Mette

If you include some not-quite-so-ripe blackberries in with the ripe ones, you will be able to make blackberry preserves without pectin. Under-ripe blackberries have a substantial amount of natural pectin and the jam sets up quite nicely. I usually include about 10 % unripe berries, and add a little lemon juice. Eileen ← When I make blackberry jam, I ususally add 2-4 half lemons (organic, non-surface treated) to the pan, depending on batch size. They help the setting and add a bit of sharpness that blackberries sometimes lack. /Mette p.s. 4 kg.s of blackberries in the freezer, waiting to be jammed

Has anyone done the course 'Starting with chocolate' offered by Callebaut Belgium? I am a reasonably accomplished amateur but would like to expand my skills. I've done a course in Manchester, UK offered by Vantage House. I'm eager to do another course but they are reasonably hard to come by in Denmark and my budget and time is llimited. Any recommendations are welcome. I had a look at the Valrhona courses but they are very pricy (and some of them in french...). Thanks

I wouldn't normally praise the EU (European Union) but at least they've got relatively good chocolate rules - the chocolate directive states that a max. of 5% of the cocoa butter in chocolate can be replaced by other fats, if the substitution is clearly labelled - in effect this means that very few chocolate manufatureres in the EU does any substitution at all. The directive can be read here. Of course a no substitution rule would be much better, but the labelling rules are very efficient at dampening the desire to substitute. Cadbury's in England lobbied heavily for a higher ratio of substitution, but were overruled. Think about this next time you eat a Cream Egg

You evil, evil, EVIL people - Now I'll have to buy yet another book One big selling point is the metric - it is always a big showstopper to have to convert to metric before getting stuck into a recipe - and it looks like a very cool book!

I've been buying directly from Chocolate World. They manufacture a lot of the moulds you see from other vendors. They are in Belgium, and their prices and shipping for Europe is quite reasonable (Just a chirp form this side of the Atlantic)

Everybody - it is all - as always - fabulous!!! I've had very little time recently to do anything chocolate, but when the frog moulds arrived, I had to get up to a little someting. I made fruit-and-nut frogs (to please my husband, who loves Cadbury's fruit and nut bar) and some tiny solid ones. The colours are green cocoa butter and white choc dyed green. Some of them developed a nasty frog skin desease I've also recieved my copy of Making Artisan Chocolates, and then, by some weird coincidence, found an ancient bottle of raspberry balsamico in the cupboard. Inspired by the raspberry-wasabi recipe and the strawberry-balsamico recipe in the book, I made a fusion version, added a bit of extra balsamico for texture and whipped up some shells. The shells have a swirl of red. The filling is very tasty, quite fresh and raspberry with someting unidentifyable at the end (for the uninitiated). This recipe is a keeper if I can find more raspberry balsamico

Those frogs are excellent - my very own frog mold arrived today (+ a mini frog mold because I couldn't resist) and I can't wait to try and replicate your mottled frogs - the kids are very eager to help. Are you using coloured cocoabutter or dyed white choc?

Andrew, I've just ordered your book. For us humble european amateurs it is a pleasure to discover books that do the measurements in grammes - looking forward to seeing what surprises the book holds - oh, and welcome Incidently, I had ignored this thread for a while as pectin is not readily available in Denmark, although I have been wanting to try making pate de fruit for a while

Thanks John, you have solved one of the magnetic mold mysteries for me! I've had problems with leaking of chocolate, due to the tapping to get the bubbles out. This makes for some quite spacy looking chocolates. The painting in of the initial coat of chocolate solves this problem beautifully. Excellent - thanks again

I did a lemon batch a while back (see this post for substitutions). They were excellent. I think grapefruit would work really well, too. Never got round to orange The acid has not been a problem have fun

Kerry, that looks brilliant. I have no idea what that particular type of tea is like, but it all sounds so good. A quick question - did the pear infused cream taste of pear at all? or did you make up for this by adding the poire Williams? Great job

Messing with the holidays, eh? I love fruitcake - traditional, english fruit cake - and I am looking forward to seeing what can possibly be done to improve on it... Good luck Incidently, what is hard sauce? We have brandy butter with christmas pudding, is there any resemblence? (The marrying an englishman has already messed with the holidays around these parts....)

