Lisa Shock

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.

And, Boston did get to host two series' instead of most cities hosting just the one. They got a lot of exposure for their investment.

I have seen recipes that say that in the past red food color was in the recipe, and offer it as optional now.

I was referring to the composition of the sugars naturally in the dates. I found several scientific papers where they ran chemical analyses on the syrup. They noted that different types of date plant produced fruit with differing ratios of glucose to fructose, so it was difficult to list exact percentages that would consistent from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Looks like there are big variations in the composition based upon what type of dates were used. Most of the literature I am seeing says it's a mix of glucose and fructose with a significant amount of pectin.

I looked at your photo again, and you can see the domed top very well. The pan is causing a situation where the bottom (small) is done way before the bulk of the batter up top, so you definitely want to insulate it a bit. I'd try putting the pan onto a baking sheet with a silicon mat on it, the silicon is an insulator. Make sure that your oven is preheated, starting cold means your pan will heat up from the bottom, which won't help. Also, that dome is pretty large and affecting the way the cake sits. I'd remove a cup of batter, simply don't put it in the pan -bake it in a mini-loaf pan, and maybe take the opportunity to make it another flavor, like add lemon zest or almond extract and some raisins.

That pan is weird, smaller at the bottom by a large percentage. You might have to adjust oven temp just for the pan, and, there's a possibility that you'll never get a perfect result with it.

Agreed. I think the closest you can get would be along the lines of Ruhlman's 'Ratio', which happens to be so highly flawed that, IMO, it doesn't prove its own concept. In culinary school, they force pastry students to memorize charts and basic recipes for things like major categories of custards which gives you a feel for say, what a custard is like when whole eggs are used vs mostly yolks, but, you're just doing comparisons of recipes in the end. Also, sometimes we can give the impression that we are improvising when in fact we're relating information from our memorized recipes. I can make a loaf of bread without a recipe, and it will be probably be good, maybe even great. The catch is replicating what happened, so that anyone can make it again. And, honestly, if I don't write it down, I can't precisely replicate it. Another problem with just riffing is: consistency in size and weight of the final product. For some products, I want to make enough dough to fill a special pan adequately without overflowing, or make 16 3oz rolls, a 100 calorie slice, or a dozen muffins. Sure, sometimes you try substitutions and experiments because you don't have a recipe. I was asked once to make some blue corn crepes, for example. You can't just toss out the flour and use corn meal because the gluten in the flour helps hold things together, and, since we were going to roll these, they needed to hold together. I wound up reducing the flour amount to ½ the original, but replaced the usual pastry flour with 'bouncer' a high gluten bagel flour. The other half measure of flour was the corn meal, but we wound up grinding it into a fine flour to get the crepe to look nice when rolled. Anyway, this got perfected in three test runs, and I took notes the whole time because the event was a month in the future, and, I might not be the person making them. My first attempt was fairly good, tasted ok, and probably would have been just fine to serve at a casual meal in someone's home. But, this product needed to be picture perfect and produce hundreds of identical servings that were easy to roll around the filling without cracking or tearing. So, my assistant and I worked and re-worked the recipe until it was exactly what we wanted.

Forgot to mention that I usually put down parchment or a silpat before using a pan like this. I got a big box of parchment cheaply at restaurant depot.

These pans are common and very cheap at restaurant supply stores, here, I can get them for $6 each. The polymerized fat isn't really an issue. I just scrub what I can off with Bon Ami and just live with the residue - that's what the commercial kitchens do. If it really bugs you, try some Dip It.