Kerry Beal

This mornings offering for rounds - gingerbread - 'tastes like fall' said one of the docs.

I'd say it's aesthetic mostly - but some sealant properties as well. By the way - welcome p_lo to eG. Coating chickpeas leads me to believe you'll fit in nicely here!

Which one?

Dry it and grind it into cocoa powder.

Finally got around to making a YouTube video on the cocoa butter extraction - not going to win any Oscars! So far my experiments with the Piteba press have been an abject failure - but I'm hoping when I get some truly raw beans that I might have some success. Here is the video

Still in the freezer! The pecans on the other hand I was eating out of hand.

I forgot to take a picture of the brownies that were requested for this am by the ER nurses. But they look just like the last ones! Today I'm enjoying cauliflower steak on pureed cauliflower. Good that I'm sleeping alone.

Can you try without the additional cocoa butter? Here's the proportions I use for dark chocolate truffle - 150 grams whipping cream40 grams glucose350 grams dark chocolate65 grams butter - room temperature45 grams liquor of some sort

Maximilian Affair - made with mezcal as I can't seem to find the bottle of tequila around here.

Got a little distracted and wasn't paying attention to the BBQ - so a bit overcooked on the steak.

Ran to the grocery store to see if I could find a chunk of beef fat to make some drippings. "A chunk, how about a bag?" said the butcher. So right now a few pieces are roasting in the oven - to give up their fat for yorkshire pud.

The rather disappointing results of my experiment here - at least so far!

Yup - there will be no mixing with grapefruit juice! Of course that would have required some alcohol production.

Red due to Red Yeast Rice that I added. So not serratia. That I recognize the smell of from my lab tech days.

Today was the day to siphon off the Chinese Rice wine that has been fermenting for a month. At least I thought it was fermenting - it smelled alcoholic, nice and fruity. Poured off a bit and filtered it. Fluoresces in the sun! Got probably 2 litres with a specific gravity of 1.130 - strangely not a drop of alcohol, zero, zilch! So I've taken the two litres of nice sweet fruity rice juice and added a sachet of wine yeast. Shall see what develops. Fast aging a bit of apple brandy with a couple of Jack Daniels chips and the microwave. Had some people over - she works for the LCBO but it's been in a variety of smaller towns so welcomed the opportunity to taste a few things she was unfamiliar with but I had in my collection! She particularly liked the St George Absinthe - not a big fan of the amari.

Green olives in a bread stuffing - the giblets and liver were in there as well. The one vegetarian in the group brought along her own stuffing that looked quite satisfactory. I was not the only one taking pictures of my food! But most of them know already about my foodie forum and foodie friends.

Both white - one had a whole lot of garlic and cream cheese, the other 'traditional' white mash. Both went perfectly with the gravy! No sweet potatoes - didn't miss them myself. I enjoy a nice baked sweet potato - but it's overkill at Thanksgiving with all the other carbs on the plate.

Gups - welcome to eG. Love to hear a little more about what you are up to as a hobbyist. Have you seen the threads Confections, what did we make? and Your daily sweets - what are you making and baking?

We were 12 for dinner - so I was glad I'd brought 3 desserts - Dismembering the turkey. Gravy under construction. Notice any brussels sprouts on this plate? Nope you don't! I did actually eat two. So two kinds of mashed potatoes, strawberry spinach salad, cranberry sauce and of course turkey. Oh yeah - stuffing with olives in it! The Ideas in Food pumpkin pie was a hit - no one seemed to notice the missing spices. The apple pie/tart was popular as well - but by far the favourite was the Torta Caprese. And of course the cream siphon was fun for everyone to play with!

Andie - what does sound much improved over the standard - is there anything special done with the eggs to get the lightened texture?

You have - you have won the lottery! Nice score.

It's the stuff I don't post about that's often the most interesting!

I see those every so often.

So the recipe calls for tapioca starch - had some tapioca but not the starch - so fired up the spice grinder that I got to replace the Sumeet when it went to the great spice grinder home in the sky and ground the tapioca into a powder. Pie out of the oven. The extra. River Cafe Torta caprese to which I've added some limoncello.

Yummm - quince flavoured bacon!