Kerry Beal

Well it appears to be a straw and spoon combination - meant to strain some kind of liquid so you can suck it through the straw successfully?

Might be a bit expensive!

Welcome @Kiwiross. I'd love it if you'd tell us a bit more about the cooling unit you have built in to your panner?

Welcome Katelyn - you've changed your name - I've enjoyed watching your career develop on Facebook. You were such a great help to us in St Louis. Strangely having gone over the thread from the 2019 we didn't manage to include you in any of the pictures. And it doesn't look like we took a group photo. Here's a good place to start scouring - Pastry and Baking Index - put together a few years back by Rob Connelly of Bulrush in STL - aka @gfron1 Feel free to PM if you need anything.

Garabaldi biscuits?

Chef Rubber has some glazes and polishes I believe. I tend to use whatever chocolate I'm partial to at the time - not the most expensive for sure. Looks like you've picked a couple of challenging items to start!

You can hook it up to a battery and take it with you.

A guy who started out doing kids parties (untempered chocolate into the freezer) just bought his 5th EZtemper.

Put it on the knife blade - then you can chop with the blade between?

Menu holder? Oops already suggested.

The untempered chocolate you add to it can be quite warm - just make sure that you don't go well over the working temperature when you add it. When added to over tempered chocolate you can take milk up as high as 32.5 and dark as high as 34.5

Should be dames who dine I guess - since it was dinner not lunch. But hey - this thread is looking a little lonely since @Anna N left us. Last evening I headed down to visit @patris and go the the RCI (Retail Confectioners International) which was being held in Buffalo this year. I haven't seen most of these folks since 2019 or before and it was a treat to reconnect. Made me realize just how many people I know in the industry. After the trade show today @patris and I headed out to The Dapper Goose in Black Rock Buffalo - a place we ate once before in 2017 and very much enjoyed. We opted for a few small plates instead of mains. Cheese plate - I've left the list with the cheeses on it in the other room - but one was the Barn First Creamery's Quinby (it's the brie like cheese). The one with the herbs on it is Good Mood Franz Berchtold - a very stinky but quite delightful cheese we enjoyed very much - (Ingredients: pasteurized cow's milk, salt, garlic, ramps, basil. oregano, marigold, rosemary, thyme, rose, cornflowers, cultures, vegetarian rennet). The third we recall was ash rubbed but beyond that... Blackened green beans with a very garlicy sauce - had quite a bite to them. Cauliflower with green goddess dressing Mushrooms with cheese sauce on polenta.

I freeze stuff in big yogurt containers - then put it in to the pacojet containers - so it's not fixed on the bottom - but it still seems to work fine.

Is it a pet hedgehog? If so - then I might not put it there.

While I'm thinking of it - one thing I'd like to feature next year is decorating techniques using coloured cocoa butter etc that don't require an airbrush.

Keep the dates. We are planning on the weekend of May 16, 17, 18 and we will be at the very brand new (not even built yet) TCF Sales facility in Cedar Park, Texas. This is a suburb of Austin. No shortage of hotels within walking distance - and I believe Tom has some sort of a deal with one of the favoured ones. But I'm sure @Chocolot will make it her mission to find us the best one! Airport 23 miles from Cedar Park. I see Tex-mex and smoked meat in our future. What do they smoke for vegetarians?

Back when I was using the iCreami instead of the Pacojet I found running one of my bone handled knives around the edge after the first spin solved that problem.

It’s an interesting development - taking the sugars out of the pulp! Some of the issues I’ve heard related to it - the pulp is an integral part of the fermentation of the beans - so this can get short circuited when the pulp is removed immediately. Then there’s the nebulous claims that it’s low sugar - but it’s still carbs just a different source than cane or beet sugar. And so far those I’ve tasted - taste like ass.

It would heat and stir!

Might want to fiddle with the chocolate you use for the ganache as well - some are better with bitter than others. Another thought - a liquid caramel made with the beer as the liquid component in the ganache. Bonus would be a nice long shelf life.

But I do understand the need to make it just once to prove it can be done! Why don't you make the really high viscosity solution, bung it in the sous vide at 80 degrees for the time required - taking it out and squeezing once in a while?

I will never reach that level! Curious to know what you will use to hydrolyse the solution and what determines when you stop it?

When you freeze an alcoholic beverage in order to jack up the alcohol content. Hence applejack. You take alcoholic cider and freeze it to remove the water. AKA freeze distilling.

Sounds like some fun experiments. Thought jacking was illegal in NA though! Would you consider just making a water ganache using it as is?

@Jim D. - I've found that the numbers I get from ProChoc seem to align quite well with those I measure with my Aw meter. The weakness I find with ProChoc is the caramel - I think it's in there but I'm not sure how to account for it. I'd love to be able to put in something like - "X grams of sugar, X grams of cream cooked to X degrees" - without actually having to know the amount of caramel that would result.