Kerry Beal

Glace cherries?

I'm in. Found a used Benriner in a thrift store today here. It only has one shredding blade - but it looks like the most appropriate one for most tasks.

Anna N has joined the spiralizer trend started by Franci here. I arrived at work kind of early today and stopped in at the Grimsby Benevolent Association thrift store. Picked up a little freezer alarm and happened across this little baby - make in Japan - I assume it's a Benriner. $2. Brought it home, cleaned it up and pulled a very sad hairy carrot out of the bottom of the crisper. Dragged hubby out to see what I'd done - first question - "can you make shoestring fries with that?" Guess that will be the next thing.

I'll bet that you could find that information on Ed Hamilton's Ministry of Rum website. He's an eG poster - you might find some info by searching within eG as well.

The process of polishing and sealing requires blowing cold air for up to several minutes at a time - and standing holding the hose is a pain. I was cleaning up some of the chocolate stuff I have taking up space in my living room this morning and ran across my little IV pole that I use to hold the Fuji airbrush, along with some old lab equipment. This allowed me to jury rig a hose holder. Last evening Alleguede came over and very patiently coated a pound of coffee beans. Not something we'll be doing again soon! Because they are flat on one side they fall victim to serious doubling - and half his evening was spent pulling apart doubles. I got them polished up this afternoon. He was kind enough to bring me some almonds (my hubby is feeling hard done by) which I roasted in the microwave last night - and coated this afternoon. Not polished yet but hubby is already enjoying them. They are a hell of a lot easier to coat than coffee beans! Took less than an hour.

I'd add reseat the gasket and check the door seal.

And yet Paderno is Canadian. Wonder if the outlet would have it?

Actually the centre is a dried cherry and the powder is the freeze dried that I put with some sugar in the thermomix and powdered.

I'm not sure - check with them and if they need wholesale - I can arrange it for you.

Believe Rodney said he got them at Signatures Fine Food.

The blueberries with ground vanilla beans. Gianduja coated hazelnuts - it was challenging to engross these - and I'm going to have to come up with another solution for finishing - because they didn't polish! Cherries - finished with powdered freeze dried cherries and sugar. Need some work on getting them rounder without adding a ton of chocolate to them - not prepared to roll each one between my hands! Not happy with the spots that don't take up chocolate.

I was given Power Flowers by Alleguede for Christmas. A certain number of the little flowers (which are colour in cocoa butter) added to 400 grams of white chocolate gives the desired colour.

Underway today - I have dried cherries in white chocolate, dried blueberries in white chocolate with freeze dried ground vanilla beans and roasted hazelnuts in gianduja. I need to get around to making some plain old milk chocolate coated toasted almonds for my hubby.

Everyone who has tasted them seems to think they are the best thing I've produced so far!

Freeze dried raspberries, engrossed in white chocolate, then coloured white chocolate.

Wouldn't say they are easier to coat - and they are noisier and harder on the kitchen aid motor.

This afternoon I polished the things that Alleguede and I worked on yesterday. I finished the peanuts with more chocolate as they still had some bald spots when the machine when belly up yesterday. Corn pops polished Peanuts polished. Decided to try dextrose panning the cereal that Alleguede engrossed yesterday. Ran in to some technical difficulties (i.e. need to get off the beginning of the learning curve) My attempts to add colour failed - possibly because there was some undeclared sucrose in the colourant I added to the syrup. So like all good failures - a bit of lustre dust makes everything better! They don't look as interesting in the picture as they do in real life - they look like little pearls. I think a further run of polishing after they have completely crystallized may help as well.

I know I've put up pictures of this before. Wondering if it might be on one of the Manitoulin threads - cause I remember doing it up there. Shall look for it if I find time and link to it.

One of the things I want to perfect before I start to teach other people how to do this.

A lot of vegetables get blanched in steam for a minute or two, then thrown in ice water. It stops enzyme activity and sets colour. I just bunged it in the microwave for a couple of minutes until it got a little wilted, threw some ice in with it - then put it in the freezer. Last time I made kale in the FD'er I did some raw, some steam blanched. Liked the blanched best.

Not seasoned - but blanched in microwave cause it tastes better that way to me. How healthy - who knows?

Kale is for eating dry like chips. The berries are scheduled to be panned in chocolate when the coating pan is fully functional again. Ice cream planned for chocolate bark. Ice cream needs to be really, really frozen so it doesn't blow up. I slice it, put in on the pan, and put it in the deep freeze, then freeze in the unit for another 9 hours or so. Edited to remove screaming ice cream!

Before the nut slipped again and put him out of business - Alleguede coated a box of Cocoa Puffs and some caramelized peanuts. Hubby says Locktite requires a couple of hours to cure. Alleguede blowing hot and cold. Look how smooth those are!

A few things finished up this morning. Kale - two kinds. Raspberries. Cherries. Vanilla ice cream.