lapin d'or

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.

I have had a small round Mol d'Art melter for a year now and am really pleased with it. I I do make a mess when working with moulds which are too big to upturn above the melter but since seeing the wrap it all in plastic wrap trick in another post clean ups are much easier. The melter just heats, it does not cool. If your room is above working temperature for the chocolate I think you could have problems with the dipped pieces not staying in temper unless you can get them into a cooler room pretty quickly?

Town & Country Fine Foods have just quoted a price of £67.39 for 5kg packs of Cluizel. They only stock about 5 different Cluizel chocolates though. According to their web site they will courier nationwide but have a minimum order value which I think was £70. I have never bought from Oakleaf but they also carry Weiss chocolate and other pastry ingredients. So why is it so much easier to buy bulk quantities of european chocolate in the US than it is here in the UK?

The hard bit seems to be finding suppliers of interesting makes of chocolate when you start to need 2-3 kg bags rather than 100g bars. Thanks Alex Chef for the information on Michael Lee. I have found HB ingredients cheaper than the Chocolate Society for Valrhona but it maybe that the Chocolate Society will discount if you are buying more than a few kilos.

I order some of my chocolate related things from keylink who supply ingredients, equipment and packaging but again not a vast range of chocolate. Lots of Callebaut & Cocoa Barry. I have ordered some chocolate (Weiss) and pastry ingredients from Wildharvest in London but they are currently ignoring every phone & email request I have made for a new price list. If anyone here works for them please please could I have a new price list. I still buy most of my chocolate from HB ingredients who seem to work with Vantage House as the ingredients supplied are the same in each case. HB were able to get me some none listed Valrhona products but I had to put these in as a special order and basically wait until they were next buying in. It was about a month wait but I was just happy they would order the stuff. I have recently phoned a firm called Town & Country Fine Foods who supply some Cluizel but as yet the price list has not arrived. You will find some kg sized packs for sale on the seventypercent web site but their prices are high and supplies appear erratic. The chocolate society also sell Valrhona. I would love to hear what other options there are in the UK. I am left thinking most small UK chocolatiers must go to the manufacturers direct or use Callebaut.

I have just today received a copy of Diana Henry's 'Crazy Water Pickled Lemons' which has some fantastic looking recipes. I particularly like the look of the recipe for 'Jewelled Persian Rice' that has rose petals, saffron, pitsachio, almond, warm spices orange, carrot... I have several books by Arto der Haroutunian all of which are good.

Tammy, those Halloween candies look really gorgeous. I love the sound of the apple cider caramel and the blackberry marshmallow. lucky customers

The comparisons between the french and english main markets are really quite depressing for me and although I had hoped england's 'market of choice' was not so very dull, the pictures speak for themselves. I think there is a loud but I guess very minority customer base in the uk really looking to source quality ingredients and not just expensive 'comfort labels'. A lot of our organic food supplies do not really offer good quality food, just a feel good factor. I have been very encouraged by local markets selling really good meat and vegetables and a number of local shops stocking good, locally grown produce and more interestng things - not just carrots, cabbage, marrows and potatoes. There has to be hope but I wonder if the larger markets will recover. If we are to remain dependendt on supermarkets I wish ours were as good as the french ones. The food available in my local supermarket just seems lifeless - it doesn't inspire you to cook at all. There is something really wrong when your first thought is how can I disguise this, but that is so often how I feel when I shop there. We are due to be offered yet another supermaket in our small town- so that there is more choice. I do not understand where this choice is coming from - not the produce. Fantastic blog Franco.

I put a transfer under a rubber chablon sheet, spread the chocolate over it, then lifted the sheet off. I don't think they could be made from the cup mold. ← Kerry thank you for explaining the process for the lids. I am really taken by how they looked but not sure I could reproduce this. How easy is it to lift a chablon sheet off the chocolate? The sheets I have seen for sale online look a little large for one person to easily lift off cleanly. I assume you have to lift before the chocolate sets and that the sheets are quite floppy to handle. I could see myself making quite a mess!

Hello Merlicky, I would say I have found Peter Greweling's book on Chocolate & Confections the most useful of the ones I have. It has a good range of confections, some good background information and recipes that are easy to work with as you can easily scale the recipes based on the percentage measurements. There is a thread on it here which I am sure you will have seen. I'm based in the UK so cannot help with suppliers but I buy a lot of my ingredients online and it works fine for me. It is the only way I can get good quality chocolate at reasonable prices. Good luck

Shortbread would also be high on my list. I think my favourite plain cake is a ginger cake closely followed by a lemon cake. If you can included yeasted cakes I would put a toasted teacake at the top of my list. A lightly fruited not too sweet bun split, toasted and slathered in butter.

