Serj

I would say cook them down with a little simple syrup, add some cointreau, puree & strain, and then add it to taste to your favorite neutral pound cake. I imagine it would be pretty good with a layer of ganache spread in between.

I have been doing some baking with Giusto's Peak Performer, which is organic. It's been working pretty well. I don't like it as much as King Arthur, but if it's organic you want, I would recommend it...

I did that one time. I made a huge batch, it looked and smelled awesome- went to clean up and found my citric acid solution sitting on the side of the stove. I scraped off and heated the pate de fruit back up ( to maybe 90C) and it seemed to reverse the pectin a little, it loosened up then I added the acid and recasted it. It came out pretty good. I guess the yellow pectin isn't reversible but doesnt fully activate/seal until the acid is added.. Oops. Making mistakes is the best way to learn right?

I remember going to a place in Providence RI when I lived there called Pastiche and they were open late, with a dessert & drinks theme... Every time I went they were pretty full, so I guess that qualifies as being pretty successful. I visited Portland, OR earlier this year and there are a few places there that are along the same lines, one that stands out in my mind as being fairly hopping was pix patisserie. My feeling is that when it's done well in the right market, you can't go wrong.

At work we freeze all of those things that Alana listed before baking with no problem at all. Just let them thaw in the fridge overnight and you'll be fine.

This online French dictionary lists chocolatière as both a female chocolate maker/seller and a hot chocolate preparing/serving container... http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/chocolati%C3%A8re

I agree with letting them thaw in the walkin for a couple of hours before hand instead of at room temperature at the event.

Another vote for fresh French style baguette.

Today at work I thought about how I would describe the firmness of pate de fruit (remembering reading your question). I reminisced back to once upon a time when I made an apple pate de fruit which came out soft (how I imagine you describing yours) and it was crystallized on the outside with virtually no resistance in the middle. Then I thought about an overcooked batch of mango pate de fruit, which came out a little too leathery and you had to struggle a little to get your teeth all the way through, just for it to stick to your teeth, as alana said (obviously being dramatic). This is where I think describing it becomes subjective- you need to have enough resistance to need to bite but not bite hard & feel like you have to chew. Something a little more objective: Every pate de fruit recipe I ever remember seeing/making was cooked to 106-107 Celsius (222.8-224.6 Fahrenheit). Maybe you just need to cook it another couple of degrees Fahrenheit. Good things come to those who wait- the last degree takes the longest!

Or maybe it's just me!

I have found it comes out a little sloppy. It's hard to get the nice even distribution- lots of splotches. Obviously you get what you pay for!

If I were doing this, I would fill the small mold (lined with acetate) 2/3-3/4 full with bavarian cream and freeze that completely solid (overnight). Then I would filling the bigger mold (lined with acetate) half way with white chocolate mousse, upside down on another sheet of acetate and as quickly as possible peel off the acetate from the bavarian and insert it into the white chocolate mousse, but not all the way down to the sheet of acetate, so that the top of the cake is completely smooth and the same color. Then I would pipe the rest of the white chocolate mousse up the edges. Then I would cut the cake with the bigger mold, trim it slightly to make it 2 3/4" diameter, lavish it with the syrup and push it into the center of the white chocolate mousse, using something to press it down and make sure it's level. Then, instead of trying to play around with glaze (sounds like a pain in the butt to me), I would freeze & spray them with white cocoa butter/white chocolate mix - the velvet effect would look pretty cool.... I would also try and do it as close to the date as possible, just to keep all the extra gelatin from contracting and getting rubbery in the freezer... Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

The only one i've used is capfruit's exotic fruits, which makes a delicious sorbet.

I have a suspicion that the problem may be that I usually make a relatively big batch (2+kg puree) in a big pan and the outside of the pan doesn't get the heat, only the middle does... It's happened a few times on the induction, but never on the gas... Finished school in summer 07, now i'm a worker bee at the Trump Tower here in Chicago. Can't believe it's been a year and a half- how time flies right?

Going back to spraying cabinets--- At work I have discovered speed rack covers as an excellent make-shift alternative. Imagine a very large garbage bag. Cut off the end that is sealed and then cut down one side of the bag, resulting in a very large plastic square. Tape to the wall above a work surface (i prefer in a corner), so that it covers both the work surface, the top of the area below the work surface, and the wall area above the work surface. Spray away. When you're done, roll it up and throw it away. Very little cleaning required. Perhaps not the most cost effective way of doing it, but hey, it works well.

convection... conduction... whatever!

Kerry every recipe I've made with apple juice has been exactly as you posted on Jan 9 (sorry for the delayed response). Mix it in with the fruit puree, wait for it to come anywhere from warm to the touch-boil, add the 10% sugar/pectin mix, boil, glucose, boil, sugar, boil, acid is always at the end and any alcohol is after that. As a side note, any time I do a combination of fruit purees, one of which is a lot more fibrous than the other (ie anything with banana), I add the more fibrous puree after I add the bulk of the sugar, to reduce the chance of it burning. It works pretty well. With purees like pear, which are also pretty fibrous, I just watch it a lot more closely than a mango or raspberry or whatever else. As another side note, I've discovered that making a pate de fruit on an induction heater is no where near as successful as making it on a gas burner. On a low setting (on the induction) the PDF has been taking forever and coming out way too thick. On a high setting, it comes to temperature before all the sugar crystals have melted. I've had the same problem with melting isomalt, so it's got to be something with the way the induction waves heat up the sugar vs good old fashioned convection.

