gfron1

Pomegranate Curd - yep it was my breakfast with three greasy strips of Niman Ranch bacon.

Kim - my spouse said it was the best thing I've ever made. I'm working more seriously on my decorating skills. Some day I'll have the time and money to go sit in with some of the great bakers here in their shops. Here are a few things I've made lately for sale at my store. Using leftover lemon syrup from candying lemon peel, I made Lemon Caramel with Toasted Piñon and Grey Salt. That gave me a reason to read the wrapping caramel topic which I had never had the desire to do Marmalade with Blood Orange and Jasmine Pearl Tea. That really is the color of it. I used Amernick's base recipe which doesn't use pectin, but at the last second I panicked and threw a pinch of pectin in for good measure. The tea was a really good addition. I can't remember if I posted this before: Brown Sugar Pecan Shortbread dipped in Tempered chocolate. Pomegranate Curd - yep it was my breakfast with three greasy strips of Niman Ranch bacon.

Perfect tops - congrats! Awesome first attempt.

I really like Sanrensho's idea of sampling. It will depend of course on what items. So many pastries die faster than you can give them out, and no one wants a sample of a dried out old croissant.

I am screaming NO! There's a bakery in town that did that, and guess what? All the cheapskates waited for the discount to buy them. That bakery in no longer in business. We take them home, donate them to the food bank or recycle them. But we never, ever, never discount them. Never.

Yeah - Tri2Cook and I are in similar boats. I don't have the option of reps. Sysco has one guy in our town. He's young and hasn't worked in restaurants before. He's always impressed by whatever I'm doing ("Dude, you know how to make croissants from scratch?") But you know what - as long as I'm in control of my decisions, I don't care. Buyer beware - prices and selection. At least my rep knows not to even ask about convenience items. Did on day one and not since. He does know to tell me about sales items that are cheap that can fill my case minimum up. I love their bottled water deals

A year since my last comment and I thought I should update my thoughts on Sysco. As many of you know I took over my cafè this past August. Its done very well for our town. I inherited Zanios, a regional food distributor, who is nothing special, but they have good meats and good overall prices. After a few weeks I contacted Sysco because I wanted Niman Ranch meats which I knew they carried. Of course I had to meet their minimum order amounts. So I added on some paper products and sugar. Fast forward to present time. I order from Zanios weekly and Sysco every other week. Why? Its not their food quality, but rather a very nice, but less ambitious sales rep. Zanios' rep offers me convenience by his weekly visits. I see the Sysco rep only when I call him. Sysco has turned out to be about 5% higher than Zanios on everything. They just recently decreased their fuel surcharge - the ONLY company out of the 80+ that I source from that has so far even though diesel is $2.29 in our neck of the woods. As to quality. It is as stated previously in this thread. The quality depends on what you buy. My rep always offers me good, better, best. And you pay accordingly.

You could keep it in the fridge, but why not pour it into an ice cube tray and freeze it - think of the possibilities of putting it in drinks! I'm in the same boat right now so I've been in lemon curd heaven. I just canned a dozen jars of it last night. I had the juice because I just candied all of that rind.

Yep - we sell them. My response is the same as yours. Its definitely a good chocolate and very enjoyable, but for "special" I go for Patric or Askinosie.

Chocoera - place looks great. I love the tin ceiling panels. And that case...oooh what I wouldn't do for a great big display case like that!

T2C - nice job. I was wondering why the host of the event hadn't posted his own creation. And Joe, beautiful cut on that cheesecake.

I did use nuts...you know this is just not my type of dessert. I'll have to trim the edges so I can have some and find out why she wanted it.

Thanks guys. I looked online at pics in google and everyone just dusts with powdered sugar. I don't really want to do the whole yule log thing because I'm going to start making the real deals next weekend. But I could do the leaves. Maybe a combo of leaves and a bit of dusting would be appropo.

I had never made one of these things before - you know, the recipe on the can of pumpkin for rolled pumpkin cake filled with cream cheese stuff. So I doctored it up a bit for a customer and now its so boring looking that I'm embarrassed to deliver it. Has anyone done anything fun with these before?

