nightscotsman

"Desserts en Liberte" is available from Amazon Canada here.

I do like Spud's, but I will second the vote for Chinook's as best in Seattle. I like that they use cod and the batter is very light and crispy like a tempura. I'm not a fan of halibut fish'n'chips.

Nope, still no power at the Bellagio. They told me yesterday not to come in today (it's normally my day off anyway), but they might need me tomorrow. It's nice to be able to sleep in (till 4:00 am - hah!), but all those employees who aren't working are also not being paid to stay home. Last night they thought the lights might be back on this morning. Still no word on what caused the outage.

Well, depending on the recipe, I think the egg white version can be made lighter and fluffier. But then, the egg version also won't keep as long. I tend to like the creamier mouthfeel of the corn syrup and gelatine method, myself.

I completely agree with all of your points, chefette. We used Flexipans a lot in school and at the Bellagio, but I bought Gastroflex (otherwise known as Silicon Flex) for use at home and I really prefer them. I just wish they were more widely available and had more options in the full-size category for cake rounds and such. As I've posted in other threads, by FAR the best prices I've seen on Silicon Flex molds and the biggest selection is from http://www.dr.ca (you'll find the molds here). They also have amazing prices on polycarbonate chocolate molds and stainless steel ring molds. Shipping is a little bit more and not very fast coming from Canada, but the savings are often worth it.

I think in Bruce Healy's "The Art of the Cake" there is a recipe and directions for making small cakes that look like the cheeses you are referring to. Unfortunately the US Post Office lost my copy so I can't look it up to be sure. Does anyone else have that book? Wait - using Amazon's "look inside this book" feature, you can see what I'm talking about on the back cover here (top middle image). Is this close to what you're looking for?

You're very welcome So far I've tried them with raspberry (good), passion fruit (really good, but could use a touch of food color), cinnamon (excellent in hot cider), coconut (the fat in the coconut milk made them dense), and chocolate (using cocoa powder - made them very fudgy tasting). Strawberry is still my favorite, but I would like to try lemon or peach sometime.

If you are referring to "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking", it's a long out of print classic that's just been re-released. As I have said before: Flo Braker is a baking Goddess.

I've only made the chocolate angel food cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Cake Bible", but I've made it many times since it's very good. The chocolate cuts the sweetness of what might otherwise be an overly sweet cake (it takes a lot of sugar to tenderize the egg whites and retain moisture). My only advice is to be sure to cool the cake upside down in the pan. Whichever recipe you use will probably say the same thing, but it bears repeating. If you don't, the cake will deflate and you'll have a dense and chewy pancake.

As of yesterday all Bellagio guests (I think there were a couple thousand at the time) were relocated to other MGM/Mirage hotels and given major comps and free hotel stay vouchers, so all the restaurants, food service outlets, buffet, and room service operations are shut down. I think they tried partial service at a couple service counters yesterday, but quickly closed when they couldn't use water any more. It's a terrible situation to be in, but I think they tried their best to do right by their guests. Latest word is they'll have power back tonight. Thank God I have the next two days off - it's not going to be pretty getting back up and running. Although I suppose they might call me to come in to help anyway.

So I just called and still no power at the Bellagio. They said they are sending everyone home and I shouldn't come in. I made sure they had my phone number so they could call if they needed me, but they said "probably not today". Somebody is losing a LOT of money.

Well, we had a really "interesting" Easter at the Bellagio. At about 1:00 am Sunday morning the entire building lost power. When I arrived for my usual shift at 4:00 am the kitchen was on backup generators, so we got started thinking that power would be restored any minute. Just as we were about to start putting the racks of creme brulee in the oven at about 7:00 am, the generator failed and we only had a few emergency lights left to work by. So we did what we could - finished fruit tarts, glazed eclairs, etc - until they told us we couldn't use any water in the sinks, which completely shut us down since the health department would not allow us to work without any water to wash with. They sent us home at about 10:30 and a few of us offered to come back to help out if the power came back on. Well they called me at 11:30, but not because we had electricity - they had the entire kitchen staff moving everything out of all the freezers and coolers (6 big walk-ins) to the central warehouse where apparently they still had generated power. So I'm about to go in this morning to work, but as I look out my window (I have a view of the Bellagio from my balcony) I see that the building has no lights, so I assume still no power. What a mess!

No, no - I said 1 teaspoon for 1/2 (half) a vanilla bean. Other sources I've seen say 1 Tablespoon of extract for 1 whole bean.

