Lisa Shock

I have found that it's really difficult to get people to follow recipes (whether it's lazy employees or managers who want to put their personal 'twist' on a recipe), so, chances are that even if a competing bakery took the recipes, they won't make the products exactly the same way.

Generally, dry meat has been overcooked. You can overcook meat and have it be dry in a soup, surrounded by water. Internal temperature is very important when cooking meats. As noted by btbyrd above, the external drying of food during roasting is desirable and tasty.

Use of a tart tamper really helps, and I agree that you can just cut one large circle and fit it in, no need for a strip for the edges.

You could just add coconut flavor.

The proportions seem fine. What brand of chocolate? What temperatures are involved? (burnt maybe?) Was the chocolate in temper when you started?

Off the top of my head, several possibilities: the dough was over worked and gluten developed too much, the dough sat around too long and gluten developed too much, there was too much liquid in the dough gluten developed and there was shrinkage due to evaporation, the dough was handled with hot hands which broke the emulsion in the butter hydrating the dough too much while developing too much gluten from both the moisture and warmth, the dough wasn't docked.

I did, had to take a class in business management, business math, a class in purchasing, and a communications class -for a pastry degree at LCB. The curriculum has changed since then, though. IMO, purchasing was the best class in the whole program. I really felt like I got a lot of valuable information from it. It also helped that my instructor was hugely knowledgeable; he had owned something like 11 restaurants, each very different from the others. We also had classes on food history, and nutrition.

There have been some big advances in technology in recent years in this area. All of the equipment I have experience with is pretty dated now. (a small blast freezer used in conjunction with a larger storage freezer was state of the art when I was in school) The last time I went to World Pastry Forum in 2011, I saw demonstrations of some pretty amazing freezers with computerized controls and more efficient operation. In some major cities, brands have demonstration kitchens where you can view and try out the equipment. You might ask with your local ACF chapter to see if they know of any such place nearby.

Has anyone experimented with using an ultrasonic machine to speed things up? I saw a video online of someone making different extracts this way to speed things up. I don't have a machine, but have been thinking about getting one for various purposes.

I think the main attraction of the original is that it theoretically gives you three types of pie plus three types of cake in one serving. The catch here is that the different desserts all suffer from the treatment. Why not just have small slices of a variety of well-made desserts on a plate, not touching each other? This way, each item can be perfect.

I have seen them at asian markets, but, they need to be deep fried. They generally come in smallish bags, less than a pound.

I suspect that one would get a better result by making regular cake layers, doing a crumb coat of buttercream icing, then layering cooked and cooled fruit compote(s) between the cake layers. Then doing a final buttercream icing, maybe topped with more compote, and placing a crispy on top, like the discs that are found in entremets, or, just a round of puff pastry decorated with flavored flat icing. This way, you get cake, delicious compote, and a really crispy topper. That said, since I am a lover of the crispies, I'd prefer it to be just one or two layers.

BTW, if you need to do things in between piping, stick the small paper coronet in your pants pocket. If you are careful, the chocolate won't leak (it's more likely to form a small hard cap on the tip) and the pocket is the right temperature to keep the chocolate liquid, but cool enough to stay in temper.

There is a product you can buy called piping chocolate, it is a bit costly, but works very well. We used to get Callebaut in tubs in three colors (dark, milk, white), but, I haven't been able to get any for a few years. Generally, a good quality white chocolate is used for colors, and I make hard ganache if I want to pipe dark brown.

One minor point: I am disturbed by the fact they are serving unpeeled kiwi. (might just be me and a possible allergy, but, while I adore kiwi, the skin gives me a burning sensation -I have to wear gloves when handling them, even at home) Makes me wonder - if they aren't discerning enough to properly prep the fruit, what other shortcuts and ill-tasting ideas are they promoting?

Depends.... If there's a good offering of, say, barrel aged cocktails, or some other type that stores well but is difficult to make at home, I would try them. If it's just an ordinary cosmo in a bottle, not so much.

Don't they have a form for you to fill out? Most secret shopping gigs involve filling out a fairly detailed questionnaire.

I suspect that the pie crusts are soggy.

I use unsalted in baking, because recipes are written for it and different salted butters have differing amounts of salt. It's particularly important point in recipes like buttercream, where there's a lot of butter used, and you might not want so much salt. I generally eat salted butter on toast and such, so I buy both kinds, and wind up doing savory cooking with the salted type. -My exception would be in making Italian double-butter sauce (aka the original Alfredo) the cheese adds a lot of salt, and I prefer sweet butter as a little bit of contrast. I don't find it a hassle to stock both at home, because I freeze my butter and only pull out a sticks of salted one at a time as I use one up. The unsalted stays frozen until I need it. In general, I wait for sales and stock up. -I generally have 5-10 pounds in the freezer at any given time. This comes in handy for baking on the spur of the moment.

There is a US based seller on eBay with the pan, no lid, sorry.

True, in theory. In actuality, it varies by how long it was cooked and I have seen guava jams turn meat mushy in the past.

"Soften or melt the butter per instructions, toss in the sugar and cream them together in a single step is what I tend to do." Don't melt the butter, that defeats the purpose.You want to be incorporating air bubbles, and that won't happen with melted butter. HERE's a video on the topic, with a comparison of results with creaming and without. And, yes, it's not considered creaming if all you are doing is whipping the butter by itself.

For the coconut, how about a sweet curry with dried fruit chunks? Ever had potato candy? That could be a springboard to something else, or add jelly and make the PB&J this way. What about apple pie with green chile? Piñon brittle? Piñon butter ganache? sweet tamale?

You have to watch out for protease content, guava happens to be one of the problematic fruits. If it's a non-protease containing fruit, say, raspberries, jam wouldn't hurt anything, but, you'll change the texture and probably make it thicker.

Might be the plastic, usually shiny acetate in particular is used.