Paella! All of your other dishes are easily modifiable to become Spanish themed. And if you wanted to keep chorizo, don't they make a soy chorizo that is readily available at grocery stores?

pardon my French, but oh shit! That's a great idea. Stations! I could do a meat, salad, veg/starch and dessert on each. Basic, intermediate, exotic. They would feel like they're getting more bang for their buck. I could get to really play. Win-win! I know those of you who have been doing this for a while will groan with the extra work, but I think I could work it out so its not much more work. And I could also explore having the same base meat on all three stations. Imagine a basic pan finished salt and pepper bison tenderloin, a molè dulce finished tenderloin and then something much more exotic tbd. The salads would be no effort at all. The bread is the same process and wouldn't make much of difference. So the effort would be the desserts and veg/starch. That also helps the one loose-vegetarian because I've just tripled their options. And to answer flop's question, it doesn't really, I was just providing context. The context is not doctor v. lawyer, but rather doctor v. my typical caters that don't have a decent budget to pay me.

Nice job on that - looks great.

That wasn't all of the cookies - I was in a frenzy to finish the class on time, so there are three others not pictured including the sour cream ones. The meringues are from Bigelow's Chocolate Desserts - Chocolate Meringues. I wanted to let the kids do some piping, so those were perfect, then we dipped them in chocolate that they learned to temper, and they learned (and need to practice) how to dip the cookies and not leave feet with trails - some were perfect. You also see Lebovitz's pecan brown sugar shortbreads - very good. I liked the meringues because beyond the cocoa, you also added grated chocolate into them - very chocolaty. The salted peanut caramel thumbs were good but you can see we had some troubles. The recipe didn't call for chilling before baking (I know better), and so they really spread. We reprinted them after they came out of the oven. On a later batch (for myself) I froze then baked and they were perfect. Part of that is the kids over handling the dough however - they were in a sugar revolt at that point and the more I said, "gentle," the more they smooshed them in their hands.

Thanks for the help on the class from a gracious group of sugar-ed up kids!

Thanks Merstar and Rona. I'm awake again and ready to start baking - great suggestions.

Might not be enough time for you all to help here, but just in case. I'm doing a kids holiday cookie class tomorrow. Ages 7-14. I've been too busy with my own stuff to plan the recipes. I'm thinking three easy recipes and lot's of decorating, but because of how we promote our store, the recipes have to be unique. No sugar cookies. No hershey kiss in thumbprint, etc. (Not that those are bad, just not what I can have in my classes). I found Mama Kemp's Vienna cookies in RecipeGullet - that sounds promising. Any other suggestions while I sleep? As soon as I get up I'll need to start making recipe cards and prepping anything that needs chilling. Thanks!

Our community is off the charts with diabetes. I asked specifically for any special dietary restrictions and except for the one nut allergy, there were none. But point well taken. I like accommodating diets - its a challenge. I'll find some fancy, but diabetes friendly dessert.

I hear ya T2C, but I guess I'm viewing this meal differently. I think I've got a diverse group of guests who are enjoying a party-food dinner versus a progression based dinner. So my thought is to give them a mix of things that will knock their socks off. You've seen my tasting menus which are hyper progressive (progressive in taste, texture, temperature, etc), but here I don't feel the need to be respectful to that. Their original idea was a potluck before the doc said no. So I've viewed this as a good potluck. Does that make any sense?

thanks Alana - yes, I'll do a nice greens salad. And I'll work on the third app. The sushi will have both seafood and veg which will help. Lala - my understanding of yule logs is that there is what we typically see - the rolled buttercream dessert decorated to look like a log. And there is a French version that looks like a half of a tube with many layers inside. It is a frozen Yule Log similar to an ice cream cake, only often it’s not made of ice cream but frozen mousse of some sort. It is an entrement that can be eaten year round. The latter is what I'm going for.

So this is what they sent me today. It helps and it doesn't help. For what they're willing to pay, I think I should throw a whole bunch of things at them. I won't please everyone with everything, but with enough quality food, they'll all leave happy and impressed. So, my thought is to propose three dishes ready when guests arrive: -Thai shrimp -Sushi (I've been getting great raves for my sushi lately) -A third appetizer finger food Then propose that I stay on site until dinner is served. They don't want sit down - they want party dinner. With that I could sear my tenderloin and split. -Sourdough rolls -Veggie idea? -Starch idea: I'm leaning toward a sweet potato puree with candied ginger -Bison tenderloin finished in molè dulce, served over savory granola *I'll throw in some more molecular zingers for fun to please the docs who will want it. -French bouche noel -Flourless chocolate cake -Some citrus/fruit moussey thing tbd Reactions? Sound good? Ideas for the few missing items?