lapin d'or

I tried to do this a couple of days ago with my favourite lemon cake recipe from cookbook 'Dinner at the Authentic Cafe' and had to cook the cake for much longer at a lower temperature. The top of the cake was starting to get quite brown while it was still wobbling in the middle, so after about 40mins I turn the temp down and kept it cooking a good 20 mins more than the standard time. I wanted one large cake for a birthday, otherwise I would have split the mixture into two loaf pans to get more even cooking. Lapin

Does it have to be a moulded bar? For a chewy caramel I can only imagine doing a hand dipped or machine enrobed bar where you cut the caramel to size and then dip. The turtle bars in Schott's book have a very soft caramel but they look good. If anyone knows how to do this in moulded bars I will buying some bar moulds straight away, I love chocolate & caramel but my dipping skills are rubbish! Lapin

If you are travelling/staying in the North Devon Holsworthy area you might like to try Blagdon Manor. We had lunch there today, 3 courses for £20, and it was really enjoyable. It makes a change for us to have somewhere within 45 mins drive that is worth the trip and this certainly was. The staff are very friendly and helpful, the food very good quality and the portions not at all mean for a budget lunch. We were served a selection of hot canapes with pre-meal drinks. I had a pigeon breast and black pudding starter cooked pink and very tender. Main course of John Dory with seasonal vegetables and a selection of West Country cheeses that were all excellent. It was an excellent way to spend a drizzly bank holiday Saturday. On a nicer day you could enjoy a walk around the grounds and panoramic views. We were happy to watch the woodpeckers feeding just a few metres from where we sat in the warmth. Lapin

We had an excellent meal at the Walnut Tree one night last week. The restaurant was full and apparently lunchtimes are also very busy right now. I really liked how un-fussy and yet beautifully cooked everything was and thought the wines were priced very fairly compared to some places that really bump up their prices. We stayed in one of the cottages which was perfect. Really comfortable and spacious. In the morning we sat in the conservatory eating our breakfast listening to cuckoos calling. My calves liver main was the best I have ever had. Thank you Walnut Tree for a brilliant meal and nights accommodation.

A book I have bought recently by Paul A Young has a recipe for ale truffles and to bring out the malty flavour he suggests you use a milk chocolate such as Valrhona Jivara Laite 40% which has a malty flavour. The recipe also uses light muscovado sugar which I guess will also push up the malt/dark sugar flavours you find in stout. The ratio of ale to chocolate is 300ml to 450g milk, no cream. I think I would be tempted to cut back on the cream in the stout mousse as I think it will deaden the flavour. The white mousse can add the extra creamyness. Lapin

I think I would be tempted to roast the pears in butter with a little mild flavoured honey and a squeeze of lemon juice. I don't think they should turn pink if they are acid enough. The drier cooking should help concentrate the flavour but pears don't always have that much flavour to start with. Lapin

I have tried to make turkish delight a few times, different recipes, including the one from Grewelling professional and never achieved a firm set. I did not have the starch that Grewelling asked for so that may not have helped, I just used cornflour. I have seen recipes that ask you to slowly boil the mixture for over an hour and as it requires constant stirring that seems like a huge amount of work. I tried cooking in the microwave thinking I could get the heat up easily and minimise the starch burning on the base of the pan but it still did not thicken properly. Lapin

Same for me; spread out on a tray covered in parchment and then break up but I have been getting concerned that some of the plastic bags/boxes I use to store the chocolate aferwards have been imparting a bit of a 'plastic' aroma. Not sure if it will help but I have started trying to keep the plastic type bags the chocolate came in and then re-use these to store the pieces. The tainting has seemed worst with white chocolate.

I had forgotten about this option for tempering but used it last night as I really did not want to open a new 2.5kg bag of chocolate just to seed the 1kg I had in the melter. I only had 1 small easter bunny left to make and there was plenty in the melter from the day before to do it; I just needed some way to seed it. I wasn't organised enough at the end of the last session to tip some out while it was still in temper so the whole kilo in the melter had gone completely out of condition. I do not use cocoa butter a lot so I buy mycryo to save myself trying to prise small lumps out of a very stubborn thick block. Anyway I could remember something from the Callebaut web site that said you should sieve the mycro first to get all the clumps out so I did that and it worked really well. I used the same method to temper a very small amount of white chocolate for the bunny's eyes and tail and again this worked fine. So big thank you to Darienne for bringing this up. Lapin

This book from Paul A Young came out in the UK last year but I have only just purchased a copy and wonder if anyone else is using it. The book has some really wonderful flavour combinations and is written to inspire home cooks so no great emphasis on equipment. Many of the recipes are for ganaches but there are savoury and dessert ones in there too. Some really good notes on chocolate flavours and pairing them imaginatively. Some odd ones like Marmite ganache that I will not be trying but others like goats cheese and lemon that I think I will. I am also keen to try the caramel,milk chocolate and Glenmorangie whiskey sauce and the lemon thyme caramel sauce. Will post back when I have some pictures to show.

I have some of the very fine ridge pattern, is that of any use? Just straight line ridges, nothing fancy. The sheets are quite large but I guess you could roll them up to send.