Absolutely brilliant - the whauw factor of the caviar is massive! Please, may I taste

When I was in London, I had some outstanding chocolates from l'Artisan du Chocolat, one of which was a sesame praline ganache. I thought I'd try and mimic it and here's the result The flavour is quite subtle and nutty, and if there were no sesame seeds on top, it would be hard to guess the flavour although you'd definitely know it was flavoured - an 'I can't put my finger on it'-vibe. But they are very nice, if I may say so myself. p.s. Very nice frog, Kerry

Robert, what a cool site - it must have been a lot of work. I am but a lowly chocolate amateur, but do enjoy the whole thing immensely. I've always loved making sweets - when I was little, I used to spend my allowance on ingredients to make cakes and desserts. Strange that I should end up working with computers I got into serious chocolate making about 5 years ago when I won th consolation prize in a truffle competition in a local paper - my truffle was excellent, but the choclate covering it was not tempered (didn't know you had to ). The prize was an evening of learning with a local chocolatier, and the rest is, as they say, history. I started buying equipment and experimenting, and it is now a much appreciated hobby amongst friends, family and work colleagues. I went on a two day course in Manchester, UK, through Vantage House which was an excellent course, and well worth the expense. And yes, I am living in Copenhagen, which has a great climet for chocolate making, but very little in way of high quality and inventive chocolate

Thanks a lot for the advice. I guess I'll just have to open it, cut it into manageable bits and wrap them carefully. The cellar, where I store my choc-stuff is app. 16 c. so I'll probably be all right. And it is better to get on with using the stuff and possibly having to chuck some of it than not to use it at all for fear of it going off

If you are after the chocolate/bonbon/truffle making, you want to have a look at his other book Fine chocolates - great experiences, which is a fab book

I have laid my hands on a 5 kg. slab of gianduja. There's no way I can use this up fast, so I was wondering if anybody had any experience with freezing the stuff to up the shelf life. What are the effects on the texture? Thanks

It's looking very promising - tea flavours are quite underrated. The idea of making choux with flavoured water (not just tea) opens up a world of possibilities

It is looking very interesting - Can't wait to see the result! The idea of smoked friut is appealing - how about smoking fresh walnuts?

Finally some time to follow up on the trip to London. First of all, thanks for all the grat recommendations - Next year, my husband will have to give me week instead of a weekend. Lucy - what a great sister to have! Anyway, the trip turned out to be a bit of a sugar rush (and shoppipng, but that is a different story). I stopped in to as many chocolate places as I could muster (but not as many as I would have liked), but one has to take into accout that one's travelling companion may not be quite so obsessed with chocolate and will want curry and gastroPubs as well Straight for the best experience of the lot: L'Artisan du Chocolat. Hands down the best chocolate I've had: extremely tasty, smooth, interesting and well balanced - try them! Bought a full selection of the couture selection, and there were some real winners: the sechuan pepper, sesame praline, lemon/thyme and dried lime were wonderful. They were all interesting and well worth eating! Stopped in at Maison du Chocolat, which was a bit of a dissapointment. Not particularly interesting chocolates. Some of them had a bit of a waxy taste, as if they'd stored wrong (maybe on the jurney across the channel...). The bark was nice though. Didn't buy anythig at Prestat and Rococo. Had a couple of samples at Rococo. They both seem to go for the looks rather than the taste, and at Prestat a lot of the chocolates had some bloom on them - not a good sign. The chocolate department at Fortnum & Mason was remarkable, a very wide selection of bars - but again, some had bloom or the wrappers were greasy from storage. Bought a small selection of the chocolates, and they were nice but nothing I couldn't get pretty much anywhere - including in the chocolate desert of Copenhagen. F&M is a fun place to visit, though, and always makes me think of an anthropology anecdote, where a young anthropologist (a long time ago) going on a fieldwork in Africa is told to bring a large F&M hamper - good advice for all trips, I should think. Chocolate wise l'Artisan du Chocolat is a clear winner!!! - sorry to miss Marcolini, Melt and Paul Young - oh well. Next time!! I'd be interested in tasting the Melt water based ganaches. We did have afternoon tea in Laduree in Harrods - mostly for the experience, I would not normally go to Harrods, as it is a bit of a nightmare of tourists in the food hall - there's now Krispy kreme Donut there . The tea was......overwhelming. We went as a small group and shared the cake selection which ment 6 kinds of cakes, each, after having sandwiches, brioche and croissants. The cake selection had: some kind of dense chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, a plaisir Sucree (which I will have to try and make from the Pierre Herme book), A very nice tart with passion fruit curd and fresh raspberries (great combination), raspberry macaroons sandwhiched with rose & lychee pastry cream, a pistachio and sour cherry mousse cake, and finally a pistachio Religieuse, which is choux pastry filled with pistachio pastry cream. At this point we did have leave unfinished cake on the plates, but what a cake rush. It was a fun experience. I meant to buy some of the filled macaroons to take back to the hotel, but after the tea, I thought I'd never want to eat another cake ever again. The tea room is worth a visit - you can chooses whether tou want to sit on the balcony or in the tea-room which is all black and gold: very decadent. There wasn't enough actual tea to wash down all the goodies, but otherwise a fun experince if your arteries can handle the clogging. All in all, it was a great trip, and I can only recommend a chocolate focused weekend in london (next time I'll have to go with someone as choc-nuts as my self) Thanks again for the great recommendations!!! p.s. The camera was out of order while in London, so no pics - sorry

