nightscotsman

At work we use maltitol for all of our sugar free desserts. Recipes do need to be reformulated, but there doesn't seem to be any aftertaste like that associated with products like aspartame and sucralose. It doesn't lose sweetening power when heated, but it doesn't really caramelize and I don't know how it performs in a cooked sugar syrup.

I'm really glad you had a good time and enjoyed the Buffet . Unfortunately, I don't feel right about giving out my employer's recipes or I would be happy to post it. Perhaps you could try sending a letter to Bellagio and asking for the recipe (although I'm sure you would have to scale it down from the HUGE batches they make )?

I was mostly interested in pastry when I was in Paris, but you might want to check out Patricia Wells' Food Lover's Guide to Paris for more recommendations. It hasn't been updated for a few years, but I'm sure the good places are still there.

Pretty much every hotel on the strip has at least one Japanese/sushi restaurant, so it's very hard to say which is best. There is a Nobu here, which I've heard is quite good. Shibuya in the MGM Grand is the newest and coolest, and I think a member here ate there recently and was impressed. I think a few people have also recommended Crustacean at the Aladdin. I've heard good things about Osaka, which is less glitzy and off the strip, billing itself as the first sushi restaurant in Las Vegas.

I assume this will be a dessert battle, right? if so, Mario is GOIN' DOWN. Can't wait to see the episode! Where did you hear about this, Le Petit... I mean lepatissier?

Thanks so much for the photos, joiei. Some good work on show and a great source of ideas.

Ha! Thanks for the great post, mel. My ass is definitely getting a regular workout, but at least I actually get a weekend (though it is Tuesday and Wednesday). It's my hands that feel the pain every morning when I wake up and they are sore and stiff. After about an hour of feeding the oven they limber right up again. Spend money on good shoes, absolutely, but also spend money on good socks! Never. Fast. Enough.

"drain" cream cheese? Even with so-called natural cream cheese without gums and stabilizers I'm not sure if this is possible. It's not like yogurt where the water/whey content is so high that it tends to separate. Cream cheese is an emulisfied fat that's quite stable.

Yep, stick blender. I'm not sure how to spell "burr", but that's what all the French guys call it.

I can think of one reason why you would add the eggs last when making cookie dough: eggs contain quite a bit of water that would activate the gluten of the flour if you combined them first. By mixing the butter with the flour (and sugar) first, it coats the flour particles in fat, protecting them from the water of the eggs and making sure the dough is "short" and the cookies are tender.

Well, I tried KarenS's stovetop brulee reicpe yesterday, and after chilling overnight it just hasn't set up as much as I think it should. It's really just the consistency of very thick creme anglaise. Also, with using all heavy cream, it seems a bit too rich for me. Did I do something wrong? I only made a 1/3 size batch since it was just a test: pint cream 8 yolks tiny pinch salt tsp vanilla 2.5 oz sugar I let it come to a full boil and it broke just like Karen said it would. Burr mixed in ice bath then poured into dishes.

We took the honey to 120C/248F, the sugar mixture to 152C/306F, or both of them together to 149C/300F. The lower temp on the honey helps it retain more flavor.

I think you might have to give us a bit more detailed description. "Cinnamon cream cake" could mean so many different things. What are the components and how is it put together?

Oriol Balguer has recipes for: saffron chocolate lollipops (basically chocolate drizzled over saffron) saffron ice cream saffron puff pastry with green apples saffron creme anglaise Haven't tried any of them, but I'm sure the're at least interesting.

Covered with parchment paper that has been brushed with cocoa butter. The percentage we used was about 1/4 the weight of nuts, added a little at a time 4 minutes after adding the hot syrup, but before the (toasted and still warm) nuts.

Hey Wendy - I've been wanting to try the stove top method ever since you said you switched to using it. Is there a recipe around here that you can point me at?

I believe the dense, chewy nougat is more French while the lighter, fluffier kind is more Italian - though you will find both kinds in each country. Nougatine is an entirely different animal - more of a crispy butter caramel with lots of sliced, granulated and or slivered almonds.

Mmmm... nougat.... Nougat should be chewy, smooth and glossy, but much denser than marshmallow or divinity. Ya know "Big Hunk" candy bars? That's nougat (or a rough American commercial version). The recipe we used in school had us heat the honey to 120 C and the sugar and glucose with water (water will help disolve the sugar without changing the end product, since you have to heat it to the same temp anyway) to 152 C. The only reason to heat them separately is to maintain more honey flavor. Otherwise you could just put it all in the pan together and boil to 149C/300F. I've seen several recipes that use the "torch the mixing bowl method" to continue to cook the mixture while it whips, but I don't see the advantage as long as you cook the sugars to the right temp in the first place. One difference in the school recipe that I haven't seen elsewhere is the addition of melted cocoa butter. You add it after whipping the mixture for about 5 minutes - so it's fully whipped but still hot. The cocoa butter seemed improve the texture and made the flavor richer and more complex.

