etalanian

I love this thread! Today I ate the last of the homemade goat cheese, long pepper and caramelized onion tart I made for a Thanksgiving appetizer. Sorry to see it go!

Foie gras can be either from a goose or a duck. Susanna Foo has great sweetbreads on the menu. Also, LaCroix or Four Seasons will make them for you even if they aren't on the menu. Call ahead before you go and ask. If they have enough time before your visit so they can order them and prep them, they will be ahppy to do it. The best I have ever eaten were from Allouette (anyone remember that one - from way back in the 80's?) when it was on 5th street near South. Excellent and succulent, napped with an amazing demiglace. I can still taste them. Brings tears to my eyes.

When I had my bakery, I sold wholesale to a lot of retail outlets, and none of them sold the product for less than keystone (doubling the price I charged). It never bothered me. Besides everything Jason mentioned, retailers also have to deal with weather conditions, road construction that unexpectedly cuts off some of their accessibility, power outages, and much more. It might sound like a lot of money, but the margins are easily chipped away by all sorts of things. I tried to keep my ingredients costs to 20%. And never felt guilty about it. There are too many hidden costs that have to be covered - insurance, workers' comp, utilities, delivery costs, packaging costs, equipment maintenance, and on and on. Lots of businesses go under simply because they underprice themselves.

Dark chocolate ganache, that has cooled just enough so it is still spreadable, makes a lovely, glossy, chocolatey finish to a cake. Don't beat it, just spread it on like frosting. I agree with the previous comment, though, that maybe your friend has never had a real French chocolate buttercream. Maybe she's only had the creamed Crisco stuff, which is enough to gag anyone. edited to add this: 8 ounces (weight) excellent quality dark chocolate (I like Callebaut semisweet) and 8 fluid ounces of heavy cream is the recipe I use for ganache.

Rebecca and Claire, Thanks for the kind words, Rebecca! Enjoy your baking. Claire, if you use steel cut oats the cookies will have a lot more chew, and will be more prominent in the baked cookie. Which you may ormay not like. You can generally figure that the longer the oats have to cook to make oatmeal, the chewier they will be in a cookie. You can always process them a few pulses in a food processor, so they will meld into the dough a little more easily, to reduce the chew a bit. I'd love to know how you like the steel cut oats in cookies. Eileen

The soft ganache will melt faster than the cookies will bake, so the ganache will most likely run out of the cookies onto the parchment or baking sheet. Try using grated chocolate for the rogelach filling.

Unbleached AP flour is great for use in chewy type cookies, and bleached AP is good for cookies with a more delicate flavor, or crispy texture. I use a little cornstarch in my shortbread, along with bleached AP so they are really tender. Bread flour will give you a more pronounced chew in chewy type cookies.

To freeze cookies, the easiest thing to do is to mix the dough and shape it. Then lay the shaped, unbaked, dough on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer until it is hard. Take it out and quickly transfer it to a zipper bag or plastic container, and you can just take out what you need as you want to bake them, keeping the remainder for later use. If airtight and if your freezer is cold (zero degrees) they will keep for up to 2 months. Don't put sugar or candy trims on before freezing, because they will become sticky. Right now I have pecan tassies, lemon wreaths, jeweled shortbread, walnut rogelach, chocolate snowballs, orange-almond wafers, walnut chews and chocolate-peppermint patties in the freezer. Still on the mix-and-freeze agenda are chocolate-almond lace cookies, hazelnut fingers, butter cut-outs, pecan snowballs, lemon spritz, cranberry jumbles, chocolate-dipped coconut chews, and soft gingerbread people. I will bake off some of each on the 14th & 15th for the big family Christmas party on the 16th, and then I'll bake off the rest on the 17th for the always-expected cookie trays that we give to friends, family and my hubby's clients. I love to bake, but the whole holiday cookie thing is my absolute favorite thing to do. I am in a constant state of euphoria from the week before thanksgiving until the week before Christmas.

Old-fashioned rolled oats will make the cookie chewier, while the quick oats will have a little softer texture. Instant will just dissolve into the dough. I like to use old-fashioned oats, dried tart cherries, and a small bit of pure cherry flavoring, along with pecans and coconut. I top off the cookies by sprinkling a few crystals of fleur de sel on top of each one before baking them. The salt really highlights the cherries and nuts, and the contrast is sumptuous. Don't use too much, though...just a few crystals on each cookie.

Mine's an old one, but my grandmother always made T'giving dinner for us. When my folks moved to PA from Indiana, my mother, who didn't cook (and I mean, DID NOT COOK), tried to make the holiday dinner herself. Canned cranberry sauce, bagged stuffing mix, and instant mashed potatoes. We watched curiously as my father pulled something out of the not-quite-done turkey. It was the bag of giblets. He looked up, and after a pause, he said, "I think the Hilton is serving Thanksgiving dinner. What do you say we go on down there?"