What a great result!!! Not at all what I'd expected, but then again, that's why you were a great choice for challengee. My husband (yes, I am a woman) was in hysterics when I told him of the vegemite/parmesan cheesecake - he is english and lives marmite. Has trouble believing that the stuff is good for anything other than spreading thinly on toast. I may just have to try it - will the recipe make it to recipeGullet. What do wild kiwis tast like? Never heard of them, but then again, I don't exactly live in the kiwi growing regions of the world. Anyway - excellent and highly unexpected result - hope the Aussies make it tonight!

Sorry for dropping this challenge on you and then dissapearing out of sight Unfortunately, I've had some family issues to deal with the past week, hence the silence. Too bad about the australians, but glead to hear that it's going to happen after all. The koncep sound very exciting, and I hope we're still going to see som cuisine this weekend. Looking forward to it /Mette

The recipes are now in the recipeGullet: Recipes Thank you all for the replies and kind words - it has been quite a buzz, I will get back tomorrow with more pics and misc info. Now it's bedtime - my husband is 40 today and deserves better than a wife surgically attached to the computer

Deconstructed Beer Dessert (eG Pastry & Baking Challenge #3) Serves 6 as Dessert. A smoked malt creme brulee, a cascade 'not-quite-beer', which is a cold citrus soup flavoured with cascade hops topped with a grapefruit/lime/hop sorbet, and finally 'the Brewpub bar', a chocolate bar with malted shortbread, chocolate malt ganache and beer marshmallow in milk chocolate. The dessert uses a few special ingredients - Cascade Hops, Chocolate Malt, Münchener Malt, Crystal Malt and Rauchmalt. These should be available from home brewing shops, or try your local micro brewery. Chocolate Malt Syrup 150 g Münchener Malt 120 g Crystal Malt 30 g Chocolate Malt 500 ml Water Rauchmalt Syrup 100 g Rauchmalt 100 g Münchener Malt 375 ml Water Malt Flour Crystal Malt Malt Shortbread 2 T Icing sugar 2 T Sugar 140 g Salted butter 125 g Flour 50 g Malt flour Chocolate Malt ganache 100 g Whipping cream 250 g 70% chocolate 25 g Chocolate malt syrup Beer Marshmallows 8 sheets gelatine 35 ml Chocolate malt syrup 35 ml Hop water 45 ml Water 1 T Cascade hops 285 g sugar 80 ml light corn syrup salt 2 tsp Pulverized cascade hops (pulverized in the coffee mill) Chocolate bars Malt shortbread Chocolate Malt ganache Beer marshmallow Chocolate for enrobing Citrus Fruit Soup 150 ml Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice 100 ml Freshly squeezed orange juice 25 ml Freshly squeezed lime juice 100 ml Freshly squeezed mandarin orange juice 100 ml Freshly squeezed lemon juice 150 g sugar 1 tsp Finely ground cascade hops 15 g Potato starch 25 ml water Grapefruit-lime-hop sorbet 200 g sugar 200 ml water 1 T Cascade hops 150 ml Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice 50 ml Freshly squeezed lime juice 1 Egg white 1 tsp finely ground Cascade hops Rauchmalt Creme Brulée 250 ml whipping cream 150 ml full cream milk 6 egg yolks 90 g