OK, after baking litterally thousands of creme brulees in the last few months at my job, I feel like I can speak with some authority on these issues. 1) baking in a water bath. The thermodynamic properties of water - it is a good conductor of heat and it takes a lot of energy to change it's temperature - cause it to act as a heat-sink when in contact with the custard baking dishes, keeping the dishes from overheating and the custard from boiling. You want to bake them slowly, to retain creaminess, but not so slowly that the custard dries out. Therefore you don't want to use too much water. In school we learned that about 1/8 inch of water in the sheet pan is optimal. Any more and the custard bakes too slowly, any less and the water dries up before the custard is done. There really shouldn't be any need for foil on top of the dishes. At the hotel we bake brulees in a convection oven at 250 degrees for about 25-30 minutes. 2) When done, the custard should be just set all the way through. It should move in the dish when jiggled, but the whole mass should move together - sort of like jello. The center should not be runny. 3) A torch is really the best way to do the caramel top. You can use the broiler, but it has to be preheated until it very hot, the custards have to be very cold, and they have to be placed very close to the broiler. A gas broiler in a home oven won't work as well as an electric broiler because it doesn't do a good job of focusing it's heat down. You can also try putting the custard dishes in a pan of ice cubes to keep them cool before putting them under the broiler. But really, head down to Home Depot and get a torch. When torching, it works better to move the flame slowly and caramelize as you go, rather than waving it over a larger area trying to brown the whole thing at once. 3) We use white sugar (and so does Charlie Trotter's, by the way) for the topping. An easy way to make sure you get an even, light coating is to sprinkle on some sugar, tip the dish to let the sugar pour off (some will stick due to moisture), then repeat one more time.

The Rio completely remodeled their buffet this year, and when it reopened they ran a special half-off deal for locals. Couldn't pass up $7 for the lunch buffet, so I went several times. I would have to say that it's only slightly above average food quality. The selection is huge, but nothing really to get excited about (can you say non-dairy whipped topping in the tiramisu?). The Bellagio buffet and the newly remodeled Mirage buffet are far superior and in a completely different class in my opinion. The Aladdin buffet is also very good (it actually tops a lot of the local "bests" lists), though the desserts are inedible.

Well, I've only done sugar in school, so who knows if I'll have to a chance to do any of it later in my career. We don't have much call for pulled sugar at work, and when we do the chefs take care of it. In school, some people had problems with blisters, but not from the heat of the sugar. The main problem was the friction produced by the pulling very thin rose petals for a full day. The sugar we used was actually not that hot to handle. In fact, the instructors told us that you don't want it too hot or it will be dull. So we used the sugar just warm enough to be pliable, which meant that it was very stiff, so you really had to use a lot of pressure to pull it thin. We used latex gloves only to keep finger prints and moisture off of the sugar.

Knead some granulated sugar into the warm and flexible melted sugar before you blow the orange. Same technique was used for texture on the starfish.

Do not shock the pan of sugar - that's cooling it down too much. You want it hot and very liquid. And if you're trying the alcohol method, it's better to use parchment rather than silpat. Spray the parchment generously and the alcohol will spread out on the paper - on a silpat it will bead up too much and run off when you lift up the edge. Half a cup of sugar is probably not enough for a half sheet pan. You don't need two sheet pans, just two silpats. Put one silpat in a sheet pan smooth side up, sprinkle with isomalt, then cover with second silpat smooth side down. No need to weight with a second sheet pan.

I really liked the Wooley recipe that Wendy originally posted, excecpt I thought it could be a little less crumbly and have a bit more structure. Well, I finally got around to experimenting and I think I've come up with a version that comes closer to what I wanted. The main changes are increasing the eggs from 3 to 4 and changing the mixing method. Here is what I did: combine, cover, and let cool to room temp: 1-1/2 cups cocoa (I used Hershey's) 1-1/2 cups boiling water Then add: 1 cup buttermilk 2/3 cup oil 2 tsp vanilla Combine separately and set aside: 3 cups AP flour 1-1/2 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt Cream together: 3/4 cup softened butter 2 cups sugar Add one at a time, beating well: 4 eggs Add flour mixture altnernating with the cocoa mixture, ending with the flour. Bake at 300 degrees for 45-55 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in pan. Unmold and wrap in plastic until cool.

Well, I guess at MY hotel they assume everyone who stays there is rich, so they probably thought you were slumming by not taking a limo.