emmalish

I don't recall her thinking it was a bad idea, just bad execution. Maybe I am not remembering it correctly. ← That's what I thought too. Or maybe just not innovative enough. I got the impression she thought the chef wasn't trying very hard because she had immunity.

Mmmm, that looks delicious. I haven't really looked at any of the pie recipes in the book yet, but that makes me want to check it out.

Are potato chip sandwiches Canadian? ← I've lived in Canada my entire life and never even heard of someone putting potato chips on a sandwich. Is it an eastern Canadian thing?

Ouch! But yeah. Here's hoping you're not in Surrey... And Surrey is nowhere near Richmond. You'd better check and make sure you're staying in the right area...

DesertCulinary I love those wee sliders! Especially the coconut lettuce. It totally looks like lettuce. One of these days I will steal that idea. For me, this time of year means gingerbread leaf cookies...

Wow, LittleIsland, that mango passion tart is gorgeous.

I'm so glad it worked out for you! I didn't bother making the glaze either. I tend not to like overly sweet things, and this cake is great on its own. I find quite a few of the cake recipes I've tried from this book are more thick than I'd expect a cake batter to be, but they all bake up beautifully. That's hilarious!

I've made it with store-bought apple butter, but if I recall it was pretty thick as well. I say go for it! What's the worst that can happen?

I've made the mocha walnut bundt a few times – I really like it. I've also made the sour cream swirl bundt several times – 2 of those was my contribution to a Christmas party at a friend's house and it was very popular. There were very few leftovers, but they had them with coffee the next morning and promptly asked me for the recipe.

I finally broke down and ordered the 2nd book from Chocolat-Chocolat. Not cheap – $95cdn – but it came with a free mold, so I decided to go for it. It just came today. Gorgeous book! I've only flipped through quickly and already have seen several flavour combinations that I'm dying to try.

A magnetic mold is in two pieces that snap together with magnets – it's specifically for using texture or transfer sheets. There's a demo with photos here.

I've only worked with molds once, but when I did I was glad I had more than one that I could fill with ganache, as even cut in half, the recipe I made filled two molds easily (I think I ended up with 2 and a half-ish). So I would definitely say at least two that could be filled... or is that just me?

Me too! I was going to respond to Lior's question, but then I realized I wasn't entirely sure whether the celebrations had the same significance or whether my perceptions had just been heavily influenced by American media over the years to the point where I believed they were basically the same thing, just on different days.

Wow, those are all so gorgeous! I'm interested to hear how that pattern was made too. If I had to guess, I'd think it was airbrushed on with a stencil after the chocolate had set. How about the Pineapple? Is that a transfer sheet or did you just drizzle a chocolate pattern on them? (...I'm still looking through the site)

It's the first one, sadly. I'm looking for the 2nd as well and the best price I can find is about the same. Amazon used to have both of them for about $60 ea. and I ordered them, but a couple weeks later they sent me an email saying they were unable to get the books "at that time". Then a couple months later I saw that the first one was in stock again. I'm hoping they'll get the 2nd again as well.

Mmmm, walnuts would be good – I'll have to try that. I make these with craisins instead of raisins, and sprinkle both sunflower AND pumpkin seeds on top. Delicious.

Amazon has it in stock right now for about $60. Otherwise it's usually around $100 new.

I just got my book last night (it was delivered to the neighbours by mistake and they were out of town until last night). I've only had a chance to flip through it quickly so far, but oh my goodness, the pictures are so inspiring!

I made the Classic Brownies last night. I've made the Katherine Hepburn ones before, and they were good. The Classics? Oh my god. SO chocolatey. I made them with the full 1/2 tsp of salt and in the end I could taste a hint of saltiness, which I thought was perfect. I like the bit of espresso flavour that comes through, but I think I'll try another batch without that just to compare. Will definitely make these again. I used Valrhona for both the bittersweet (Araguani) and the unsweetened chocolate. Didn't have walnuts, so I used hazelnuts. I also didn't have an 8" pan, so I had to use a 9" and they ended up a bit flat. I'll probably go buy one for this recipe.

I'm going by memory here (which isn't reliable), but I thought Greweling has the cream and the chocolate both at about 30°... no? I've only done this method once, but I thought they were both the same temperature.

Thanks for the advice, both of you! I just ordered some flavourings and I'm pretty sure one of them was cinnamon. I can't remember whether it's an extract or an oil though.

I finally got around to taking a photo of these. As I said upthread, the marshmallows set up too quickly and ended up all lumpy, so you can see that there's crazy variation in the thickness of the two layers. The instructions in the recipe said to use 2 sets of 1/4" rulers, but if you look at the picture in the book the marshmallow layer appears quite a bit thicker than the ganache. I think next time I make these I'll make a full batch of the marshmallow (since a half batch was so difficult to work with), spread it using 3/8" rulers, and then top that with 1/4" of ganache. Overall I really like these. I need to find a better way to add the cinnamon so it doesn't just sink to the bottom though. I'm not quite sure what happened, but the coating of chocolate seems too thick on the tops. It didn't seem any thicker than usual when I was working with it. Although I have to say, I always thought I'd done a pretty good job with my tempering before this. But when I bit into my first hot chocolate, it sounded like I'd bitten a carrot. Such a snap!

I do the same thing, but just with a large drinking glass. I do it when putting frosting into a piping bag too.

Oh that looks wonderful. I can never cut chocolates without knife marks either – how do other people do it? Amazon finally got this book back in stock so I've ordered it and will hopefully get it in a couple weeks. Whee!

[Moderator note: This is part of an extended topic that became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it into shorter segments; the preceding part of this discussion is here: “Baking: From My Home to Yours” (Part 2)] Hee, I'm such an idiot sometimes. I made the chocolate muffins this morning, but when I mixed the wet ingredients in with the dry, it seemed really dry. It seemed more like cookie dough than muffin batter – and I've made this recipe several times before and it always turned out perfectly. I mentally went through all the ingredients again and was sure I hadn't mis-measured something... but just as I got them in the oven and started washing up, I realized that instead of the 1/3 cup of cocoa powder, it was my 1/2 cup measuring cup that was all cocoa-y. Whoops. They're almost black they're so dark. Reeeeeallly pronounced cocoa flavour too. Heh.