lapin d'or

This firm in Australia sell pure cocoa butter for making cosmetics. New Directions web site I have used 100% pure cocoa butter from cosmetic suppliers before when I only wanted a very small amount. I would just check with them the product has been prepared and packaged ok for food use. I have used the uk site before as they carry a wide range of natural fats/butters etc. Jill

Well my too chewy home made snickers bars have now been rescued. It was a bit of a marathon, but I managed to deconstruct the caramel and nougat layer, re-cook the caramel to a softer setting, squidge the nougat back in the pan and then top again with the caramel. I have just dipped them which was a bit messy as the nougat was now somewhat crumbly but yum they taste so good. Many thanks for the help. I will try hard to get the caramel right next time - it will be so much easier! I am taking the bars into work tomorrow and hoping everyone enjoys them as much as I do. Thanks Kerry for the recipe

Is there any hope for overcooked caramel? I had a go at the home made snickers bars this weekend but I have cooked my caramel a tad too high and the texture is quite brittle and very chewy. I have already poured it onto the nougat layer so I cannot easily reboil! Is there any hope it will soften if I leave it out uncovered for a while. I left it open for a night but no change. This is so frustrating because I normally undercook caramel and if I leave it out for even an hour it goes tacky - not this time. The taste of the nougat was superb so I have plans to try again even if I have to abandon this batch. At the moment it will not cut easily into bars. I tried just cutting one corner and it sort of shattered - no control over the cut. I guess I could try and peel the caramel layer off the nougat.

I think the site you may have been looking for is home chocolate factory I have not used them but they carry a range of chocolate and moulds. You will also find a small number of chocolate items like dipping forks and cheaper plastic moulds on many cake decorating sites - Jane Asher has chocolate stuff. I have been using a firm linked with Vantage House - called HB ingredients. They have a good range but you have to pay a minimum postage charge which is about £8 unless you are going to buy a lot. Bettys by Post also had a few pieces of chocolate making equipment last time I looked but they were expensive. Also try keylink they have carry a lot of chococlate, equipment and packaging. Again you pay for postage which was £9 last time I ordered with them.

My copy arrived yesterday and the caramel filling in the Turtle Tablet recipe was just jumping off the page at me. I made a batch in the evening but just kept it simple by piping the filling into round milk chocolate cups and then I dipped these in a blend of Callebaut milk and 70% dark chococolate. I really like milk chocolate but prefer it less sweet to any I have tried from Callebaut so far. Adding some 70% makes all the difference. Anyway I took these to work today and they went really quickly and were highly praised. This was the first caramel ganache I have made and I really liked it - I can see this recipe becoming a favourite. As a beginner I think I am going to find this book just what I was looking for. And this site is so fantastic for helping when you cannot work out what is going wrong! I have leant so much here - thank you egulleters. Got to choose my next recipe now.

You could try and get a copy of Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free - A Guide to the edible wild plants of Britain'. I have a very old copy but I know it was reprinted. I also think you can now get reprints of Hugh Fearnley's... Cook on the Wild Side from the River Cottage web site. Ray Mears is currently looking at British Hunter Gatherers on TV too. happy foraging

"Do these people really think a dog on the label or wacky name is going to get me to buy the beer, with no other knowledge of it?" I guess I often order a beer because I like the name but only if I can see what sort of beer it is first. Two that I came to like this way were 'Tanglefoot' and 'Old Thumper'. But that is the sort of thing you do at beer festivals - you have to choose from the hundreds on offer some how, and then try to remember which ones you liked at the end. I also like the name of Cotleigh's Buzzard but we see Buzzards flying around here most days so that is just an association I like to make with a place I love. The beer is good too mind.

Randi, I wish you all the best in your new job and I hope you are able to keep your diner's happy but it is a tough call. This has got me thinking hard about saving up more for my own old age - and I do hope I get to see one, but only if I can eat well! My mum has quite bad arthritis and this makes using cutlery increasingly difficult - there are so many things caterers need to take into account. Anyway for summer I wonder if you can do some nice chilled vegetable soups and even when it is warm I quite like to eat baked potatoes filled with tuna fish mayo and served with salad. Potato salads with lots of fresh herbs are lovely too. Perhaps you could serve cold boiled beef or cold roast shoulder of pork. The diabetic friendly desserts seem hard to do on a budget - so often the 'good' desserts need to have quite a lot of low fat dairy or plenty of fruit which can be expensive, especially in the winter months. My MIL has diabetes and uses a lot of those sugar free instant jellies but I really do not like them. Dried apricots seemed to be one of the things on her list as ok and they can be good plumped up and served with a bit of yogurt and a small drizzle of honey.

