lapin d'or

Chris, The chocolate nougat I made from the sleeping beauties also did not go well. I only have a hand mixer (no longer working well since I made this recipe) and the steps did not seem to be quite right from start to finish. I ended up hand kneading in the milk powder and cocoa but it was very tough, sticking to everything. I felt I lost a lot of the mixture stuck to the bowl, mixer, my hands, spoons - everything. I would say the texture improved after a day or so but not enough for me to try it again. It reminded me of a firmer version of a milky way bar (do you have those in the US?) just not tasty enough for the trouble. I only made the nougat not the caramel. I nearly threw mine away but I was making stuff for a sale and really needed another item for my table so I kept it. I put samples out but it was not popular even tho it was dipped in a good milk chocolate. I am hoping to soon have a set of trusted recipes to make up for the few sales that I do; so they are not such a roller coaster journey! The just keep the experimenting for the times in between.

If this couple have kids I would maybe try and keep away from the slayed partner theme, tho I love the imagery of the cake above linked by atcake. People have often been arguing for quite a while by the time they get divorced, maybe some zen like calm images, perhaps something to symbolise moving from negative energy to positive energy.

This mould, mixed seafish, on jkv website is named friture and this is another fish assortment and this another assortment of small size seafish I just have the larger sardine mould which is very popular and I am currently making as many as I can for a table top sale in a couple of weeks time. Good luck

I have seen gellan for sale recently on this UK website infusions and somewhere else but cannot remember where - possibly wild harvest.

I have seen chinese artichoke tubers for sale in a few of the seed catalogues ie Marshalls. I hope these are the same thing, I had never heard the name crosnes before?

I have used Natoora for online purchases of fresh fruit/veg and deli stuff but this is not cheap - good quality tho. For mexican ingredients I have bought mail order from Lupe Pintos in Scotland. I would try and find a wholesale greengrocer in your area. They often have fresher produce and many will sell smaller amounts so long as you do not get in their way when they are busy. For meat I would head to the farmers markets. There are loads of places selling meat, poultry and fish mail order if you cannot buy locally.

The Valrhona supplier I use in the UK has just bumped their prices up by about 10 percent - Gfron1's prices are much cheaper than I can get here for the same volume. It makes me so jealous to see what a good range of european chocolate you can get in the US compared to my options in the UK. I didn't think I would be able to use a 5kg pack quickly enough when I first started but I quickly found the cost of couriers made the larger packs better value and in good conditions they keep well. I just store in air-tight boxes in a cool dark room.

On the Hevin website they list caramel chocolate drops for sale with these ingredients 'Cocoa minimum : 33% ,Sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, caramel powder'. I wonder if they use this flavoured chocolate to make their rounds? Could you reproduce it by adding very finely ground caramel to tempered chocolate? I have a Hevin recipe book but there is nothing in there that sounds the same. A chocolate flavoured caramel but not caramel flavoured chocolate!

Are Harrods stocking anything bigger than the 100g retail bars do you know?

I've not heard that one either, made our wedding cake in 1989 and still happily married. My husband ended up helping make the sugar roses because I got so stressed out. He did a better job than me which was so funny because he had never touched icing before. We did the traditional english fruit cake which can be ready days ahead so that was a lot easier than something that has to be prepared at the last minute. I still found it pretty stressful with everything else that had to be done. Congratulation and all the best to you both.

Thick cut shortbread fingers or that shortbread with layers of caramel and chocolate on top, flapjack/cereal bars, an almond sponge baked about 1inch high and cut into blocks, gingerbread cut into blocks. good luck

My favourite carrot cake recipe comes from Dan Lepard's book titled 'Baking with Passion'. This always gets really good comments from everyone that has some and the recipe has always worked perfectly.

I watched all of the programmes but I was aware of most of the points they made already so whilst I was very pleased to see chicken welfare getting good prime time coverage this was not a week that changed my attitude to chicken. I have been keeping a few hens (from the battery rehoming charity) for about six months now and I would encourage anyone who has the space to do the same. As a child we had guinea pigs and rabbits as pets - I wish we had kept chickens they are much more fun. Keeping birds for meat is something I am thinking about but as yet I'm not confident I could dispatch them myself, and that would be important to me. The economic argument is complicated - a lot of non standard chicken does cost far more than the 50p premium being discussed. There have been many occaisions when the shops I have been in have had very little to offer between the very cheap birds and the very expensive premium ones. If the products are rarely on the shelves we cannot buy them and then the stores can argue that there is no demand. I seem to remember M&S were once adamant that there was no demand for organic food but now they have very much changed their mind. I know people that would always choose to have more beer money than pay extra for animal welfare. I just don't think the cheap chicken choice should be available to start with and if this requires legislation then, reluctantly, more legislation please.

