Sugarella

Wow, Wegmans is a grocery chain, right? They're pretty generous with the fruit on those tarts, huh? (Not that I'm complaining....it's just so unexpected to see.)

Immaturity and lack of intelligence shows far greater in name calling than it does in giving misinformation. Mind your manners, kids. As for pastry schools, if money is the issue I recommend getting into whatever school you can that's reasonably priced and is local, after having done your homework on the school of course. Believe me, you'll spend at least the tuition doing your own trial and error at home with retail priced ingredients. School, in the long run, is cheaper and it takes a lot less time to learn it all right the first time. I wish I went.

That recipe has a lot of liquids in it.... a liquidy batter can cause a sinking cake when exposed to temperature extremes, like moving from a hot oven to a cool room, or if it gets bumped around while still hot. Remember, batter expands with heat and is susceptible to all kinds of trouble while still in its expanded state. (I prefer liquidy batters, myself....makes for moister cakes when done right.) I don't think this is everyone's problem with it, however....it may just be that the cakes are deflating a bit on cooling and it's being mistaken for sinking. I'm not sure about the advice to "Cool cakes in pans on racks 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto 9-inch cardboard rounds or removable tart pan bottoms; cool cakes completely on racks. " For denser cakes this is fine but handling that cake while still hot can cause deflating, so it's better to just leave this cake in its pan, right side up, until almost cool. Make sure you line the sides of the pan with parchment so you can get the cooled cake out. To help wth deflating though, I'd recommend you replace the 2 teaspoons baking soda in the recipe with 1 tsp. baking soda + 1 tsp. baking powder. I also think you should seperate the eggs and whip the whites to firm peaks seperately, then FOLD (not STIR) those in at the very end.

Oh wow Michael....thanks for sharing. You mentioned the singles are $4 as an introductory price..... would you mind sharing whereabouts you're located, and how much you hope to increase the price to eventually? And is this an already established patisserie or a new location without a real customer base yet? ... And I'm also wondering how you're keeping the cut edges of cakes from drying....I can't see if there is acetate wrapped around those or not. Sorry for all the questions. Again, great work. I just LOVE when we get these kind of pics.

Kim there is no liquid in this cake! Are you sure there isn't anything else scribbled on that recipe card? I think the flour is exactly right, given the amounts for other ingredients. And I think this will need a lot of liquid, given the large amounts of dried applies and raisins and knowing how much they'll absorb the liquid from the batter during baking. And I suspect that baking soda was to be mixed with some liquid in order to be able to beat it into the apples! (unfortunately, I'm no expert on mixing soda with liquids and NOT making a disaster.... it's easier to whip the egg whites seperately and fold them in at the end, for me, anyways) I wouldn't cream the butter and sugar together, either....I'd melt the butter and add it as part of the liquid. WARNING: THIS IS OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, but I suggest you include: 1 cup unsweetened applesauce 1.5 cups unsweetened apple juice (although I suspect it will take more) 2 tsp. vanilla I'd play with this recipe with you but I've got an awful lot of other baking to do this month.... Nina, what a great gift you got for your family. Treat that book like it's priceless! Sorry, I can't help with yours except to say you're right about the sugar syrup temp, and I suspect "enough water to cover" for the sugar should be approximately half, or in this case 1 cup.

I read your blog entry and found this bit interesting...... I'm curious about water being left in the plastic bag: I would expect the crust should absorb all of it. So to that end, I'm wondering if you're freezing these loaves in the plastic, or just freezing them unwrapped, then wrapping for thawing?

I've had several crappy fridges living in crappy apartments over the years. Usually it's a fan/circulation issue that can't readily be fixed by yourself, so you just need to find the warm and cold spots in the fridge and places foods in different areas to keep them fresh. If the carrots and greens are wilting it means the vegetable drawer area is too warm, or perhaps even has a blast of warm air that occasionally circulates through there. In all likelihood, the top of the fridge is coldest, getting warmer as you go down, and the middle of the fridge is probably closest to the temp on your thermostat. Try keeping meats, cheese and other dairy right at the top, eggs, veggies and leftovers in the middle, and leave the bottom drawers for things that aren't so temperature sensitive, like beverages and condiments, hardy root vegetables, etc. Edited to add: What kind of fridge is it? Side by side or freezer on top inside, or seperate freezer on top outside? Altering the freezer temp can also help....depending.....

Hi Pam, I hope I have time to get his question in here before the blog is locked..... should've thought of it earlier. You mentioned that you have all these orders for pickup..... I was wondering if they're all prepaid, or do people just pay when they pick up their orders? Do a certain percentage of people forget and you have all this leftover unsold food? Thanks again for blogging....

