in general lighter. Use less dairy fat and more whole eggs and fewer yolks, or whip air into it in some form - either by making zabaglione or by folding in whipped cream or meringue/whipped egg whites. The folding in would be to pastry cream or creme anglaise, and possibly further stabilized - examples are chiboust and bavarian cream. Panna cotta can also be very light depending on how much fat and gelatin are in the recipe.

What do you use for pineapple puree? Something like a Boiron or Perfect puree, or do you make your own? And you're doing the Pineapple recipe on p126 of Fine chocolates 2? It's counter-intuitive to me that more liquid would make a caramel more likely to separate, but my intuition has been wrong before

I don't make a standard lemon bar either. I top mine with lemon curd cooked stove-top and set with the help of white chocolate and gelatin.

I would think the coconut would soak up most of the liquid from the eggs. What if you let the topping mix sit and absorb for a while (30 min?) before baking? If you leave out the baking powder, maybe they'll be denser and hold together better. Or just bake them longer so the eggs are fully set. My guesses for this morning... Good luck!

celery root, parsnips, artichoke hearts, eggplant, jicama, avocado... I don't know how active the low carb-ers are here on eG, but some other food boards have a lot of activity on the subject, which might be helpful in dealing with no wheat, rice, or potatoes. good luck!

Tartlets for a catering tonight. Dark chocolate hazelnut ganache with candied hazelnuts, cherry-blueberry with streusel, milk chocolate salty caramel ganache with salty caramel cream, and mom's raspberries with vanilla bean chantilly. Also few lemon with fresh mango that didn't get captured. The dough for the berry tartlets puffed a little much, so they're not as pretty and clean - TGWC ... Thank god for whipped cream!

OK, so what CAN you have? Luckily you are in a big city where you can find just about anything! cashews, sunflower seeds, macadamia nuts, quinoa, teff, spelt, amaranth, millet, corn, tapioca, yam/sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, celery, radishes, leeks/onions, mushrooms, asparagus, peas, green beans, fennel, cucumber, goat & sheep milk products, meat, most seafood, most fruit...

I think I fixed it well enough to not feel bad about selling 8 dozen pieces to a bride tomorrow. Yesterday's ganache was still squishy so I melted and slightly cooled it then mixed it into a new batch of the formula that I know works. Of course the agitation of scraping it off the silpat into a bowl was enough to firm it up nicely. Oh chocolate ... so delicious, yet such a pain in the butt! Now I'll go back to pretending I know what I'm doing. Carry on!

Do you ever end up with ganache that reminds you of extra-heavy mayo? I was winging it today, testing batches that set up ok but grainy, then weirldy flexible. The 60% i usually use is 39% cocoa butter, but in this batch I used 72%, which is 45% fat. I also made some other changes but was trying to keep a similar ratio of liquid to chocolate. The 72% ganache is far thicker than the 60% ever is - it probably needs more cream or a splash of booze, right? Arg, I should know this! I got annoyed and left the slab out to do whatever it will overnight - cross your fingers that it is either use-able or save-able tomorrow!

@Bentley so you're doing soft caramels (fresh dairy products) p212, raspberry variation?

Is there a reason to add the cream and fruit in two steps? I'd be inclined to heat the other half of the cream and the fruit together and add them all at once. Hmm, I should try some fruity caramels..,