gfron1

Ancient family secret...until you look in the dessert thread

My April Fool's food... Potato Chips and Dip Actually it is a sugar cookie with white chocolate mousse made on creased parchment paper. And while not a dessert, this one was fun too: Savory herb cupcakes with red pepper or broccoli cream cheese spread.

April Fool's 2007: The rules for me...everything must be something other than what it looks, and it must taste good. Cupcakes: Savory herbs with roasted red pepper cream cheese spread or brocolli spread. Hardboiled eggs: Blue food coloring, caperberry. Eyeballs: Kiwi jello with lychee and blueberry. Chips and dip: Sugar cookies with white chocolate mousse

That really is pretty tami. Were you able to serve it, keeping its beauty?

of course... I made Ling's brownies, with ganache and sea salt on top.

A couple of thoughts... First, you have to be real careful because it could backfire on you making you look like a snob or competitive or ... I always opt for letting my products speak for themselves. Second, I knew our most successful chocolatier in the area was using bark/melting, and I tried to convert her to El Rey. She tried it and her customers preferred her nasty stuff to my El Rey. So the lesson for me was that I'll have my customers and she'll have her's...plenty to go around. Since you're in a gym, I'd be pushing the health benefits of chocolate and focus more on dark versus sugar-laden milk!

Using my vast network of blackmarketeers (snicker), I just scored 5 jars of Guiness Marmite for my store. Let's see...one for me for that savory cheesecake I've been wanting to make...one for our best British customer...one for the marmite addict who's thinking about moving overseas...that leaves 2 for the lucky suckers who walk in the door the day after we get it!

No dessert for breakfast. No alcohol before brunch. Both are bunk in my household!

What's funny about the Ste. Gen wineries (actually south of there) is that I was raised in that neck of the woods before the wineries came in. We used to drive 45 minutes into nowhere from Ste. Gen to get to our family cabin past Coffman. On the way, there was this over-the-top "castle" that we would laugh at amongst all of the red barns. It eventually became a fancy restaurant which I never went to. You have to understand that Ste. Gen is out of the way and this is even further. When I moved away after high school the area started to blossom (no connection between the two occurances). When I would return the wines were barely drinkable - way too fruity (more like spiked kool-aid). The last time I went back there were quite a few wineries - major acreage for the area. The wine was not so bad. I'm probably biased against it, so it may be better than I think. Well, there's memory lane for you. I guess the days of Falstaff beer at the cabin are gone! Grab a pound of Oberle Dog (sausage) and enjoy a carafe.

I am thinking ahead to next fall and was looking for some molds. I found something called a wood cake mold - is this the same thing? It looks too shallow to be a moon cake mold.

This is gorgeous - especially photographing it on that table - great lines.

How exciting! Thanks for keeping all of us vicarious living folks updated!

I've done this dessert too many times, but I haven't posted as frequently on this thread, and I took a new step with this. First, I made this from memory - adjusted to my memory...so not quite the same as I've made before (originally in Pastry's Best), and I played a bit more with the sugar. I have no experience in sugar, but on this one, I boiled my sugar, added almonds and then spun it into spirals...not earth shattering, but I had never done it before so I was happy. Anyway, almond cocktail with passion fruit gelee.

I'm very proud of my state of NM that goes smokefree later this summer (just signed into law yesterday). My little oasis mountain town has been smoke free for years, but now our bars go clean too!

This may become the Tony's experience thread if we're not careful, but Tony's was my first "nice restaurant" moment when I was just 17 (22 years ago). I did dare to go to the bathroom, and when I returned my napkin had been carefully re-folded, much of my serviceware had been replaced, and I thought they had already reset for the next guest. Even back then I thought the food was just ok. Now, back to defending the Hill. Yes, Rigazzis and the rest are over-rated, but each has gems. My favorite part of the Hill is exploring the bakeries - especially in the holiday season.

That special occassion restaurant I believe is Tony's. I've always been pleasantly surprised at the ethnic restaurants. My last visit (Dec) I went to Himalaya which was pretty good (not special). Do like the locals do and pick up a RFT (River Front Times) and see who they're pushing these days.

David's comment helped me force a parallel with car dealers - especially Saturn. Their whole pricing game is that "we're going to remove that element of the deal. Your car costs us this much to make, and adding this much on is going to be a fair payment to the dealer for their time/service." No negotiations. And to tangent into another parallel - I recently heard of a restaurant out east that only takes plastic, - no cash or checks. At the time of the report, they were doing very well with that model. So, here I wonder if any restaurant would be willing to change their model to pay a fair wage to their staff, and have customers pay a clearly stated rate - and no more. (I'm acknowledging that this former parallel is not truly parallel because for most there is no stress related to tipping unlike car purchase negotiations.)

I wonder if you could slice them and make them into bagel chips...or are they too far gone?

I hope their festivities carry over - I'm on the books for that Sunday - coming in for the Fancy Food Show.

In our town we have a restaurant owner who has been known to chase people down the street to ask them why they tipped low or failed to tip. My thought is that you let it go. I know the intent is to find out why so you can improve your service, but if someone is going to leave a small or no tip, they already have put themselves in that frame of mind and I feel its better to let it go and focus on improving. I believe that people who want to tell you why, will. If they don't, then they have built up a fight in their mind and probably aren't open to an honest dialogue anyway.

Sometimes desserts don't turn out the way you want, but this still tasted great following our chicken tagine. Its was supposed to be a saffron mousse (but our guest list grew and I ran out), so then it was finished with a pomegranate mousse. In between is a pink peppercorn genoise (really great contrast). I set it all on toasted pine nut and served it on pomegranate mollasses with fresh berries and a pine nut brittle with black pepper, topped with an Italian meringue.

I wouldn't eliminate the water but you could do a water/agave mixture since its boiling and see what happens....I'll keep answering, but this is uncharted territory.

I haven't used it in a traditional sponge or genois, but I have in dacquois and shortbread, so i don't think I can give you a helpful response. And as for an aftertaste, there is a slight dull taste, but I don't think it would be noticed. Let us know how the experiments go. The only tip is that I normally incorporate it into another liquid that is in the recipe (ie milk) on the stove top and consider it part of the liquid ingredients if that makes sense. So for example, if the recipe was 1 C. Sugar, 1 C. Flour, 1 C. Milk...I might try 1 C. Flour and .75 Milk/Agave...but its all playing and I also am doing altitude adjustments at the same time.

Wow, you were dead on. I made my first batch last night and it was way too sweet. I hadn't thought of the yeast eating the sugar...duh! Thanks for the info.

I was wondering about the combination of white chocolate and rootbeer as well...I thought it might be too sweet. Let us know. And yes, I'll definitely post pics.