Pam, I just wanted to chime in and add my thanks and praise. I just read through your last one also and loved it! I've learned so much, and I'm enjoying all the wonderful food. How on earth did you move your whole kitchen!? Was there much down time when you did it .... I assume you had to have the business closed for a while?

I read Jason Perlow's link to his blog re: sucrose versus fructose since 1985, and that kfP coke is just the original formula. My question is, how does the kfP Coke differ from "Coke Classic"?

Yes, purples fade to blue, just like Sweetside said. I haven't tried the chefmaster so I don't know if it'll fade or not, but for icing you can add some milk and the lactic acid will keep the colour from fading, provided you keep it out of sunlight and away from fluorescent lights. It'd be pretty tough to mix milk into fondant though. Do you have time before this cake is due to order an airbrush? The airbrush colours don't fade, and it's also much quicker to airbrush a whole cake than to mix up all that fondant to be the right shade. I airbrush everything now....no mixing, no stained hands, no blue teeth for wedding guests....

Thanks for posting this..... your results are awesome! But I, too, need help following what you're doing. Would you mind adding a caption to each photo letting us know the steps you took? Thanks again......

Oh I disagree wholeheartedly with this.... people seeing and eating your cake is your biggest advertising. If the cake sucks, it means you as businessperson suck. Charging heftily for a substandard product is a really good way to run yourself out of business real quick. Ah, but NO is the most powerful word in business Fatguy!! I don't think you should tell them it'll cost too much because they've probably made it themselves and know exactly what it costs..... I think you should just be honest and say it won't hold up as a weddng cake. Simple. You know, so many people subscribe to the notion that the customer is always right, and it's so untrue. Customers do not know more about the products or services they hire professionals for, so we pros need to stop pandering to this....we're the professionals here, we know better.

These people think 1 container frozen whipped topping, thawed is cake icing. "Nuff said. I think it's nice of you to try out this cake as an experiment, but you need to consider what these people are telling you when they approach you with a recipe. You're a baker/pastry chef and they're emailing you a recipe to use without considering your skill or experience or knowledge. That makes me think they really don't put much value on your abilities to begin with, and your entire time spent dealing with them is going to reflect that. It's your business, so you're in charge. I can tell by the ingredients list this cake recipe is trouble and it won't have a proper crumb..... I think you should just advise them it's not up to your standards and recommend a good recipe of your own.

Edible gold You want to look for Dauvet Powder Gold - Edible Gold Powder or any of their edible leaf or flake golds.... they have a lot of inedible products as well so make sure you're getting the right stuff. As for edible platinum, no.... I doubt that'd be possible. Edited to fix the link.

I'm well aware a copyright exists from the moment a work is created, but it's pretty much useless unless registered, or at least documented with a third party witness in some way. I don't need a lesson on patents and copyright...I have 1 patent already and am working on making it international, and have 2 registered trademarks as well. (on a method/formula not a design) I have spent nearly 3 years getting the first patent and will likely spend another 2 on the next, and the entire thing will cost me about $40000 by the time I'm done, if I'm very lucky. I don't even make that much a year. I am a low income earner (hey - there's the "stupid" again) so that is an awfully big stretch for me to get all of this done without any financial backing or support. So excuse me if I don't think slapping some food on a plate and calling it intellectual property carries any weight.

Gullible means easily tricked or deceived, which I am of course not if I voluntarily do this. I think perhaps the word you were trying to call me, Fat Guy, was STUPID. I appreciate that the chefs in question here are innovators and are very excellent at what they're able to do. But we have 2 very major differences here between a chef's creation and another artist's creation, or a legally protected creation. The first is that the food was put on a plate; no copyright was applied for and no trademark or patent was filed, so one cannot claim the food on the plate as intellectual property if one has not gone through the steps or gone to the expense to make it so. The second problem is that culinary art does not deserve this protection because it does not carry the same weight as visual, performing or studio arts, because it is not a permanent art. Does an oil painting or a musical recording or a literary work have more value than a sidewalk chalk drawing? Of course it does, because the drawing will wash away with the rain, and the food on the plate, no matter how clever and innovative it may be, will eventually turn to shit.

freddurf is a Susie? I thought you were Fred! I don't use impression mats so this is a guess.... but I think it would work if the buttercream was chilled firm when you did it, although expect that would be rather tricky to imprint in hard butter. You could also try adding meringue powder to your IMBC (as part of your whipped whites) to make it crust.

I think it's only inappropriate to send food back when you're at someone's house. Seriously, what if it wasn't a dirty dish? (Although sending that back would not have guaranteed you anything better, in that case.) What if your chicken was still pink and oozing blood when it came to the table? Would you send it back? Of course you would, and that's not an insult to the person treating you either....they didn't cook it. I think the best thing to do is send food back but let everyone else start eating and just wait, continue eating the rolls, etc. I know if it's a kid's first treat it's hard for a parent to do, but I think the valuable lesson to them in it would be not accepting mediocre product or service or being a pushover in the interest of just being polite. And I don't think that'd be everyone's only memory of the day years down the road, either.