Kerry I have been making an apple pate de fruit at work recently with apple juice and the texture does come out softer than pate de fruit with just apple puree. It's not a boiron recipe, I don't think, so it could be a completely different ratio of pectin/sugar/fruit than the capfruit recipe I've used before, which may or may not explain it. My boss has a lot of French pate de fruit recipes lying around, and a lot of them call for juice, as do some of the ones from the FPS... There must be something to it, the French are pretty good at this gig.

When I learned chocolate at school it was the middle of winter in Chicago and the kitchens used to get down to 32 degrees when the first class came in first thing in the morning (luckily I was in the afternoon class!). I used to have to wear 2 undershirts to keep from shivering. At work now, our chocolate room has excellent air conditioning, including a vent right above next to where we keep the chocolate warmer (unlike the rest of the bakeshop where they haven't hooked up the hood above the oven. Hm.) However, I still learned how to temper chocolate in the cold! It is possible... Some tips- use a plastic bowl instead of a metal bowl, as it will insulate the chocolate better. Also, put something between your bowl and cold work surface to stop the chocolate at the bottom of the bowl from setting up immediately (a smaller bowl works well, as does a folded up towel). Also, keep a hairdryer handy. I also usually bring the temperature of the chocolate up slightly over 50C/122F (evidently there's a reason the mol d'art melters go up to 60C) the first time and find that it's okay to bring it up even slightly over 33C/91.4F without losing temper after taking it down to 27C/80.6F in between. The humidity here in the winter is usually around 70%. Obviously make sure you use a thermometer with a probe and calibrate it regularly. I prefer to table but when I seed I chop up the chocolate in the food processor to help the pistoles melt faster. I usually let chocolate set in the freezer without any trouble. I promise you that tempering in the cold is better than tempering in the hot humid summer when the air conditioning isn't working!

The French Pastry School guidelines for making icecream are: <11% butyric fat <10% nonfat solids 18% sugars 0.5% stabilizers 3% egg yolks (mainly because of the emulsifying power of lecithin, although because it adds fat, not all recipes have yolks) 37-42% solids 16-23% sweetening power As long as you stay within the guidelines, it doesnt matter what kind of dairy fat you use, i.e. half&half, cream or milk & butter. The only thing with using butter is it tastes like butter. Sebastien Canonne told us that he doesnt believe in keeping recipes secret, so here are a couple of his recipes that do not have cream or half and half: Honey: 4g ic stabilizer 20 g sucrose 612.5 g whole milk 38.3 g nonfat milk powder 40 g glucose powder 150 g honey 65.3 g butter 70 g yolks Peanut butter: 1284 g whole milk 71 g nonfat milk powder 240 g sugar 100 g trimoline 114 g butter 180 g 100% peanut butter 10 g ic stabilizer Ginger: 638g whole milk 30 g nonfat milk powder 140 g sucrose 50g glucose powder 68g butter 70 g egg yolks 80 g candied ginger 1/2 ea vanilla bean 3 g ic stabilizer So it can be done.... Just as a point of reference, FPS exclusively uses Plugra butter, which is 82% fat, whereas the grocery store brand butter i buy is 78% fat. If that makes a big difference- you have to ask the pastry gods. Good luck.

I think you can take a chance and use the powder regardless of whether it's glucose or dextrose. My feeling is that the increase of 25% of sweetening power or decrease of 3% of solid content of approximately 4% of your recipe won't really harm things. I am all about the science of it all, but at the end of the day, the "ideal" sweetening power and solid content are a range, so there's a good chance it will fall in it if it's dextrose instead of glucose powder. I think as long as the rest of the recipe is well balanced and the base is made properly, you shouldn't have a problem. Just my 2c.

At work we use XL eggs, but the recipes call for weight rather than quantity, so it's not really an issue...

I have zero experience with this and know very little about the malting process & fermentation, but I think it sounds like a pretty cool experiment! Would you roast the grain before milling it, or vice versa? Also, can you actually taste the difference between a lightly roasted grain and a dark roasted grain or is it a difference, say in brewing, that comes out in the fermentation process of the beer? My other thought is does roasted barley taste any good on its own if it's not used to make beer? Good luck with the experimentation.... =)

Hey Kerry, thanks for uploading the pictures. It's always fun to see different way of doing things! Interesting... supposedly blitzing in the untempered chocolate into the warmer ganache tempers the ganache mix? Is there a set proportion of untempered chocolate to reserve? Did he let the ganache cool down to 38˚C before mixing in the butter to keep it in temper too or did he let it melt in? That trick with the cocoa butter at the end is very clever. Hope you're having fun in Europe! Enjoy the rest of your stay...

I agree with the idea that the texture of the brioche probably had more to do with the way the butter was incorporated than with the starter (=levain). Laminated croissant dough consists of layers of gluten and butter repeated. Same as puff pastry. But you can make Quick Puff Pastry, where are no laminated layers, just a minimally mixed combination of dough & butter. My guess is something similar happened with the brioche. My impression is that the starter used to give the fermentation of the dough a jump start. The faster the fermentation happens, the less of a sour taste there will be. In terms of the underwater aspect... since dough development is anaerobic, it will expand in the air or under water. One problem a lot of people have is not letting starters ferment enough to obtain maximum rising power. If you get the temperature of the water right, by letting the dough proof under water, you can tell when it is ready by when it rises to the top. That's my guess. I remember reading something about it once - along the lines of the water should be the temperature of a river in Russia in the summer. In the Whitley book maybe?? Anyways, just my thoughts. edited to add: Incidentally, one time I experimented with letting dough rise (from frozen) in Russian-summer-river-temperature water versus in a proofer (it happened to be brioche dough - all i had on hand). The dough in the water exploded in just a few minutes, whereas the dough in the proofer took much much much longer (i don't remember how long now).