RuthWells

Welcome, Staximo! Let us know what you start out with.

You can do a light, whipped chocolate ganache -- think chocolate whipped cream, all grown up. I have a few different recipes and will be happy to post proportions, if you like. You can also use standard poured ganache (or glaze) with no buttercream underneath. Or, rolled chocolate fondant, which tastes like tootsie rolls.

I'm not going to get to it until next week, myself -- this week just disappeared somehow.

Chilling the cupcakes down between flowers is a terrific idea -- d'oh! Good technique for cakes as well, I should think, when you're going for that over-stuffed look. On my list of things to try!

Fabulous demo, ChiantiG! I really appreciate your taking the time to post these -- nothing beats seeing new techniques in action.

Interesting. The egg white remains completely uncooked, I presume?

Miss Jane, those are GORGEOUS!!! Thanks for posting. I would love to hear a little about how you managed to pipe them without incurring crippling hand-cramps. Did you pipe the flowers directly onto the cupcakes, or did you pipe the flowers onto nails and transfer them? I aspire to such beautiful buttercream flowers, but have yet to achieve such splendor.

If you're trying to feed "multiple women" from one cookie, I'd suggest that you rethink and make a sheetcake instead. You can borrow the design idea on the website (they're pretty cute cookies!) and carve your sheetcake into the shape of a wedding dress, and decorate accordingly. Much easier to execute and serve, I think, than one large cookie.

Thursday would work for me, too. Too hot to be outside anyway! ← I may or may not be able to join in on Thursday, but I'll try! Ooh, I want to bring something to a big pool party on Saturday -- maybe the twice-baked brioche would fit the bill?

I'm sorry to hear about your kitty, Jennifer. It's nice that you got some support at work (especially after reading Wendy's horror story on another other thread). I loved reading about your new job and all that you're experiencing! I think I'll be a real pastry chef in my next life, but 'til then, can I live vicariously through you?

Thanks, Jennifer. Yup, that tail is quite tricky! I was quite proud to progress from 3 ridges to 4 by the last set.

Nice to have some recipes to compare. Being a croissant neophyte, only a few things from your experience jump out at me -- For comparison with the BwJ technique, after forming mine they rose for 3+ hours (and no refrigeration beforehand). I'm guessing that yours needed several more hours at room temp prior to baking. The BwJ recipe has you brush with egg wash immediately after forming, which probably makes more sense -- they're much less fragile before that final rise. Then, BwJ has you do a second egg wash after the final rise. I'm sure that the lovely golden brown crispy crust is thanks to that final egg wash.

Oops -- I think the picture I labelled as the first turn was actually the second. I've edited the thread accordingly.

Thanks so much for the feedback, Dorie. It must have been an amazing experience working on BwJ and getting to see all those wonderful bakers in action. That makes perfect sense to me, and I can even visualize it -- thanks for clarifying! If I'd had more confidence in my knowledge, that's probably what I would have done, but I really wanted to follow the recipe as closely as possible. This also makes perfect sense. I think I'll do this with half of the croissants from the second half of the dough -- I have a tendancy to eat more of these than I should!!

Hi, Rhea -- you are the same Rhea S from CooksTalk, yes? Glad to see a familiar face! Yes, this was my first time making croissants, and if I can do it, so can you. Go for it!

Thanks, and glad to act as enabler!

Croissant heaven this weekend: I spread the recipe over several days, letting the dough rest for 24 hours between each turn. I'm sure that this was a good thing. Here's the dough pre-butter packet, after its rest in the fridge: It's still wrapped in plastic wrap in this photo, and you can see that it expanded quite a bit. I should have wrapped it more loosely. Next, rolled out with the butter packet centered (more or less): As you can see, I didn't do a stellar job of shaping the butter and the dough initially, though it doesn't seem to have done any harm. The next step is the only one that confused me -- the recipe states that after centering the butter, you pull the top and bottom flaps over the butter, and then stretch the folds to the side to make a neat packet. I just couldn't picture that, and here's what I did do: I wasn't quite confident it was going to work out -- the first rolling looked like this: You can see that the butter is starting to break through in places, so I quick folded it and threw it back in the fridge for 24 hours. Here's the second fold -- still a bit rough. By the final ("book") fold, things had come together: Shaping the little monsters is where the real patience is needed. I wasn't able to roll half of my final dough "book" to the required size of 14" x 26" (the only time that happened throughout the recipe), so I settled for about 15" x 15" and started cutting out triangles. I kept the triange bases to 3" to make up for the lack of length, which may have been a misstep. The stretching of each triangle prior to rolling was the most nerve-racking step for me. It was a hot day, which I'm sure didn't help, but the butter kept breaking through, which caused me to lose my nerve and not stretch them as far as recommended. I kept half of the triangles in the fridge while rolling the first half, and the second half were much easier to manage -- so I suggest that anyone attempting this recipe add a 10-15 minute chill for the triangles prior to stretching and rolling. I have no pix of the stretching and rolling as I was freaking out just a bit! But here are the final rolled croissants, prior to the final rise: Those are half-sheets, for scale. You'll notice that I acheived 3-4 "ridges" per croissant, so I have a way to go to acheive the perfect 6!! Good thing I still have half of the dough in the freezer for practice. Here are the risen croissants" I found that any amount of curvature that I had managed to acheive while rolling was lost in the final rise -- the rising tends to flatten out the shaping. Note to self -- make rolls more curvy next time. Or make more curvy rolls. These were absolutely delicious -- crackley crisp outside, flaky-chewy-sweet inside. I brought a bunch to Virginia while visiting friends this weekend and they raved. Ten minutes in a 350* oven the day after baking restored them to almost-fresh-baked quality. I'll definitely be making these again.

That's great to here, Pastry Mama! Glad that it worked well for you!

Let me know what you think, Diva. Until I bought this book I was a complete devotee of RLB, to the exclusion of all others.

Hi Patrick, Glad you had a chance to try it -- thanks for the report. I agree, it is a sweet cake. I tend to instinctually short-measure my sugar, so I probably use less than the recipe calls for. Tis definitely sweet, though. It is a good use of leftover whites. I've been chasing the perfect macaroon with my extra whites; so far, no glory there.

Oh my -- looks like quite a place! Probably a bit much for our group, but I'll keep a note of it.

Did you try the Brioche? Bought a pan at Wms Sonoma and will endure the 99 degree kitchen heat in Chicago to give it a go with you. ← I don't have the right pans, but I could probably jump on a brioche wagon in a week or so......... (lots of compulsory baking projects on the schedule for this coming week).

In the absence of expert advice, I will probably freeze 1/2 of the croissants prior to baking and bake the other 1/2 right away. I'll report back on the success (or lack thereof) of the venture! I did the second fold last night; third fold tonight and shaping in the morning. I will be away for the rest of the weekend (during which time croissants will be consumed) so I won't be able to post pix and results until Sunday evening at the earliest. As for next projects, I've been drooling over the Alsatian Onion Tart and could probably get that done this week....

Brilliant -- thanks! I think my bosses would love this if we can manage to schedule it. Otherwise, the Newlin Grist Mill looks like a great option.

Freta's is a family institution for us (we're a Penn family)! It's been a looong time since I've spent time in U. City; glad to know she's still around.