RuthWells
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Posts posted by RuthWells
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No pics, but this week I made cinnamon tuile cups with a scoop of lemon mousse, topped with fresh blueberries & rasberries. Light and refreshing.
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.
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What does fondant taste like? Is it really hard to work with?
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.
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No pics, but this week I made cinnamon tuile cups with a scoop of lemon mousse, topped with fresh blueberries & rasberries. Light and refreshing.
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A firm white chocolate ganache is also an option....
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.
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What would be the next best option for frosting and decorating a wedding cake besides buttercream. The bride really hates buttercream... I was thinking about using stabilized whipped cream but was afraid that it might be too difficult to use since it sets up quickly.
I've heard of adding whipped cream stabilizer or merigue powder to help stabilize whipped cream, does any of those work? And if so, does it affect the taste, and does it hold up at room temp?
The wedding will be indoor, so it would be rather cool...
Any input will be appreciated!
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.
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I tried making a jaconde cake for the first time, and it went relatively well. This has a jaconde base and border, a crunchy white chocolate layer on the bottom, white chocolate/Grand Marnier mousse in the middle, and passionfruit gelee on top. BTW, I'm not infatuated with white chocolate -- I was given several pounds of it as a gift and have been looking for ways to use it.
Relatively well?! That thing is smokin'!
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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.
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Speaking from the bride's point of view (as I'm not a baker), there's no way in heck I'd ask a non-local to make my cake: there's just too much that can go wrong. You could get sick, the cakes could be lost, etc.
At the very limit I'd consider having the cake made locally in a bakery with sufficient resources for you to work there (or at the reception hall) and decorate it.
Does she (the bride) know how much work this is?
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.
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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.
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I've been doing a bunch of bite-sized desserts using my little tart pans. Actually I don't know if they are supposed to be tart pans or petite brioche pans, but they work fine as tart pans regardless.
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?
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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?
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I used orange electrical tape in school, but it was not allowed at Bellagio (health code violation
), so we used an engraver. In my new job the tape is OK, so now I've go both.New job? Do tell!
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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!
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That looks lovely!
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I'm leaning towards filling it with a mixture of strawberries and cream and topping with the pink tinted buttercream and strawberries.
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.
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I want to do a southern style pecan dacqoise and was wondering if anyone has ever used brown sugar instead of white to have more of a praline flavor. Will this work? I have made brown sugar angel food cakes and marshmallows, but never anything that needed to dry out.
Any tips or advice?
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?
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Those are adorable! Thanks for reporting back on the project.
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I have done a lemon-basil in white chocolate truffle before.
When I use the juice of a lemon, I use a peeler first to take the strips of rind off, then dry them and keep them to grind in my sumeet grinder. I add a bit of sugar and lemon oil and keep in a bottle to use in cookies etc (my imitation of the Durkees lemon rind that you can't get anymore).
So for my truffles I took 3 of these big strips of dried rind, 1/4 cup shredded basil and steeped in 150 grams hot cream. I strained them out, added the reheated cream to 380 grams melted white chocolate, added 6 drops lemon oil and when cool 25 grams room temperature butter.
I dipped them in tempered bittersweet chocolate, then rolled in cocoa mixed with sugar and lemon rind.
As I recall they were very tasty, an almost minty flavour.
Yum -- I can taste them in my mind's eye.......
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After a few days in the fridge, I notice my IMBC seems to lose it's flavor and tastes more like butter. Has anyone else had this same experiance?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The point I wanted to make is that in either case, NEVER scrape the saucepan. You will inevitably get chunky crystallized sugar bits around the maniscus of the sugar syrup clinging to the pans sides.... don't scrape that down... don't touch it and don't let it get into your buttercream. Otherwise all you'll end up with is crunchy sugar bits in the buttercream, which ain't so good.....
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......
The second point I wanted to make is that in Ruth's photo of "stiff peaks" on the egg whites....forgive me if I'm wrong Ruth but that to me looks like "firm peaks," not stiff. The difference between firm and stiff isn't visual, because both appear the same, but textural. "Stiff peaks" make the mixer work pretty hard, and show up about 4 or 5 minutes after what looks like "firm peaks." In either case, the peaks will hold their shape when you stop the mixer, but "firm peaks" are much more solid. This buttercream still works beautifully and tastes the same whether you take the whites to the firm peak stage or just to the stiff peak stage, but mixing them another 4 or 5 minutes further to get a solid mass of egg whites first does make the rest of the process a little easier, (ie: incorporating the butter) and it also helps keep the final buttercream from deflating or weeping over time.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!
Wedding cake photo
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Lovely job!! Color me impressed.