RuthWells

Lovely job!! Color me impressed.

Blueberries! I can't wait to start using them with a vengeance in desserts and baked goods. They are a seasonal treat I look forward to all year long. Your dessert sounds delicious. ← The cninamon in the tuiles was a nice complement to the blueberries.

Fondant takes some getting used to, both from a taste perspective and in working with it. I would not attempt to cover a whole cake in fondant my first time out for a special occasion, but you should be okay with using fondant appliques to create your stripes. So, I vote for white buttercream over the entire cake and red fondant stripes on top of the buttercream. Fondant doesn't taste too bad, as long as you don't use Wilton brand. For the logo on top: if you have any piping skills at all, I suggest a frozen buttercream transfer, or a royal icing plaque. Same basic technique for both: slide a reversed, to-scale copy of the logo under a sheet of parchment (or waxed paper) on a sheet pan. Following your guide, pipe the logo, outlining first in chocolate or some other dark color. Then fill in the areas in the appropriate colors, being sure not to leave any gaps. If you use buttercream, slip the sheet panp into the freezer and let the buttercream freeze hard. If using royal, let the plaque dry on the pan for at least 24 hours. (It would probably be smart to make 2-3 of the logo to allow for breakage.) When you're ready to put the plaque on the cake, gently reverse the logo onto the cake and peel off the parchment.

No pics, but this week I made cinnamon tuile cups with a scoop of lemon mousse, topped with fresh blueberries & rasberries. Light and refreshing.

Oh, that's a great idea. You can easily pipe decorations in royal over ganache. Here's another idea -- what about the trend in wedding cakes to surround the tiers with piroutte cookies, or similar? You'd need a crumb coat of some kind, but perhaps could use much less icing than usual.

Are we talking the American 10x-sugar+butter buttercream, or a French or Italian buttercream? Has the bride tasted a "true" buttercream, one made with a cooked sugar syrup? I don't think stablized whipped cream would set up too quickly, but hopefully more experienced voices than mine will chime in. Fondant certainly is popular for wedding cakes, but if you've not worked with it before, I save learning fondant for a less ambitious project.

Relatively well?! That thing is smokin'!

I am new to the world of bread, and while I can understand some of the pique at RLB's tone, I have found her Bread Bible to be a wonderful tool for a beginner. The early section on technique is priceless, and I have had great success with her basic hearth bread and ciabatta. As the only in-depth bread book on my shelf, I have found it to be very user-friendly.

The bride is my sister in law! I was recruited for the project by me brother in law after a fine dinner with the family and several bottles of wine I am a pastry chef so the whole making of the cake doesn't faze me, just the shipping of the cake. It is a gift from me to her, considering I would normally charge about 1200 dollars, without shipping, I think it is a nice gift. ← I think this is a fabulous gift, and that you're very very brave! I have no advice, just good wishes that you pull it off.

You could also make the crepes yourself and freeze them in advance. Pastry cream takes hardly any time at all to make, maybe 10 minutes, so I don't see the benefit of buying a pre-made product. It's also easier to work with freshly made pastry cream. ← I suppose I could always make my own pastry cream and freeze that for a rainy day. Any suggestions on the best way to store pastry cream in the freezer or will that ruin the final texture? Thanks ← I often store pastry cream in the freezer (airtight container, with plastic wrap placed directly on the surface of the cream), but it does tend to thin out a bit upon thawing. Luckily, a quick reheating on the stovetop will thicken it back up.

Absolutely stunning. I'd love to hear about your technique for lining the tins with your pastry dough. I did a bunch of tartlets from Sweet Miniatures a few weeks ago and was quickly reminded of how tedious and time-consuming it is to press the dough into each little tin. How did you get such consistent results, and did it take hours?

Are you tasting it cold, or when it has returned to room temp? I've never had this problem when the buttercream is back to room temp. ← Ruth, I didn't mean to disappear on you! I caught a horrible cold. Anyway, I was adding only half of the flavor like you were when I noticed the loss of flavor. The last time I made it, I added the full 3 oz and it seems to be holding the flavor well. So when you only add half, yours doesn't seem to change after a few days? ← Strange. I only ever use about 1.5 ounces of flavor, as the buttercream tends to separate on me when I add more, and I never have a problem with flavor fading. I wonder what everyone else's experiences have been?

New job? Do tell! ← We opened Restaurant Guy Savoy in Caesars Palace on Wednesday. ← Congrats!

New job? Do tell!

Last night one son wanted lemon squares and one wanted mixed-berry shortcakes. To try to please everyone, I made shortcake biscuits and served them split and filled with fresh lemon curd and lightly mascerated berries. It would have been even nicer with a dollop of whipped cream, but nobody complained!

That looks lovely!

You can fold 1/4 - 1/3 cup of strawberry puree into about 4 cups of buttercream for a lovely, pale pink, strawberry frosting. If the pink is too pale, you could bump it up with some food coloring.

Hmmm... Emily Lucchetti has a brown sugar crisp meringue recipe in A Passion for Desserts, so I imagine it's doable. Might take a little more drying time in the oven than with white sugar?

Those are adorable! Thanks for reporting back on the project.

Yum -- I can taste them in my mind's eye.......

Are you tasting it cold, or when it has returned to room temp? I've never had this problem when the buttercream is back to room temp.

As a certified Bundt pan addict, I could never limit myself to just one. That being said, the rose pan is a very classic, lovely shape while still being a bit more modern than the original Bundt. I love it.

Sounds like you had great results. I thought of this thread a few nights ago, when I went directly from zesting a lemon to watering my basil plant, and couldn't resist pinching off a leaf to snif. The combo of lemon and basil was really heady. The flavors are probably too delicate for a bittersweet chocolate truffle, but maybe in a white chocolate confection of some type?.... I have no time to experiment myself, so I'm throwing the idea out there to see if it grabs anyone's interest.

The recipe will yield enough to cover a 2-layer, 9" cake. And that's allowing for several spoonfuls for, um, quality-control along the way. ← Thanks Patrick. And the quality-control part is very important. I taste everything that goes in my oven before it goes in side. ← LOL, what Patrick said. If you're scoping out tupperwear containers for storage, 4 cups is just about perfect -- provided you do your due diligence for quality control.

EXCELLENT point, Sugarella! Besides, what you really want to do is leave the clinging syrup in the pot so that you can go back when it's cooled a bit and pull it off with your fingers to play with and eat it...... Interesting note. I guess I don't have a terribly finely tuned sense of firm v. stiff peaks, but will say that I've never ever had a problem with this buttercream weeping or deflating... for what it's worth. I often omit the cream of tartar in this recipe, so tend to be a little hyper-alert to potential overbeating of the whites. This would be interesting to experiment with!