With all due respect Fat Guy, I think you're flogging a dead horse here. I agree with FFB, there's no such thing as culinary plagiarism. A chef invites a stagiere into their restaurant to tutor them, to mentor and inspire them to take their culinary knowledge to new heights, or rather, the chef's ideas of new heights, in exchange for free work. This is not an employer-employee relationship, this is an apprenticeship, and apprenticeship means you're supposed to model yourself after your mentor. The stage is expected to copy their work exactly during service night after night, is expected to model themselves after the chef's style when developing new ideas, and it is assinine to then not expect that stage to be influenced during the time they've put in. With your examples above, I think you're stretching. The terrine dish I'm sure I've seen elsewhere anyways, and the broad rice noodle dish is not even close. And how dare they consider using cotton candy (is that what that is?) if someone else has done it before!? So what if one restaurant looks similar to another? Maybe that's because that restaurant design works, the stage turned chef liked it, and also saw a similar restaurant design in dozens of other places he's visited. You know, in the wedding cake world we have cake designers, and we have cake decorators, who by far outnumber the designers. Those of us who do design original ideas for clients occasionally put photos of those original designs on our websites, and we understand that by doing so, by putting a picture of an original design on a website, we have essentially published it. And at any given time a future bride will peruse cake websites, will find the cake she wants, go to someone local to her, and pay that person to make an exact copy of the cake we designed. Do we get pissy that we were copied? No, we get flattered, and 99.9% of us will actually help the other decorator out with the design if they choose to contact us as well. I can't help but wonder if part of the issue here could have anything to do with the average levels of testosterone in haute cuisine chefs versus estrogen in cake designers.

If you're translating, count me in. Great motivation for me to buy a french language book.... I'll see if I can order one.

I think possibly you took too long adding all of the syrup, what with turning the mixer on and off again, and possibly by the end it was too cool to incorporate. I notice in picture #2 there seems to be some firmed up syrup stuck all around the sides of your bowl, which is a telltale sign that the syrup wasn't hot enough anymore to be incorporated into the mix, at least part of the time. I haven't noticed fred's observation about RLB's instructions.... from memory I think it says to pour the hot syrup in a slow steady stream with the mixer constantly running, but he may be right...I've been up for 38 hours now. That's how I do it anyways, pouring in while the mixer is going. As for that butter, just use it for something else. I'd smear it around the bowl first with a flexible rubber spatula to make sure there aren't any syrup crystals in it though, unless you don't mind crunchy butter. As for whipping the butter prior to adding it.... I think this is in the same category as using room temperature butter....to each his/her own. My power went out one night and I had to make several batches of buttercream by hand, and cold chunks of butter worked just fine.

What is that creamy white liquid in your bowl!?! Were the whites whipped to stiff peaks before you added the sugar syrup, and were you whipping the whole time you were adding it?

Yes, cool the cake completely, then chill in the fridge to help with wrapping so it doesn't smoosh; you want to wrap it while it's cold and firm. Use a high quality plastic wrap that's got a fair bit of stretch to it, otherwise just covering with regular wrap will allow air to get in and the freezer will affect it. Pull and stretch the plastic wrap around it to seal tight while wrapping, then put the wrapped cake inside a freezer bag that you've sucked all the air out of and seal it up. If you've got a foodsaver and can seal it airtight, that works very well also. For thawing, it's important to remove the cake from the freezer to the fridge without unwrapping it and let it thaw completely under refridgeration. The reason is that moisture esaping the cake during thawing will settle outside the plastic wrap then eventually evaporate, whereas thawing something unwrapped will cause that same moisture to settle on the cake itself, and you'll just end up with soggy cake. Those freezing and thawing tricks work for any food, not just cake. If the filling you'll be using will be ok in the freezer, you might want to torte and fill the cake, crumbcoat it, chill, then wrap in the plastic and freeze that way. It'll save you a lot of time the day of...... And as for the freezer....make sure you don't store the cake in there with fish or other things that have odors or it will absorb them. If you can, keep it in a dedicated freezer and move smelly things to another freezer if you have one. If you can't do that, put the whole wrapped cake inside a large rubbermaid or tupperware container, along with a little open baggie of baking soda to absorb smells, and seal it up. This is probably due to baking the cake at too high a temp too quickly. Try baking at 325, and make sure your oven is preheated.

In the same way that not chilling the dough will cause cookies to spread, so will not preheating the oven. That might be it.