nightscotsman

If we're talking about tartlet shells made with pate sucre or sable, with a good recipe that's made properly you don't have to use anything to weight the dough as it bakes. In school we never used beans or other pie weights and we had only the tiniest amount of shrinkage and no puffing up. Maury Rubin's "Book of Tarts" has a good recipe that I think might be published somewhere on the net and I like the tart dough recipe in "Sweet Miniatures" by Flo Braker. I try to find it later and also dig up some of my notes from class.

The first time we made brioche dough in school we had to make it entirely by hand - NO machines - so we could get a feel for the different stages and when to add the butter. It's really not that hard once you have someone show you the trick of kneeding a really sticky, soft dough. However, savarin and baba doughs are so soft and runny they are almost batters, so I for one would never consider making them without a stand mixer with a paddle and/or dough hook.

Actually it's the eggs that will provide the puffing. The flour is there to give some added structure and keep the eggs from curdling when they're fully cooked. A true clafouti is basically a baked custard thickened slightly with flour. Too much flour will make the finished dish heavy and chewy.

I have yet to find any chocolate frosting recipe better than a simple ganache. Though there are some small variables to play with even there - add butter or not, liqueur or flavoring, maybe some glucose for texture, that sort of thing. And of course which brand of chocolate makes a huge difference.

And have you actually made anything from this little gem, Judy?

And be sure to stop by Palio (near the entrance to the art gallery) for a raspberry tart:

Whatever Martha's faults, I'm afraid the failure of this recipe isn't one of them. Here's the problem: When you add sugar to yolks, you must whisk the mixture immediately and thoroughly, otherwise the sugar (which is extremely hygroscopic) will suck the water out of the yolk cells and basically "cook" them. There is no way that I know of to reverse this reaction once it has occurred, but to throw it away and start over. This is why the directions say to add the sugar to the flour and then add the eggs and dairy to this mixture. I'll bet if you try it again following the directions more closely, it will work - though it sounds like you'll need a bigger baking dish.

Yep, I just used coconut milk - but I made my own rather than use canned for better flavor. Pour boiling water over shredded, unsweetened coconut and let sit for about half an hour. Spin in a blender or use a stick blender. Strain through a triple layer of cheese cloth, squeezing out as much liquid as possible. You can also toast the coconut before adding water for a toasty flavor.

Mycryo will not work for making marshmallows. Being cocoa butter, it's pure fat which will keep the mixture from whipping and holding a foam.

I have a copy of the "Candy" volume of the Time Life Good Cook series. It's fairly old school, but has lots of pictures and step-by-step techniques. I've made a few recipes that turned out fine.

rent due - must make some desserts!

The strawberries we get in the kitchen from Driscoll's are usually quite good. Not as good and the wonderful berries I grew up with picking myself in Oregon, but better than most from the supermarket. They are almost always red-ripe and juicy. We go through a LOT of them, too. The chocolate room alone dips 1000 strawberries (more like 1500 on Saturdays) in chocolate every day. Those tarts were the bane of my existence for the first week or so I was on the fruit station. The trick is to get the berries packed together tightly enough that you see as little pastry cream as possible. You start with a glob of cream in the middle of the base and set a ring of raspberries around it. Then pipe in a bit more cream and another row of berries - and so on making each row a little smaller each time. Everybody has their own variation on the technique. Some people like to put a raspberry into the pastry cream in the middle of each level for structure and stability, but I find it's easier to form the cone shape without the berries in the middle. Glad you liked the pictures!

Unfortunately I don't think that pastry cream will survive freezing. When defrosted, the water will separate from eggs and starch and you'll have a curdled mess.

According the the Kraft Foods web site, 4 packets of Knox Gelatine is 1 oz. So I think you could use 3 packets of your Kojel. I haven't heard ot Kojel before, so I don't know how it will work. Do you know what it's made of? Any other details on the box? And stscam: glad the recipe is a hit with your customers. So that royalty check is in the mail, right?