When I made the caramels I used liquid lecithin, not granules though it is a very viscous liquid. The sorbitol I used was from the SOSA brand and it is a liquid but the label just gives sorbitol as the ingredient, no % and no mention of added water. Hope that helps a little. Lapin

Can I add a big thank you to Schneich for giving us his caramel recipe which was the star of the chocolates I made for friends and family this Christmas. I dipped it in both plain and milk chocolate but prefer the milk version. This is the only caramel recipe that has worked for me. Easy to cut, easy to eat and no nasty sugar crystals formed while it was stored. Next year I think I am just going to do a range of caramels! Many thanks Lapin

I have bought Valrhona from HB Ingredients, they sell a reasonable range of the 3kg packs. The prices range from about £10 to £13 per kilo depending on which one. You have to pay about £10 for delivery unless you can order up to £200 in one go. Town and Country also sell Cluizel, very good couverture in my opinion but more expensive than Valrhona. They also have a far lower minimum order value than a lot of places. cheers Lapin

I have been wanting to try mincemeat with quince for some time. I now have some quinces on order and hope to make this next week if all goes well. It should have time to mature a little before the xmas mince pies are needed. Recipe from Nigella Lawson below Quincemeat

Had dinner at Purnell's last week and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The food was quite outstanding and there was nothing pompous or stuffy about the restaurant service which was so good to see. Really enjoyed looking around the indoor market in Birmingham too. Long time since I saw boiling fowl and fish heads for sale. Lapin

I have really enjoyed reading this thread and have been reminded to get some bottles of Tanglefoot in, one of my favourite beers. Looks like a really good trip, cheers Lapin

In addition to many of those already mentioned my favourite non american english language authors are Darina Allen, Peter Gordon, Richard Whittington/Alistair Little, Frances Bissell, Tessa Kiros and Atul Kochhar(for Indian food). Nothing to do with anything but I think Rick Stein's 'famous' dog was called Chalkie not Sparkie. Lapin

I made an apple soup last year to use up crab apples and that was very good, I think there are quite a few scandinavian fruit soups that use apple and my apple recipe book has one for apple, leek and potato soup that can be served hot or cold. For puddings I like to add a lot of grated apple to a sweet mincemeat pie, pancakes or waffles served with stewed apples are prety good. Eve's pudding allways looks nice and simpe but I have never made one. For vegetable dishes red cabbage cooked with apple and of course chutneys.

I have just made some oatcakes using a scribbled down recipe from The River Cottage Bread book. I didn't have wholemeal flour so I used a small amount of rye with strong white flour and I could only find medium oatmeal so I sieved it to get the larger pieces out. I think I should have used a softer flour as the otcakes were a little elastic but tasted really good. I was nervous about the amount of liquid but the batter thickened up as it sat. I cut down the salt, only adding as much as I wanted by tasting rather than weighing. I left the batter for about 3 hours to prove by which time it was very frothy. I am cooking them on an old welsh griddle pan that had been rusting in the garage for a while so it took a bit of cleaning up and seasoning but worked really well once it was clean and hot. It would be good to cook with 2 pans at once so you could turn these out a bit faster. Sorry about the poor picture, I was trying to show them being cooked but the griddle is as black as the stove top so not very clear. The original ingredients were: 225g wholemeal flour 225 g oatmeal 500 ml water 500 ml milk 5g yeast 10g salt

My uk version of the Roux brothers recipe asks for 500g flour, 500g butter, 1tsp salt, 275ml water.

andiesenji, the recipe you mention that required muffing rings was possible closer to a staffordshire oatcake than your current oatcake recipe. The linked recipe above is for scottish oatcakes which are more like a dry biscuit/cracker whereas the staffordhire oatcake is more like a pancake. Can anyone tell me how Derbyshire oatcakes differ from staffordshire oatcakes? lapin

My first attempt at a water based ganache was a coffee flavour for which I used Trablit coffee extract and some brandy but for the oil I used walnut oil which gave it quite a distinct taste that complemented the coffee. I would try this again with an oil that had a less toasted flavour as the slightly burnt nut flavour was the one that was left on your palette, where I wanted to have the coffee/chocolate flavour dominate. Lapin

Another home cooks book on sauces that I have is the Sauces volume from the The Good Cook Series, Time Life. ISBN 7054 0613X. This has a more international selection of recipes but also more detailed notes/pictures on the preparation of stocks and reductions. I think books from this series can often be found for about £5 from second hand book sellers. It would be worth a look. Lapin

More info on Roux Sauces: This is very much a home cooks book, not heavy french classical but traditional none the less. No foams. Each recipe has serving suggestions at the start. Good basic book but not anything like a 'bible'. 175 pages with lots of pictures. Chapter Headings with info on some of the recipes in each: Intro - advice, equipment (nothing more complex than a bain marie) Stocks -(veal, chicken, lamb, game, fish, vegetable, cooked marinade) no fancy clarifications with egg whites or trendy bags, just a fine sieve. Liaisons & Instant Sauces -(use of egg yolk, starches, cream, blood, breadcrumbs, butter, beurre manie, roux, vinaigrettes) then example recipes ie thai vinaigrette with lemongrass, crustacean oil, pistou sauce Flavoured Butters & Vegetable Coulis - classics such as anchovy, maitre d'hotel .., range of vegetable coulis, tomato, morel, parsley Sauces & Chutneys for Terrines, Pates & Game - port sauce, apple, poivrade, pumpkin, venison & blackberry, peach chutney Sauces for fish - Nantua, champagne, Americaine, Thermidor, Mango, Curried Mussel, Mandarin, Matelote, raspberry scented oyster sauce Emulsion Sauces - mayonniase, gabriche, aioli, tartare, hollandiase, beurre blanc, White Sauces - bechamel, coconut & chilli pepper, aurora, bread sauce, parsley, sorrel, soubise, mornay Brown Sauces - Chasseur, Periguex, Orange, Bologniase, Chicken sauce with curacao, curry sauce which is mainly fruit, onion, curry powder & coconut and almost deliaesque Dessert Sauces - stock syrup, orange butter, creme anglais, liquorice, prune & armagnac, caramel, chocolate, If you are only going to buy one book then this is perhaps not the one as there are clearly more comprehensive ones out there but if you want a primer this is pretty good.