rosejoy

I've purchased many, many used cookbooks on half.com and ebay. A few on Amazon. I tend to use Amazon for new release cookbooks and one of the others for older books. Now, I've found myself in need of divesting myself of a number of them, and like Fat Guy, unsure of what to do with them, and dreading the process of listing and shpping.

Thank you for the tip. They don't list the Princess Cake on their menu but I've sent them an email to see if they can help.

I love, love, love the traditional Princess Cake/Princess Torte - it's a white layer cake with some raspberry filling, layered with pastry cream, whipped cream domed on top and covered with tinted marzipan. Do you know of any bakery in the Portland area (or baker) who makes this cake? I tried making one myself but it didn't turn out so well )-: I'm in Beaverton but will travel for Princess Cake.... A cake that looks something like this:

All glass bakeware, such as Pyrex, needs to be baked at a temperature about 25 degrees below the temp specified by the recipe. My guess is that your brownies were just over-baked.

Thanks for the heads-up, A. Steve. I bought cream cheese last night and am planning on baking the rolls this weeekend, and I'll incorporate some of her techniques as well. We'll see how they turn out and I'll try to post a picture (if they look at all decent ) Happy baking weekend to you R.J.

I'm in the market for a Belgian waffle iron/maker and am hoping I can get some recommendations of units that folks here have used and liked or didn't like. I have a VillaWare heart-shaped regular waffler that's gotten light-to-moderate use for 8 or 9 years now that I'm happy with - it works fine and produces thin attractive waffles. Now I'm yearning to tackle Belgian waffles so I need a new machine. I purchased a flip-maker about 5 years ago from QVC (can't remember the brand) that broke on its 3rd use and immediately went back. I've looked at the home flip waffle makers on Amazon and some other sites and see that negative reviews run about 1 out of 3 for the VillaWare, Waring & Cuisinart makers with the biggest problem being that the machines tend to blow a fuse and stop working after a very few uses so that makes me a somewhat leary of them, but other than that the reviews are quite positive for them. Presto makes a flip machine that's a little different and less expensive that has very good reviews. What waffle maker do you have? Is it a flip maker or regular? Is there a real benefit to the flip makers? I live alone and don't need a commercial unit. What can you recommend? Thanks for your advice, I'm looking forward to great belgian waffles in the very near future!

Hiya, Aloha Steve, I'm thinking about trying these and wanted to ask you a question about the liquid quantity in the recipe. I got the recipe from the Saveur website since the link in the thread didn't work for me. The ingredients list includes only 1/2 milk, but the instructions say to proof the yeast in 1/4 c water (which isn't included in the ingredients list). Is that what you used when you made yours? Was that 6 oz of liquid sufficient for your dough (seems skimpy to me, I'd expect something more along the lines of 7 - 7.5 oz liquid for the amount of flour in the recipe). Can you share whether the recipe worked out fine for you as written, or whether you needed to make adjustments to either the liquid or flour? Thanks... yours look outstanding and I can't wait to give them a try.

Jay - Re: your post at http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/40358-homemade-marshmallows-recipes-tips/page__view__findpost__p__1405147 Thanks and thanks again for the your utube videos! I'm late to the marshmallow party and just started reading this thread a couple days ago - your videos helped a lot in putting real-life pictures to the process. They're wonderful and oh! so helpful.

Jay - Re: your post at http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/40358-homemade-marshmallows-recipes-tips/page__view__findpost__p__1405147 Thanks and thanks again for the your utube videos! I'm late to the marshmallow party and just started reading this thread a couple days ago - your videos helped a lot in putting real-life pictures to the process. They're wonderful and oh! so helpful.

I use the "Basic Soft Sandwich Loaf" recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's "The Bread Bible." It makes the most flavorful white bread loaf/dinner rolls I've ever had the pleasure of eating. Great texture, great flavor. It's about a 2-day process of making a sponge, retarding it, mixing the dough and retarding again before finally shaping & baking the loaf, so it takes some planning.