I would also recommend Black Sheep but my current favourite is Golden Pig from Country Life Brewery in Bideford, Devon, right on my doorstep.

Peter Reinhart has been working on a new book for a while which I think should be out this year. Not sure if it has a title yet but I believe it will cover wholemeal breads offering up new ways to make them taste more interesting. See his blog for more information blog link here

I went to a cordon bleu cookery school in Britain in the mid 1970's and apart from shortbread, mincepies and christmas cake everything they taught us to cook was french. I swear we spent far more time garnishing and arranging the food than cooking it. It seemed quite alien to my home background of get it on the table quick but I was young and soaked up the french food snobbery. This was also a time when 'convenience food' was being touted as sophisticated. Why fill your newly acquired freezer with home cooked food when you could fill it with ready made chicken kievs. It came as quite a shock to me when I started my first cooking job at a shooting lodge in the highlands of Scotland that they did not want any of my newly acquired french tricks. We cooked with fabulous ingredients off the estate - wild salmon, venison, grouse etc. I do not remember any of the french or italian parties that we catered for complaining about the food, though a lot of them preferred the cheese board to the steamed puddings. I would struggle to defend British cuisine as worthy of special mention, but I still think it is very good, but so many cuisines are when treated with absolute respect. There is far more interest in how we produce our food than there was 20 years and at last restaurants here do not insist on writing their menus in french when there is no point. But I am doubtful that British food will ever be revered. I still find that most foreign visitors we have want to go for a curry.

This may not work as well as rose oil but I am planning on using rose syrup in my first experiment with rose flavoured truffles. This syrup has a very strong rose turkish delight flavour and is available from asian stores. I first saw it on the chocolate and zucchinni, blog and I think there was a reference to someone using it in rose macaroons. The make I have is Natco: http://www.natco-online.com/acatalog/drinksection.html The rose syrup is about the second item down the page.

I am finding that I can get most of my books entered pretty quickly by typing in the ISBN. Only my older stuff is taking longer and some items have had to go on manually. I just wish I could be more consistent with my tags, I would never make a librarian. I reached the free book limit and had to subscribe - opted for the $25 dollars for life subscription so I am hoping the web site has a healthy life ahead of it. It is making me think about how I physically store my books but that is another thread.

I started my library thing list last autumn but have only added about one fifth of my collection so far. Hope the link behaves - here is the web address to my cataloge: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jill_farrimond New Years resolution is to get it up todate! I will post back when it is complete.

An ice cream cookie sandwich or one of those really retro ice cream gateau with lots of layers: ice-cream, sponge, biscuit, meringue there always seemed to be a bit of everything and if you made it look like a dobos torte you could use sails of speculaas biscuits for the top. Some caramel roasted quince on the side. Lots of sugar!

A lot of 'traditional' english cooking would possibly fit with the allowed foods but is not to everyones taste. I was raised on plain cooked roasted joints with potatoes (roast/boiled/mashed) and a boiled vegetable. I still cook a lot of plain beef stews without adding onion and so long as the beef is good they are very tasty. It is a pity fish is not allowed as a good fresh piece of fish needs very little flavouring added. Is sugar not allowed? If not you may be able to sweeten with apple concentrate or date syrup? There are some quite good gluten free flours on the market in the UK which allow you to bake a range of sweet and savoury pies. You may find some interesting pilafs in the Middle Eastern cuisine that allow you to combine rice, chicken, dried fruits and some permitted spices for extra flavour. I use a lot of fresh parsley in hot rice dishes and rice salads which together with a flavoursome olive oil can be far from bland even without any onion or garlic. Do the family like goats cheese and milk, I know a lot of people that find it too strong. good luck

I recently baked a banana cake from a Nigella Lawson recipe where you add rum soaked raisins. The recipe also had choclate it in too but the rum flavour came through very well.

