lapin d'or

Apart from wondering how these guys sleep at night I also wonder how they pull off stunts like this overnight. Or perhaps they have been planning them for weeks just in case. I can't even open a bank account in 24 hours let alone buyout a business. If our government does anything to 'help businesses' surely they can do something about the legislation that lets you sell a bankrupt business to your best mate handing over all of the assets but none of the debts. If we can legislate on the shape of a banana then surely to god we can sort this out.

This may not be any good as you would only be using one side of the mould but Hans Brunner have a top/bottom egg mould in a range of sizes : egg mould

I have one recipe for Borodinsky bread in an English cook book. They use a rye sourdough starter to which they just add light rye flour, no wheat flour or extra yeast. The bread also has salt, molasses, malt extract and coriander in it. No butter or oil. No idea how authentic this is!

Lior, the link below should take you to a preview of recipes from Sherry Yard. Scroll down to I think page 96 and you get to the twix recipe. I am going to have to try this as I have always loved the bought version. sherry yard recipes lots of other good looking things in there too and although I think it is protected from printing out, there is not too much info to jot down. cheers

I have received my copy of Complete Confectionery Techniques and this is pretty much a student primer in working with sugar. My copy is the 10th impression (1999) of the 1994 edition so maybe the 1995 impression did produce some rare error of printing but I doubt this book is really worth more than a few pounds but is has some fun items in it. It has quite a small section on chocolate and the pieces they cover remind me a little of those in the Geertz book - dipped flavoured marzipan and dipped fondant, very basic truffle formula with no glucose/invert sugar. There are a couple of paragraphs on painting with cocoa powder paint (1 part cocoa butter, 2 parts oil and cocoa to the depth of colour wanted) which I had not seen before. Apparently this works quite well on white chocolate eggs. The whole book is 148 pages and has a reasonable number of colour photos. the chapter headings are: Introduction - sugar types, colourings, colour theory, flavourings, equipment Sugar - working with sugar, tables of temperatures, poured sugar decorations, marbled sugar work, spun sugar, fondant, meringue, piping boiled sugar, pulling sugar, making pulled sugar flowers, baskets and ribbons, blowing sugar to make fruits and other decorations. Petit Fours - covering sponge petit fours with boiled fondant, almond/marzipan friandises, fruits dipped in boiled sugar, brief description of candying fruit, a few recipes for caramels and fudge, nougat, marshmallow and turkish delight. Pastillage decoration Marzipan - recipes for different types of marzipan and several pages on modelling with marzipan, covering a fruit cake with marzipan and a battenburg cake. Chocolate - theory on how it is made, handling, tempering, pouring, piping, cocoa painting, decorative chocolate run-outs and ribbons, some recipes for cake fillings and icings. There is only limited theory in here and not the detailed information that Grewelling has on some of the things that can go wrong. The section I found most interesting was the sugar work as most of my confectionery books focus on chocolate work. I need to try some of the candy recipes before I can say anything about how good they are. It was worth the few pounds I paid for it and I think one of the authors still teaches sugar and chocolate work in his own school: nicolello The photos on the web site are quite fuzzy in places but quite a few of the photos of finished products have been taken from the book so you get some idea of what to expect. cheers, Lapin

I have also often thought about how I could make a living from something I love doing. But there is the catch. I love 'baking at home'. I am in my own house, baking what I choose and no one tells me off when the cookies all come out a different size and I have changed the recipe because I felt like it. I can use good ingredients, no industrial cake mixes, no synthetic flavoured jams, no blocks of waxy vegetable fats and if I don't feel like baking because the weather is nice outside I can make those choices. For me baking in a commercial environment would just not be the same. I would like to think I could hack it but I know I couldn't. There are a load of reasons why I would be no good to anyone running a bakery and it would frustrate me to be so useless to them. If you have had a long think about what skills you would need in a commercial environment, and believe you have them, then that's different, but I don't think that home baker to professional baker is always a natural progression.

If anyone is looking for an enjoyable meal in Barnstaple, North Devon, then do try The Old Customs House. We had a very good lunch there today, small menu, tapas style, all very well cooked and friendly service (evening menu not tapas based). Lunch tapas dishes are priced at £4 each, glasses of wine started at £3.50 I think. We had battered cod with lime mayonnaise, devon rump of beef with mushrooms, excellent chips with garlic mayo, and an excellent green salad as shared main course dishes. For dessert a lime parfait with fresh fig, confit fig and raspberry sauce and a moorish custard with beignets. Coffee was also very good. Other dishes on the lunch menu were cauliflower soup, hummous, crab risotto, chicken stuffed with black pudding, cheeses & quince. I don't think they have a website, lovely old building. Rare treat in North Devon. The Old Custom House, 9 The Strand, Barnstaple, EX31 1EU, tel 01271 370123

I found this description on a UK booksellers web site: The book site had a very cheap (UK sterling 7:43 inclusive of postage) used copy which I have ordered so I will post back once I can see what is in the book. I would guess it would be quite basic pastry student instruction level.

You will get smaller ice crystals, smoother texture, in an ice-cream that is stirred constantly while it is being frozen. The volume may also increase due to the additional air that gets incorporated while churning. The recipe you want to try includes one whisking if it is frozen without churning. Some recipes suggest you beat by hand two or three times while the mixture is freezing.

Oh ok, doh, I think I need new spectacles, that makes sense. Did you have to glaze/varnish the area that had been next to the gelatine? On the Cocoa Barry clip they said the chocolate would be very matt where it had been next to the humid gelatine. thanks

I think I am having a dead brain day Kerry but I was expecting the pattern to recess into the egg mould? Can someone help me work that out! Thak you for posting the picture, I should try the nuts on the outside of the egg that looks very attractive.