Chocolate coated strawberries? or other fruits like dried pineapple, glazed apricots half-dipped in chocolate, etc? A little round of white chocolate with 2-3 fresh raspberries embedded? (It's a spring-like weekend here, you can tell where my mind is today!) Some nut bark? Chocolate coated cashews?

Why would you add baking soda to your sourdough starter?

To convert recipes calling for instant yeast to active dry yeast, multiply the quantity by 1.25 Have fun with BBA, lots of great stuff there. BTW, 120 degrees F is a little bit warm for proofing yeast, you take a risk of killing off some yeast cells at that high a temperature. Try to keep it to about 112 - 115 F, you'll be safer there.

To the inverse situation, in the US I've seen quite a few recipes that call for the use of Lyle's Golden Syrup, and bakers have recommended to me to substitute corn syrup for it, saying that the biggest difference you'll notice is that the Lyle's Golden is not as sweet as corn syrup and has a bit more complex flavor. I think you would be quite safe simply substituting Lyle's Golden for corn syrup measure for measure.

Here's the one I use, it's a variation of a Maide Heatter recipe. Pots de Creme au Chocolate 2 c heavy cream 6 - 8 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped 6 large or extra-large egg yolks 2 tbls sugar pinch of salt 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F, tray in center Stir the egg yolks slightly (do not beat until foamy) Scald the cream, stir in the sugar pour over the chocolate, stir until melted and smooth in a double-boiler over simmering water. Temper the eggs with a little of the chocolate mixture, Add the tempered eggs back into the chocolate mixture and stir in the vanilla. Return to the double boiler and stir constantly over low heat to slightly thicken, about 3 minutes. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a pitcher and fill your cups, leaving about 1" headroom. Place in a bain-marie, put in the oven and cover with a cookie sheet or foil. Bake 22 minutes, should be somewhat liquidy in the center when removed from the oven. Cool at room temperature and then refrigerate for a few hours. They should firm up as they chill. Serve as is or with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream. Makes 6 or 7 2.5 - 3 oz servings. The original recipe called for only 4 oz chocolate. I use Callebout's semi-sweet and like 6 - 7 oz of chocolate best. It's rich, smooth and satin-y, utterly delicious and not hard to make.

You know what? That is really pretty good for a first loaf! Remember, those folks in/on shows (not sure if you mean tv or live presentations) have years of experience and loads of help! Stars of the tv shows, Food Network, PBS, etc have a lot of people of their staff who do most of the work, very little of what you see on these shows is actually done by the chef - and it can't be, based on how little air time they have. I think you should be congratulating yourself, rather than berating yourself. You got two loaves that rose fairly well and that tasted pretty well - just think, very often first loaves turn out to be bricks! Yours' didn't! Your loaf looks nicely formed and you didn't have any "blow-outs" at your seam or slashes. Your slashes look very nice and even. It's a little dense but that may have more to do with the bread not getting enough rising time than. The thicker crust at the top could have to do with either the dough drying out some while rising or by your steaming techinique (if you tried to introduce steam into the oven). The large oblong-shaped hole in the middle of the loaf could indicate that the loaf didn't quite bake long enough. I'd recommend sticking with all-purpose flour for a while because bread flour is even harder to knead. Many French Bread recipes are written for all-purpose flour and the traditional flour used in France for Baguettes is a softer flour even than our all-purpose flour. Bread flour is really made for bread machines and mixers, not hand kneading but once you get your kneading technique down, you could give it a try and see what you think. So congratulations of your first loaf! It's really quite good for a first loaf.