Hi Laurie! Yes, the silicone pans work fine, and they release very easily, but they tend to give a shiney surface to the finished items that doesn't seem quite traditional. You should be able to find metal pans that are cheaper, and if you brush them liberally with soft butter mixed with flour (or brush with butter and dust with flour) they will pop out fine. Be sure the dump them out of the mold while they are still hot from the oven and cover with a kitchen towel to keep them from drying out. One tip on madeleines: they don't keep well and aren't nearly as good the second day. But the batter does hold up in the fridge for a few days

Well, Chef did spring an Easter surpise on us after all. For the next few days we are making a special Easter dessert for the Palio shops at the Bellagio. It consists of a molded chocolate egg, vertical on a small base, with the top broken off and a gold ribben around the middle. This is filled with white chocolate mousse layered hazelnut/royaltine crunch, and topped with a small dome of exotic creme (yellow, to look like the egg yolk). On top of that, tomorrow we are starting a completely new dessert menu for Jasmine, the hotel's Chinese restaurant. It's going to be a long weekend...

I think I generally use 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to replace 1/2 a vanilla bean. The bottle of Neilsen-Massey Vanilla Paste (which contains vanilla seeds) says to use 1 Tablespoon paste to equal 1 Vanilla Bean.

Invert sugar is regular white sugar that has been processed so that the sucrose molecules have been broken into their constituent parts: fructose and glucose. It is semi-liquid in form - kind of thick and pasty. It's also sweeter than white sugar, and it actually has the mouthfeel of honey, but without the honey flavor. That's because honey is actually a form of invert sugar and you can use honey in place of invert sugar in most recipes, as long as you account for the flavor difference. I think most Amercian pastry chefs use the Trimoline brand of invert sugar - at least most people I've met just refer to it as "trimoline", sort of like "kleenex". And I know of no retail source where the average consumer can buy it. (Edit: looks like alanamoana beat me to it)

I was just nosing around Amazon and noticed that the CIA has come out with a new professional book "Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft". Just published on March 1, 2004 and I haven't seen it in stores yet, so I was just wondering if anyone had heard anything or flipped through it to see what the deal is - Must have reference with best of class recipes, or dated, middle of the road stuff that's covered everywhere else already?

My recipe for Strawberry Marshmallows is here. Is you want to make plain vanilla ones, you can replace the puree with 1/4 cup of water and add a teaspoon of vanilla, or scrape in some vanilla seeds.

That sounds like quite an elaborate spread you're doing, Wendy. I'm in the restaurant team at the Bellagio pastry kitchen, and as far as I know we aren't doing anything special for Easter. I haven't seen any holiday stuff coming out of the other groups either, except for some big showpieces being put together in the chocolate room (yeah, they have a whole separate kitchen just for chocolate stuff). Mostly various types and sizes of molded eggs and baskets, but also a giant bunny made out of huge molded chocolate eggs. I'm told those will be on display in the Buffet area. Who knows, maybe the chefs will spring something on us at the last minute? Jeez, I hope not. Speaking of showpieces, I've been noticing that some competitors in the upcoming World Team Pastry Competition have been developing and practicing their showpieces in our chocolate room. They seem to come in after I leave for the day, so I'm not sure who they are, but the pieces are spectacular. Maybe not as tricky as gold medal team from two years ago, but still... This is the first time I've ever seen really elaborate, world-class work like this up-close and personal, and it's even more impressive than photos or TV. Very inspiring stuff.

By the way, a little bit of kirsch drizzled in at the end and just tossed with the crumbly streusel is a nice addition.

It depends on your humidity situation. When we did them in school, it was summer in Chicago, so we had to dry the almond flour AND powdered sugar overnight in the deck ovens. And even so we had to make adjustments for the humidity. However, when we made them again in late fall/early winter when the humidity had dropped, no drying, no problem. Either way, we sifted the powdered sugar but not the almond flour.

For what it's worth, we never used a refractometer when making pate de fruits in school. Just cooked to the correct temperature. As long as the mix cooked quickly enough there wasn't a problem.

European Imports does still carry Sicilian pistachio paste - the brand name is "Agrimontana". Excellent stuff.

Another way to get really fine ground almonds at home is to put them through the grating disk in the food processor before processing with the steel blade. Or even better, use a Microplane rotary grater - time consuming and a real pain, but you get almond flour that's even finer than most commercial sources (though the almonds won't have the oil pressed out as Steve mentioned before).