I have not seen instant flour in the UK but if I needed a very low protein flour I would try french patisserie flour type 45 (have bouught this from the Flour Bin in Chesterfield) or perhaps an Italian patisserie flour. What are you going to be using this for?

Lior Mark has posted a couple of times on producing a liquid caramel for moulded items - he cooks the caramel to 230F. This is mentioned on the thread 'Flavoured Caramels' post ref 1391732 and Confections what did we make post ref 1344458. Sorry my post linking skills are no good hope the references work

Whenever I have seen 'Dextrose' in UK shops it has always been the powdered form, never, syrup so be sure what you are getting. I know there are differences between invert sugar syrups and glucose syrup but if you cannot find the glucose you may find looking for brand names like Trimoline or just invert sugar better than nothing? Way back when I first bought glucose for making icings it was always called 'Liquid Glucose' - I don't notice that now. A friendly local baker/confectioner might also be willing to part with some or help with a supplier's name.

I use between 1-2tbs of added liquid to 100g fondant but I have no idea if all fondants start as thick as each other so my brand may be quite different to others? This can produce a centre that is a bit fluid and I always leave them overnight before backing off. I have never tried invertase but would like to - yet to find a source here in the uk for it.

Early in the year I learnt a lot from Kerry's Confectionery demos - tried nougat for the first time and surprised people at work with the home made snickers. The Grewelling book has been a huge source book this year for technical info and flavouring ideas, and I think that book will be my favourite for a long time. The pictures of everyone's chocolate classes have also been fantastic for ideas and tips and I am truly grateful for the one that showed how to cover the melter base in cling wrap to ease cleaning up afterwards. Thanks everybody!

I have only produced a few fondant centres but lime fondant has been the most popular. I use a dark chocolate for the shell and flavour the fondant with a mixture of fresh lime juice, white rum or vodka and a few drops of lime essential oil. I tried making my own lime oil by macerating the zest in vodka but the flavour did not last very well. The essential oil has been more reliable. I also do rose and raspberry fondant. I did strawberry once by mixing freeze-dried strawberry powder into fondant. This was quite good but I'm not a big fan of strawberry and it took a while to sieve out the pips from the powder before adding it to the fondant. I do all of these with good fondant bought from a confectionery supplier - not the stuff for rolling out to cover cakes which I really do care for.

If I could not get good skirt steak I would be tempted to try well aged rump steak. Not sure what the equivalent cut would be called in the US. Pasties often do not have a lot of meat in so this is not such an expensive option.

A Praline Melts question- Today I pulled out a bag of melts that I had left over from a table top sale about three weeks ago. There was a white bloom against some of the rougher edges of the pieces. It made them look really like they had done mouldy. Now I am sure this is a bloom - most likely sugar bloom but has anyone else seen this? I was really upset to see it as I had told people at the sale stuff would be fine until Christmas; but you would not want to be given a mouldy looking packge of candy. I had kept my leftovers in cello bags but in a pretty cold room. The pieces were dusted with a mixure of cocoa powder and a little icing sugar mixed in. I have some dipped chocolates left over too which have been kept the same way and they still look fine. This really made my heart sink. Any thoughts on how to avoid this would be really welcome. lapin

I have found the cheeses supplied by Che to be really excellent, the web site information is very good, making it easy to pick ones to try. Pate and salami are also fantastic. I guess it would be fun to have a surprise selection each month but I really like picking out my own. I would recommend ordering some Poilane bread to go with them.

Totally agree Prawncrackers. I have most of her earlier books and use them often, and with great results. I hate the latest Express series both for style and recipes. I just find myself asking why is she doing it after every programme. Too bad really as I like watching cookery programmes and they are all getting a bit trivial. I want them to repeat the Roux Brothers very early series - nothing fluffy about any of that.

Well I live in the West Country but was not born & raised here so no pretence to having an authentic Cornish recipe but this cornish pastie looks good from a bakery in Cornwall.

I have reboiled a hard caramel once before when it set too hard. The reboil set fine and I thought I had rescued it but the caramel developed sugar crystals pretty quickly afterwards so I may not have melted it carefully enough or perhaps that may be just what happens when you try to reboil. I would do it again but maybe add more liquid (I used water) and take it quite slowly.