Kerry, Could you explain how you formed the lids? Can you make these from the cup mould itself? They look very inviting.

My edition came with an errata sheet and for page 141 Palet d'Or it reads: Aw. 0,880: 600g dark chocolate 70% The only other correction is for p24 : Agave syrup: Saccharose = Sucrose I do hope that helps

As someone who has shopped from natoora a few times I am fascinated by this blogg. I have been really impressed by the range and quality of food on offer. Having moved from a city to a rural part of the country I find having this sort of food supply available online is fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing more on the markets. Thank you for sharing this with us.

I fill and cap my shells off using a piping bag so I cannot help with the capping tray issue but I melt the capping chocolate in the microwave to a just melted temp not the higher temp you start with when tempering. The shells can stick into the packaging a bit but I press down on either side of the packing to pop them out rather than trying to pull the shell out of the tray. When hand piping the ganache into the shells to avoid air pockets I was taught to put the tip of the piping tube right into the bottom of the shell and draw it up as you fill. Also to keep the tube to the back of the shell so you can see what is going on. If I was good at following instructions I might be producing perfect shells but I'm still getting the odd air pocket and overfilled shell!

Mariam - thanks - I hope you find what you are looking for. There are a few uk ebay 'shops' selling cake decorating materials that may also be worth searching through.

Mariam, I buy glucose syrup from a confectionery supplier but minimum order levels are quite high. There are many cake decorating suppliers in the UK selling online and I have used these people piece of cake for a few things and they sell 450g tubs of liquid glucose. If you are buying a lot of chocolate/sugar ingredients take a look at the Vantage House website.

I have used the Callebaut dark and milk shells and I found the quality of the chocolate a bit of a problem. I am trying to get some Valrhona shells but my supplier can only do these special order which means I have to wait for their next Valrhona order to go in before I can get them. I could be waiting a few weeks. My Callebaut dark shells are labelled as 56% cocoa min. The only added fat is cocoa butter but I still think they taste a little waxy. I would say this is really not the sort of chocolate you would eat out of hand.

When I used some duck eggs this summer to make a sponge cake I thought the texture of the cake was much more grainy than with chicken eggs, I cannot remember if I thought it tasted sweeter. I may however, not have weighed the egg out as carefully as Rob so it could just have been the result of a change in the ratio rather than the quality of the egg itself. I have three of my own chickens now and I am convinced that the egg custard I make with their yokes is far better to that made with store bought eggs - it seems to thicken up much better - no idea why. I wonder if there is more variation in how ducks are fed compared to chickens. I think some of the duck eggs I have eaten have been from ducks with access to large natural ponds where they can forage quite a bit for themselves. That may effect the taste compared to those eating a predominantly grain diet. I do remember them tasting richer in some way. The results were really interesting - I shall be looking out for more duck eggs now. thanks Rob

I really like nutty and spicy things in autumn: Pear and almond tart Anything with prunes and almond Chocolate & Chestnut combinations Walnut cakes or tarts Apple and cinnamon muffins Cinnamon sugar dusted doughnuts Honey Cake Anything with ginger - Lemon & ginger cheesecake is a big favourite Dried pear and ginger muffins Flapjack with lots of dried fruit and nuts added in All the best to you

Well completely at the other end of the effort scale to hand pulling pounds of sugar into perfect channels I have just done another version of the totally easy meltaway recipe. I did the praline meltaway with a new praline paste I have just bought. It is made by Cocoa Barry and has an rather odd name ' Favourites D'Autrefois' but is really tasty. 30% almonds, 30% hazelnuts and 40% sugar but some of the nuts are still in tiny cruchy pieces so you get a really nice texture. I wasn't sure if this would be right with the meltaway but I really like it - it reminds me of tiny Lindt mini eggs I used to buy as a child that had a crunchy praline filling. I have a pretty big bucket of this praline paste as the only size available is 5kg. It has about a 6month shelf life but I think I may try putting some in the freezer.

Mette the raspberry ganache chocolates look gorgeous - I love the colour you have achieved which looks natural and very artistic at the same time. I have made a concentrated raspberry puree using freeze dried raspberries. By not adding too much water to them when rehydrating to make the puree it was quite intense. Quite hard to sieve the pips out as the puree was rather thick but this produced a very fresh tasting but intense puree. I have used freeze dried strawberries this way too.