[Dulce de Leche]

I was wondering if there was perhaps a faster way to make smaller quantities of dulce de leche from condensed milk. Could you perhaps just pour it into a saucepan and heat, while stirring occasionally, then continuosly stirring as it gets closer to the desired colour/consistency? Or does it burn/scald if you do it that way?

[Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)]

Made this gianduja gateaux for dessert at a friend's place tonight. Haven't cut into it yet but I can hardly wait  . Inside there's a shortbread base, apricot jam, chocolate mud cake, hazelnut cremeaux and chocolate creme chantilly. There was meant to be macaroons around the side but I made a mess of those because I was hurrying too much so I made shortbread discs to replace them.

Absolutely fabulous cake. That definetly going to get a lot of wows from the crowd. Was this a made up dessert or did you follow a recipe?

Thanks for sharing.

O

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Thanks for the compliment . It was mostly made-up. A friend of mine asked me to make a cake for him the day before so I sketched it up and wrote up the recipes. The glaze though is the one that can be found on recipegullet. I love that glaze.

[Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)]

Made this gianduja gateaux for dessert at a friend's place tonight. Haven't cut into it yet but I can hardly wait . Inside there's a shortbread base, apricot jam, chocolate mud cake, hazelnut cremeaux and chocolate creme chantilly. There was meant to be macaroons around the side but I made a mess of those because I was hurrying too much so I made shortbread discs to replace them.

[frosting problem!]

I don't know if you could cut down the acidity without adversely affecting the flavour. Perhaps try masking it with something else: lemon zest, grated chocolate, marzipan garnishes? Or you could try weakening the acidity by increasing the butter and sugar relative to the cream cheese (assuming that's where the cream cheese comes from). If you're going to up the butter and sugar you might have to change the method for the frosting:

If you have a lowish amount of butter you can melt it and add it to the beaten cream cheese then add the icing sugar. If you increase the butter it may be best to beat the softened butter with some of the icing sugar till light, add the cream cheese and then the remaning icing sugar.

The place I work normally adds a bit of citric acid to up the acidity of the frosting though so it could just be the brand of cream cheese?

[Creme Brulee Cookies?]

I think a tea store here had a tea flavour called creme brulee (or was it creme caramel?) that smelled like vanilla and caramel. How about replacing some of the sugar in a basic drop cookie recipe with pulverised caramel, using vanilla and perhaps incorporating milk powder or a little pastry cream into the mix? The texture would still be pretty different from a creme brulee though... .

[What's wrong with my cake?]

Some people might protest because it's less hygienic but try putting the egg/sugar/vanilla mixture (after being whipped) into a relatively wide bowl and folding the flour through by hand. That way you can feel if there's any lumps on the bottom or in the side. After the flour is incorporated, add a small amount of the egg/sugar/vanilla/flour mixture to the melted butter and mix that in first. That should solve the problem. As some extra insurance, you could add a tiny bit of baking powder to the cake flour too.

[Dump, Chiffon, Sponge?]

Pardon my asking, but did you chill the layers before cutting and use a serrated knife? Cakes that are warm or at room temperature are more difficult to handle and tend not to cut as cleanly as chilled or frozen cakes.

[The 'classics' of pastry]

Thanks everyone for your time and advice. At this point, time I'm a little worried about purchasing any more books because I was far less concerned in doing so in the past, some good books were gotten out of that (eg: The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg, The Chocolate Bible, by Christian Teubner, Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen, The Cake Bible by Rose L Berenbaum, The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard, The New International Confectioner...) and others were... a little more generic.

I wouldn't dare claim I've a mastery of the basics, but I've found that things that require learning through repetition (which technically is everything I guess ) are best left to learn on the job. We make and use large amounts of things such as creme patissiere, whipped cream, bavarians, sponges, butter cakes, pate choux (we get to pipe and fill 2500+ profiteroles a week ), buttercream, puff pastry, danish pastry and things like that so rather than use up time and ingredients to gain further experience in my own time, I'd thought that perhaps I should look at other things: things that would be less likely to be produced frequently where I work and things that every pastrychef should at least have done once or twice before (eg pithiviers, dobos torte, St Honore, etc and lamingtons, apple pie, ladyfingers etc.). And that's what lead me to asking the question about the pastry 'classics' in terms of products such as a mille feuille as opposed to a component such as puff pastry.

Is this going off on the wrong track? Would there be a better use of free time? Admittedly I have been eyeing 'The Patisserie of Pierre Herme' and 'The Cook's Book' for a while now though the price has held me back (moreso with the Herme). Speaking of going on the wrong track, I guess I've kind of gone off the topic a bit , should I be posting this under a new thread or will it be ok here?

Theabroma: Regarding the middle/Eastern European pastry, could you please elaborate more on that? My geography was never any good and my sense of which tradition different pastry products belong to is hazy at best.

Wendy: Thank you for taking a look at the 'why's' of this approach. I am a bit confused about what you're advising though. To clarify, are you suggesting that the time would be better spent finding 'the best' core recipes (by core, do you mean components such as sponges, whipped cream, etc?) or by following the recipes of highly rated pastrychefs?

John DePaula: I think I must've overlooked those when I was windowshopping through the amazon.com website or perhaps gotten the price tag mixed up with a book by Yves Thuries. Would you recommended that three books be used as a set (that is, if I were to produce a finished dessert from the second volume using recipes for components not in the first volume but from another book... the outcome wouldn't be disastrous would it?)?

[The 'classics' of pastry]

If you had to list what you'd call the hallmarks of traditional pastry, what would you consider them to be? I'm studying/training to be a pastrychef and have the privilege to 'toy' around after-hours and feel that the time would be best spent gaining some experience with the classics before anything else. There's a lot of books out there that have plenty of information about them but I was reading a post on this forum that mentioned apple pie and well... that's definetely something I'd have overlooked if I were to attempt a list so I was hoping that perhaps I could get some help constructing a list.

Thanks!