Rauchmalt syrup Demerera sugar for caramelizing Chocolate Malt Syrup Crush the malts by whizzing them in a coffee grinder or bashing them with a hammer. Mix malts and water in a pan and heat to 65-70 degrees C. (Do not go above 70 to avoid destroying the enzymes). Wrap the pan up in a couple of towels and mash for 30 mins. Place a sieve over another pan and line it with cheesecloth. Pour the mash into the sieve and douse with an additional 2-3 deciliters of water at 70 degrees C. When all the liquid has dripped through, reduce the liquid untill you have app. 1 dl. left. It should be syrupy. Cool. Rauchmalt Syrup Method as above Malt Flour Mill an appropriate amount of Crystal Malt on the fine setting on a flour mill. Sieve through a fine sieve several times to remove as many of the husks as possible. Malt Shortbread<br> Preheat the oven to 160 degrees c. Place the sugars in a food processor with the knife attachment. Cube the cold butter, add and process till fairly homogenoug. All flour and malt flour and pulse till it clumps. Gather the dough lightly with floured hands. Press into a silicone paper lined tin to a thickness of app. 1 cm. (the dough will not spread much). Prick thoroughly with a fork and bake in the middle of the oven ca. 30 mins. Mark into fingers with a sharp knife while hot and let cool in tin. Break into finger when cold. Store in airtight tin. Chocolate Malt Ganache Chop chocolate. Heat cream to boiling. Pour cream over chocolate and stir untill the chocolate is melted and the mass homogenous. Add syrup and stir lightly. Cool. Beer Marshmallows Make hop water: steep 1 tbsp hops in 100 ml. water (20 ml. cold and 80 ml. boiling) for 5-10 minutes. Strain. Proceed as the now legendary marshmallow recipe, using hop water to dissolve the gelatine and malt syrup for flavouring. Add the pulverized hops while whipping. For the chocolate bars Pipe a layer of the ganache onto the shortbread fingers. When set, prepare the marshmallow and pipe marshmallow on top of the ganache. Let set for 8-12 hours and enrobe in tempered chocolate (milk or dark) Not-quite-beer Fruit soup Sieve the juices to remove bits. Bring to a boil with the sugar and turn off the heat. Mix potato starch and water and add in a thin stream while stirring -DO NOT BOIL (the starch will turn to rubber). Keep stirring for a little while and stir in the pulverized hops. Pour into 4 glasses and let cool in the fridge. Sorbet Make a simple syrup of water and sugar. When it is off the stove, add the hops and steep for 10 minutes. Strain and cool. Mix with fruit juices and hops. Whip the egg white to soft peaks and add to the liquid. Process in ice cream maker, but leave soft. Spoon over the cold soup and serve immediately. Creme Brulée Bring milk and cream to the boil. Mix egg yolks and syrup in a bowl. Pour hot milk/cream over egg mix while stirring. Pour back in pan and heat gently till it starts getting thick. Sieve. Pour into 6 low molds and bake in water bath in 150 degree C. oven for app. 20 mins. Cool and caramelize. Keywords: Dessert, Ice Cream, Intermediate, Plated Dessert, Chocolate, Ice Cream Maker, Cookie ( RG1822 )