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Avocado ice cream

Me?? Yep, many times before. That said I'm in the middle of moving house and don't have any of my recipe books at the moment.

Purely for the sake of fun What if I wouldn't eat the ceral dry? Then adding the milk is actually the combination of two ingredients to make a completed dish. At this point, is the dish a broth?

Have you checked the thermometer recently?? That's all I could think of. Or, if you're quartering a batch, it might be cooling too quickly on the marble.

This is a handy link as well for fondant http://www.eddyvandammeusa.com/2010/02/fondant/ I haven't tried the Greweling recipe. When I have made fondant in the past, the agitation process has taken a good 20+ minutes of hard agitation - you really do work your arms. The link above uses a high powered food processor to do the agitation (if you have one). I have also done the agitation step in a kitchen aid with the paddle attachment (after a little working manually first).

Definately worked. It might have been the frozen raspberries had enough natural pectin that the pectin NH wasn't needed?? That said, "smoother texture" is definately a description I would use for this batch versus the normal batch

Like emmalish, I pour onto parchment which is in a tray (so no spillage over the edges). Usually just wrap in a platic bag.

Hi Kerry, it's a jam recipe which needs to be slightly firmer than I normally like for the centre of macaroons 100% raspberries 80% sugar 0.8% citrus pectin I ended up using pectin NH in the same ratio and it worked fine. I think you are correct though - if the pectin was a larger proportion of the recipe it would give a different texture. Cheers

Don't know if I'll hear any other answers but one chef I trust has told me to leave the amount of pectin the same in the recipe (ie., 1:1 ratio)

Hi, I have to make a recipe tonight which calls for citrus pectin. Unfortunately I only have pectin NH on hand and no time to wait. Does anyone know what ratio should be used to substitute pectin NH for citrus pectin? Cheers

As long as the cocoa butter you start with is in temper you will be fine grating it and using it (I think that is what Edward J is getting at). Mycryo is in temper. Other cocoa butter may not be. More importantly, adding cocoa butter to your couverture will thin it out. This may or may not be desirable (thin shells on mould are good, too thin and they have problems releasing). Repeatedly using this techinuque day in day out means your chocolate has more and more cocoa butter added over time, making it thinner and thinner. May be desirable, but you need to be aware of it. Also, cocoa butter is expensive, so adding it to the chocoalte you are tempering makes that chocolate more expensive. just worth bearing in mind if you are selling the finished product.

I think it depends a bit what you are looking for. For my chocolates, I find cold infusion works far better for certain flavours - generally herbs. I find mint to be a far "fresher" flavour when done via overnight cold infusion. Having bits of actual mint in the final product is also not always desirable from a texture perspective.

I thought trimoline was liquid form invert sugar??

I've used passionfruit puree as the liquid to mix with icing sugar - made a tasty, last minute topping for some cake we were doing at the time

No worries everyone The blog is great. He has a book out as well which may be worth checking out if you are in need of a baking/pastry book (I've tried 3 or 4 recipes from his blog and they have been very solid - the dark chocolate mousse is a must-try)

Purely guessing based in the fact they were European chocolates, but I would say you were eating something similar to this recipe http://www.eddyvandammeusa.com/2009/11/belgian-chocolate-truffles/

If you have Google Toolbar switched on, you can have the Translate function which automatically translates text of webpages into your native language. It's usually close enough to figure out what's going on.

My wife and I did a trip mid-last year. We went to the following and all were good. Jean-Charles Rochoux was my favourite for chocolates, Genin for caramels and Herme for macarons. That said, all were very close to each other and it's really splitting hairs. And some of these shops had beautiful displays of chocolate sculptures - very photo worthy - Rochoux and Chaudun come to mind, as does Roger. Lenotre and Laduree are more pastry than chocolates and Berthillon is only ice cream (but what ice cream - try the chocolate if you get a chance). Pierre Marcolini 89, rue de Seine Pierre Herme (more for pastries and macarons) 72, rue Bonaparte Christian Constant 37, rue d’Assas Jean-Charles Rochoux 16, rue d’Assas Laduree (more pastires and macarons) Ladurée Champs Elysées 75, avenue des Champs Elysées Berthillon (Ice cream only) 31, rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile (4th) Fauchon (has lots of pastries and a bakery - two stores close by to each other) 30, Place Madeleine 75008 Jean-Paul Hevin 231, rue St-Honoré Michel Cluizel 201, rue St.-Honoré Richart 258 bd St Germain Paris 75007 Michel Chaudun 149, rue de l’Université Patrick Roger 45, avenue Victor Hugo Lenotre Patisserie (more pastries) 48 Avenue Victor Hugo 75116 La Maison du Chocolat 225, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré (8th) Aoki Sadaharu Patissrie 56, Boulevard Port Royal 75005 Jacques Genin 133, rue de Turenne (3rd)

Yep, lid on

Herme's book is great and Google Translate is very good at translating the recipes. http://translate.google.com/#fr|en| I use the Herme proportions for Italian without any issues. This is another recipe for Italian which I haven't tried, the egg whites for the meringue are a lot less than I would use but I think the picture of the cut macaron (last/bottom picture) speaks for itself http://www.eddyvandammeusa.com/2010/01/gerbet-macaroons-gerbet-macarons/ I'm keen to try this recipe at some stage

That would be my guess

Re Tava - their standard chocolate bar is a 100% bar (I think they may refer to it as bakiers/baking chocolate, but they just mean it's 100%). I'm just not sure if they're shipping at the moment while they move premises. You can always try e-mailing them - it'll be cheaper than buying a 99% Cluizel bar

Not sure if Tava are currently shipping but they definately do chocolate liquor/chocolate mass/100% chocolate (all the same). Otherwise buy some 99% chocolate from somewhere like Simon Johnson or Essential Ingredient which will prob work OK for nougat. LucyInAust - you can buy chablon mats (the silicon stencils) from Savour Chocolate & Patisserie School in Melbourne. If you can't get to Melbourne, you can give them a call and they can probably help you buy over the phone.

Not that I have to worry about altitude adjustments, but I know many on this forum do and this seemed to be one of the best and most comprehensive articles I'd read on the topic http://www.eddyvandammeusa.com/2010/02/high-altitude-baking/ Just thought it might be useful for some of you out there . . .

Away from my recipes for a while at the moment - I'll try and remember when I get them