I haven't made strawberry icecream, but I find that the fruit itself makes a big difference to the texture of the icecream. I have made mango icecream many times with different varieties of mangoes. One variety comes out really smooth, while others come out a bit icy. And I've tried banana icecream too, which comes out hard as a rock! Have you thought about trying dessicated strawberries? I don't know if that would work, but it would certainly reduce the water content. You could possibly rehydrate them in the milk if necessary. Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Cake Bible" has a method for reducing the water content and intensifying the flavor of strawberry puree while still maintaining the fresh flavor. Either start with frozen berries (which are generally better quality that most fresh supermarket berries, anyway - cheaper, too) or freeze your fresh berries. Put the frozen berries in a strainer over a bowl and let them defrost completely. You will be left with a strainer full of berry flesh and a bowl of strawberry juice. Put the juice in a sauce pan, bring to a boil and reduce by 1/2 to 2/3. Add the juce back to the reserved berry flesh and puree. By cooking the juice separately you will maintain the bright, fresh flavor with none of the dull "cooked" taste. This will also let you use less puree, adding less water to your ice cream.

Well I finally remembered to take my digital camera to work last week, so here are some of the things we are doing with fresh fruit for restaurants at the Bellagio: These are the the fruit tarts we make for Palio, the small coffee and lunch place near the Art Gallery entrance. The base is a sablé Breton and the filling is Grand Marnier pastry cream: These raspberry tarts are also sold at Palio. They are about five inches tall and filled with pistachio pastry cream on a sablé Breton base: These are some mini fruit tarts that are served at afternoon tea at Petrossian, the caviar and champange bar near the hotel lobby. They are about 1-1/2 inches square and the base is a coconut cake with coconut pastry cream: And these are the really fussy-to-make strawberry tarts also served at Petrossian. The base is sponge cake and they are filled with pistachio pastry cream:

OK, I'll take a wild, non-scientific, stab in the dark at a guess - I think the one with butter stood up better because of the added structure from the meringue. Whipped egg whites don't melt in the heat and so they were able to help keep the fat together better than the "butter cream" that was basically just sweetened fat. How does that sound?

Wow, thanks for the formal tasting results, FWED. That's the kind of event I would like to do more of myself, but there's a lack of eGullet people here in Vegas to invite over. I haven't made the Illustrated Baking recipe before. How does it compair in texture, moistness and flavor to Wendy's? How was the slicing? was it fairly delicate or more dense?

I'm afraid that you probably won't get a true butter flavor in your ice cream without using some kind of butter extract or flavoring. Several of our recipes in school used melted butter instead of cream - a LOT of melted butter - for the butterfat portion of the formula, and they did not taste like butter at all. The fat coating your mouth issue is basically a too much fat problem. If you take a normal, balanced ice cream recipe and just add butter, there will be too much fat and it will be impossible to emulsify it with the water without some added chemical emulsifyers. So when the ice cream melts in your mouth, the water and fat melt separately - the water drains away from the fat leaving you with a mouth full of butter.

You wouldn't say that if you met me. two points on the fingers in boiling sugar and I'll shut up: 1) I've got many burn scars from the ovens and hot sheet pans, but I've never burned myself testing hot sugar with my fingers. 2) I don't think we even have a thermometer in our kitchen, and the women on the team don't seem to mind it when they have to make the meringue. As far as which method - Swiss or Italian - I think whatever works for you. For me, I find the Italian method is faster and takes less attention. I'd rather give my whisking arm a rest.

When you said "Chambord", I instantly got the image of a slice of cake that had turned gray from the purple colored syrup . I HIGHLY recommend using a clear framboise (raspberry eau de vie) in the soaking syrup if you plan on going with the white cake. Also, make sure the cake recipe you choose is designed to stand up to the soaking (like a genoise) - a regular American-style butter or white cake is too moist (and too sweet) and may turn pasty if soaked.

For these tests I've just been using Hershey's non-dutched cocoa. It's cheap and easy to find everywhere (and they won't let me bring home any of the Cocao Barry Extra Brut they use at work ). For home baking I really like Pernigotti. Though it's very expensive, it makes a huge difference in taste. I should see about ordering some Valrhona online somewhere.

My guess would be you're underproofing. The outside is hardening and forming a crust which can't hold in the power of the yeast on the inside that's still getting a lot of oven-spring. I've seen this on croissants in the past. You want to proof the loaves to the point where the yeast is almost exhausted, so you get some oven-spring, but not a huge amount.

Glad you like the tart! The base is a breton sablé - ground almonds, but no cornmeal. I'm not involved in making the chocolates. They do those in the chocolate room. I'm sure they'll be expanding the line when the new pastry shop opens in the new tower.

I can see asking for the dessert menu when you're looking at the dinner menu, but what annoys the hell out of me is restaurants that post their menus at the front door or online and don't include the dessert menu . The message is loud and clear to me: "dessert isn't important to us so don't expect much".