That's about 65% hydration which is slightly wet for hand-kneading but not too far off. That is, IF (and it's a big IF) your 3 cups of flour actually weight 16 oz (453 grams). For 3 cups of flour to equal 16 ounces, each cup would have had to weigh 5.3 ounces and unless your flour was extremely dry, that's a bit on the heavy side. You can usually estimate a cup of flour weighing between 4 and 5 ounces, with 4.5 oz a somewhat fair estimate (but without weighing it, it's just that - an extimate). The weight of a cup of flour is dependent upon a variety of factors - the most important being how dry your environment is and how you fill your cup with the flour. There can be a big difference in the weight of a cup of flour depending on whether you "dip and sweep" the flour into to cup or whether you lightly spoon the flour into the cup. May I sugget that if you have a strong interest in working with bread dough, buy yourself a scale and use it - particularly useful is one that displays weights in pounds and ounces/ounces only/ and grams. It will be the best investment you can make in terms of successful breadmaking. All that aside, an important question is this: what was the consistency of your dough? Was it very sticky? Did you end up adding a lot of flour to it as you kneaded? Or was it dry and stiff? Are you new to bread baking? If so, may I say that learning the correct consistency of dough is the most important thing that will lead to successful breadbaking, and one of the hardest things to learn on your own. You are looking for a dough that is soft and moist, not sticky but slightly tacky. What's the difference between sticky and tacky? Lightly touch the dough ball with a finger and pull your finger away. Sticky means that the a lot dough sticks to your fingers and readily pulls away from the dough ball. Tacky means that a little dough tries to stick to your fingers and a tiny bit might succeed, but most of it will stay joined to the dough ball. If you are new to breadmaking, please allow me to suggest that you buy a loaf of frozen dough from your supermarket, let it thaw and then put your hands into it. Get a feel for what it feels like - how soft and moist it is, how stiff it is, what it's structure is like. Cut off a small ball, round it up in your hands and try the window-pane test. You'll learn a lot about what properly developed (kneaded) dough should feel like for a standard loaf of white bread. This isn't what ALL bread doughs will feel like but it will give you a sense of what a pan loaf should feel like and then you can go on from there as you learn and experiment with other types of bread. Kneading by hand takes practice and experience. You want to withhold about 1/8th of the flour and stretch the dough as you knead it, fold down the top part of the dough as you pull it towards you and, alternately, stretch it out with the heel of your hand, pushing it away from you, then fold the top part down onto the doughball as you bring it back towards yourself. I wouldn't worry so much about window-paning until you gain experience with your bread-baking. Go for the consistency of dough and knead until your dough is a nice round ball that holds its round shape on its own and doesn't fall back down into a shapeless mass. Hope this helps some,

I came across and article from the El Paso Times from July, 2005 saying that BakeWise is due out in 2007 Here's the link: http://www.borderlandnews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...mplate=printart

I'm sorry... how disappointing and frustrating. It sounds as though either your yeast was bad or your water was too hot. Another possibility is that the environment was too cold. Hope your party was a success anyway. Happy new year to you

I have this little spiral-bound book titled "Oh Truffles by Au Chocolat" by Pam Williams and Rita Morin, published by Stein & Day in 1984. Of course it's out of print now, but keep an eye out on ebay or amazon.com and you might find a copy (I found mine on ebay a few years ago). The book won't wow you with gorgeous pictures in full color or inspire you with artistic flair. Rather, it's about 120 pages of chocolate truffle recipes, variations of cocoa truffles, ganache truffles, buttery truffles, luxurious truffles, rich european truffles and french truffles. all sorts of flavors and combinations. It's not the cutting edge of chocolate today, but it's good solid truffle information and recipes. Good luck to you with your new endeavor in the new year,

Alinka, do you have a recipe for those that you could share? I have a crumbly yellow cake that I've been looking for a use for - those look great and I'd love to try them. Thanks!

What kind of yeast did you use and at what point were you trying to get it to foam? If it was an instant yeast like SAF or Fermipan, they don't really "proof" like freshh yeast or active dry yeast - they are made to be mixed in dry with the flour and they don't ususally respond to a water & sugar "proof." On the other hand, if you were trying to get a sponge started with water, flour and yeast and it didn't show signs of life, then you might have a problem with your yeast being expired. Time will tell whether your dough rises or not....