I've kept chocolate for five years, well-wrapped and away from heat and humidity. If store it in the refrigerator, though, the humidity there can cause it to bloom.

Freeze the shaped dough and you can make a ton of cookies. Just mix, shape and place the unbaked dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet, place it in the freezer (uncovered) until the dough is hard, quickly transfer to a ziploc bag or plastic container, and freeze until you want to bake them. If your freezer's good and cold, the dough will keep for 2 months. I make 16-20 kinds of cookies every Christmas, and it's really not stressful when you do it this way. If you start now and make a few kinds each weekend over the next three weekends, you can bake them off the second or third weekend in Dec and have a lovely assortment. I vary the mix every year, but every year I ALWAYS make: Pecan Tassies Cinnamon-Almond Crescents Rogelach Chocolate Snowballs Pecan Snowballs Soft Gingerbread Lemon Spritz Linzers Sugar Cut-outs Chocolate Peppermint Patties Orange-Almond Wafers (dipped in tempered Belgian chocolate) Chocolate Almond Wafers (Chocolate lace cookies coated with Belgian Chocolate) The family expects these. Then I add whatever I want to experiment with to complete the mix and balance the colors, flavors and textures. Cookies are my favorite thing. And Christmas is my favorite time of year, so I'm in heaven just about now! I am lovin' this thread! I read every entry and there are some really great recipes here. Thanks for ringing in the cookie season! Eileen

Ruth, what recipe are you referring to? Is it in a thread in eG? Thanks, Eileen

Wow! Some of those vendors are institutions at RTM. I am also stunned at this decision. Eileen

I'd love to hear about it. Please do.

Dental floss works well with brownies, souffle cakes, and other soft, gooey things. When I make marshmallows I cut them next to my gas stove and wipe and heat the knife with each cut. I didn't know you could freeze soft meringues. How long can they be frozen? I've never had good luck with this. Eileen

You need to lower the temp when using a convection oven. I would recommend trying it at 300 instead of 325. Eileen

200 degrees is too cool, I agree. I always bake my brulee custards at 325, in a water bath, in a conventional oven, and uncovered. Never had a problem. I do bake pots de creme custards covered with foil that has holed poked through to release steam. But that's because my pots de cremes are denser than the brulee and I want them to cook thoroughly without becoming too hard. And I agree. Never bake ANY pastry, custard, cake, cookie or any other dessert, without using a properly working oven thermometer. Most pastries and desserts are affected by even slight variations in temperature. Eileen

I can often find it at my local Whole Foods Market. Pure butter, no fillers. Eileen

Great topic! I don't get to the RTM often enough, and this makes me want to make sure I get there later this week. I was at a celebration brunch a short while back, and the hosts served some hearty, medium-thick sliced bacon that they had grilled outdoors. It was quite good. They bought it at the Chestnut Hill Farmer's Market. I will try to go there on Thursday and see where it comes from. Thanks for starting this thread! Eileen

No, no, no...presentation can be deceiving. But that thread made me think of this one.There have been too many times in my long life of eating restaurant desserts that I have been miserably misled by the presentation of a dessert, only to have my hopes dashed to the rocks. I am looking for the perfect sensual experience someone remembers from eating a dessert at a restaurant. Sometimes the simplicity of impeccably balanced flavors and textures in a simple dessert can provide way more "shock and awe" than the most spectacularly presented dessert. These are two very different threads. best, Eileen

I agree! I've been misled too many times by fancy presentation that leaves me terribly disappointed after tasting the dessert. et

What is the best restaurant dessert you have ever tasted? The one that, when you think about it, delivers you to dessert heaven. I'm talking flavor here. And texture. Was it the complexity or the simplicity of it that turned you on? Or was it the perfect balance of the flavors and texture that sent you to the moon when you ate it? Mine is the "Coffe and Donuts" at the Cosmopolitan restaurant in Telluride, CO. Four perfectly fried French beignets (not the yeasty things served at Cafe du Monde, although they are pleasant) soft, tender, and very moist inside, with just a hint of lemon, perfect in its seduction, served hot, drenched in confectioners' sugar, tucked into a carefully folded cloth napkin, with a latte on the side. Sensuous, with impeccably balanced flavors, and a texture that sings. What is yours? Eileen

JCHO, I just PMed my address to you. Thanks for offering to send it. Eileen

Lise, Thank you for the link. It's interesting to see how different people rate different chocolates. Eileen