Re opening an account with Kroese, I applied on line a couple of days ago and he phoned me back within two hours to ask a few questions and activate the account. He was really helpful asking what sort of product I was working with and what I was currently using. I wish I had known about them before (saw their name here on egullet last week) I ordered my first set of boxes from a supplier here in the UK. Kroese boxes are much more eye appealing. I have to use what I have bought first but will definitley use them as soon I can justify buying more boxes.

I am only making tiny numbers of chocolates and have just started using the truffle shells after doing a one day course at my local college. The instructor showed us how to use the plastic packaging for the shells to make your own filling template. The sheet that sits on top of the moulds when they come out of the box has a few holes in already and if you are very patient and have a pair of sharp scissors you can cut out a nice little circle in each dimple to make your piping hole. When you come to pipe in your filling you just sit this back on top of the shells and it traps any drips/smudges so long as the holes are not too big. I got tired cutting holes and just made a 4x4 shell template but it can easily be moved across the tray so long as you haven't been too messy with the piping. I managed to wash it out afterwards but not sure how long it will last before it cracks or splits. Its a good way to get started anyway!

Lots of banana for me too, my recipe has about the same weight of banana to flour. It has a few oats as well as pecans and chocolate chips. I use butter, but this is melted and cooled first. I tried walnut oil once but didn't think it helped much. I can never get my muffins to taste like the ones I bought on holiday in the US but they still taste good. I sometimes sprinkle a little home made muslei on top for extra crunch. I take most of my muffin recipes from a book called 'Muffins Fast and Fantasic' by Susan Reimer. These work quite well and there are lots of ideas for flavourings.

I hope she is going to give it to somebody who will read it, what a waste of a good book.

I wish Eat Soup was still going - I really liked that magazine. Can I add Frances Bissell to the list of good writers - I still have loads of cuttings from when she was writing in the Times and the recipes always worked. I just look at online editions of papers now - they never seem worth the 2 mile drive I have to undertake to get to a paper shop. I say this with regret because I used to enjoy 'reading' a weekend paper and always chose which one I bought by who was writing the food and gardening sections. I no longer find OHM inspiring or useful but maybe I would be more interested if I did not have the internet which provides far more of what I am looking for.

So how many did you try Filipe? Is this an annual event? My one book on the food of Portugal has quite a few sweet recipes; I will have to try some of them out now, but the egg thread recipe says it is very difficult to make at home. Are any of these pastries easy to make? Thank you for the photos, they have really brightened my morning! And made me hungry

I live in the UK and as far as I know if I buy organic meat it will not have been fed any hormone growth promoters. Is there not an equivalent grade of meat available in the US? It really upsets me that we so often turn to giving up eating certain foodstuffs rather than giving up some of the more dubious agricultural practices we currently employ to produce them. I am really lucky because I live in an area where I can get very good quality beef. There are plenty of things I avoid but if I know a producer is doing a good job then I try to support them - I would rather buy a cheaper cut of meat from a good producer than a steak from a source I know nothing about. Off my hobbyhorse now.

Daniel those mexican dishes look really tasty. My roll of the roulette wheel this week came out with another soup recipe. This time from Lorenza de Medici's ' A Passion for Fruit'. With no husband around this week to do a random pick for me I counted up the number of cook book shelves I had and got the computer to give me a random number. Then I counted the number of books on the shelf and got another random number. That picked out the Passion for Fruit book but when I opened it at random I hit on a page of fresh fig recipes. No fresh figs in my part of Devon right now so I split again and hit the crab apple section. Now this was really lucky as I have a crab apple tree in the garden with just a few fruits left on. So this weeks recipe was Crab Apple Soup. This is actually a lightly curried soup with crab apple, poached chicken breast, rice and cream. The soup base is pureed and then the chicken pieces added at the end with the cream. I also added some parsley for colour but it has quite a nice warm yellow from the curry powder anyway. I think the crab apples added just the right amount of tartness to the otherwise quite creamy soup but I loved it and it was the first recipe I have done from the book so it has encouraged me to try a few more. I cannot get any pictures worth posting at the moment but will keep trying.