The latest online demo on the cocoa barry website has some ideas for making a moulded piece look more interesting, ie more like a show piece. They show use of gelatine to make a patterned 'indent' onto an easter egg. This was all new to me and might be of interest to other begginers. To watch the video links you have to register with them and I think they might ask you to look at the demos in order. If you understand french I would opt to have that version as the english voice over is pretty badly translated. cocoa barry site If you click on the demonstration online tab and then click on Advanced courses you should get to the right part of the web site. The demo is called Moulding. I also found the clip on tempering praline paste quite useful. It can be fun just watching those guys handle chocolate so well.

I never deep fry so left over grease tends to be from cooking meat or roasting veggies and all this gets fed to the birds. Large amounts of beef or lamb fat are allowed to set in lumps and get put on the bird table. Smaller ammounts of these or softer fats such as pork, chicken get mashed up with the cheapest porridge oats I can buy and again put out on the bird table. I have found that wiping out a warm roasting tin with cheap dusty porridge oats is a very good way to clean up the pan. The fat gets soaked up and the birds get a great treat. Tiny amounts of fat just get wiped up with a paper towel which is composted. I have been kept entertained by a huge range of birds visiting the garden this winter, even the woodpecker eats fat when it is really cold.

We had these cheese scones (biscuits?) with a home made carrot soup, simple dinner but very good.

I have not done tests to compare ice-creams made from chocolates with different cocoa butter percentages but both Valrhona and Callebaut recommend on their websites that you use lower cocoa butter chocolates in ice-cream. I once made a rich chocolate ice-cream that I can only describe as being quite chewy and I think this was becuase there was too much solid fat in it.

I wish I could say I had, and thank you for asking. I contacted the company that now owns the All Gold label and heard absolutely nothing back. My other enquires have also drawn blank. I think I need to go to some of the museums in person. The video link above was fun to see and made me realise that there were quite a few chocs in the box that I could not remember at all! I was just going to do the few that I had worked out but my mum has not been well for a bit and has lost most of her appetite, so this Christmas the timing was not right. I am planning to pull some of this together for Mothering Sunday by which time she should be a lot brighter. So if anyone had any All Gold flash backs over Christmas please let me know. lapin

Fejoida, pork and bean stew, from Brasil is a superb way to make a tasty meal from beans, cheap pork cuts, rice and kale. I am sure there is a thread on egullet about making it and you can make a lot of the stew at a time and freeze it in portions. This can be served with fresh orange salad and chilli that adds a lot of colour to the fairly brown stew. It uses lots of cheap cuts of pork, including trotters and ears if you want! I would make my own fresh egg pasta as this can be quite expensive to buy compared to straight dried pasta, and it can make a good meal with a simple vegetable sauce. You can make those different flavours like spinach and know they have good stuff in them. Home made ravioli can also be fun if you dont mind fiddly tasks. Vegetable tagines (lots of root vegetables) with cous cous is good in winter as the warm spices really change dull vegetables into something else and this can look pretty colourful too. Those are my favourite ways to eat carefully, hope some of them appeal. All the best Maggie

We had a quiet dinner at home, I had some goose stock in the fridge made from the christmas goose. My husband used this to make a delicious rissotto with some porcinni mushrooms and just a few morsels of goose meat added near the end. This was perfect comfort food.

If they used a very old recipe they may have added fresh minced meat (beef or mutton) to it. I would add Irish whiskey and definitely real grated suet fat. I have seen Guinness added to christmas pudding but not mincemeat.

Well I was not saying that bolognese pizza was the norm but just something you could often get in the uk, and it is not just the 3am take out places that offer it. See below, nice enough place, pizza options lower down the menu. newcastle restaurant This is no overnight 'fashion' either, I first remember a collaegue ordering one over 15 years ago.

It is not unusual in the uk to be offered pizza topped with bolognese sauce. This is sometimes done as a half n half, ie normal pizza topping one side, big dollop of bolognese sauce on the other. You can also get tandoori chicken pizza from quite a few take out shops and I have recently seen crispy duck pizza, with pineapple if you want it. I would put them all on the no no list.

Just a guess but if you look at his web site http://www.pierreherme.com/e-gourmandises/...194316ph8429570 there sems to be a coffee blend called melange PH.

marc de champagne is a spirit which I think they make by distilling the residue from champagne grapes. The one I bought this year has quite a distinct flavour. They may vary quite a bit like different grappas but I have only tried one so far. You can buy it as a flavouring compound too.

Cherry cordials are one of my favourite christmas chocolates. I wrap them in bright red foils so they look quite festive too. I also like a sour cherry and almond marizpan centre but not many folks join me on that one. I will be doing some marc de champagne truffles and I have a couple of moulds for making christmas tree ornaments. One is a small christmas tree that I will just do in solid chocolate and the other is a lantern mould that I am hoping to fill with soft caramel. I want to have a go at a spiced port ganache but have not even started experimenting with that yet. Happy xmas chocolate making everyone

I would opt for Kerry's suggestion of turning this batch into ice-cream sauce, with that I do not think you can fail to get something tasty and useful out of it. I think Fern has a good point about the altitude adjustment. I have no experience of altitude cooking but the emphasis always seems to be on the effect on boiling water temperatures. A caramel at high temperatures has very little water left in it so this must have some impact on the corrections. So if for example cooking oil heats at altitude to the same temperatures as at sea level then I would say the altitiude correction could have been the problem. Next time could you double check doneness with the drop of caramel syrup in ice cold water method? I admire your determination!!