sugarseattle

blitz-puff pastry, which is made like pie dough that's folded like puff pastry, is pretty easy to make, plus it's fun to say in a german accent as you're making it! I guarantee you'll be saying "bleetz-puff" all day long!

Yes, that's always a problem with me as well. You will not make money if you have to drop everything just for one silly cake that you can only charge $40 bucks for. My husband has an audio mastering business and he simply puts a general turnaround time on his web site, and as his calendar fills up, he is simply not available to take on any new projects. Period. So in your case, you could have a similar calendar or recommended turnaround time for custom cakes, and as the orders flow in, you could put them on the schedule, and once it's full, you'll have to explain the situation to your customers that you're booked for the date they want. Explain that your cakes are made fresh and you do the work personally to ensure the best quality. I believe it's the only way you're going to make money doing custom work. You can say you require at least 48 hours notice, but you have limited space on your calendar so it's important to book their custom cake early to ensure availability and best quality. Always turn it into a positive. I think it's really hard for food professionals who want to feed the world to turn away business, but I think my husband's strategy can work to your advantage, and may even create a few extra orders. Dentists, doctors, and everybody in the professional world have appointments. It simply helps them ensure the best possible service to their patients! But turning away customers must be done with finesse because you don't want to lose them altogether. Perhaps you could mail a coupon to the customers you have to turn away. Also, if you can refer them to any other bakeries, that creates excellent karma.

I read thru the very long brownie post as much as I could take, but then got tired and decided to ask my own selfish question... Has anybody ever perfected a technique for the perfect caramel brownie? What I'm looking for is a brownie that is marbled with distinct areas of caramel. I've tried several times and failed. Usually, the caramel just sinks to the bottom. I've resorted to putting the caramel and nuts on top after baking, but then you lose that wonderful top crunchy brownie goodness. Ideas?

it might be too small a batch and the cream (even though it's hot) is cooling too quickly to be able to melt the chocolate. I've had this problem with making small batches of ganache. You can throw the chunky custard into the microwave to reheat and melt again, however if you re not using baking/couverture chocolate, the dextrose (to stabilize baking chips) is going to get in the way of allowing you to make a smooth cuatard. Alternately, you could do the whole thing on a double boiler and then once you're custard's ready, just add the chocolate until it's melted. I strain all my custards anyway to get rid of any egg action.

Bittersweet choco is definitely my preferred choice, but I wouldn't limit yourself to that. You're going to want to provide a wide enough selection of tastes, but not too many to overwhelm people. I think 5 or 6 choices will be good. Be sure to have at least one "plain" one. I could eat 10 chocolates, but most people will just eat 2 or 3. Having fresh fruit would offer a nice palette break without the technical complications of a sorbet or ice cream. I think you're going to want to bring out the fruity essences of the champagne. Perhaps fruity truffles like strawberry, raspberry, or even banana. A lot depends on the champagne itself, and how far creatively you can go depends on your crowd. If it's dry, you might want to complement it with milk choco. Or perhaps play with how people describe champagne, "dry with notes of pear and citrus.." you know how it goes. When I hear "chocolate champagne social" I think it's more of a classic thing and not an adventurous foodie thing. It's super sad that most people aren't too adventurous so you're chipotle chocolates might sit untouched (although I'd eat them). BTW, I could eat an entire basket of chocolate covered strawberries so I don't know who said nobody likes 'em.

Yeah, it seems like a good way to get a lay of the land is to just get any job, get a feel for the bakery industry in general, use them for all they're worth, then start your own bakery to either fill a niche that's empty, or do better on an existing concept. Oh, and don't be so worried about going into debt to start a business, be more concerned that you have a step by step plan to earn that money back! Home ownership debt is not going to stop any bank from lending you money, they'll be excited that now you have collatoral for your business loan.

Correct me if I'm just missing the point, but every time I've tried to make fruit "infused" ganache, I've simply replaced some of the cream with fruit puree. It seems like that would not offset the fat balance too much to make the ganache susceptable to melting any sugar that graced its surface? The fruit powders do look beautiful though. I never really thought about them until reading this post, but ideas are floating in my head right now!

I make rocking oat scones and have found the best results using thick rolled oats, which give them a nice oaty texture. I think soaking them or making them into oat flour would make them lose their super texture. I use a mix of brown and white sugar and buttermilk (used to use cream and buttermilk, but then switched to just buttermilk for simplicity). Anyway, the trick to getting a nice crumbly texture is to add just enough liquid so that the dough just comes together then STOP THE MIXER! Too wet and you'll have muffins, too much mixing and you'll have a doughy mess. I'd be happy to dig up the recipe if anybody's interested.

I'm pretty sure you're going to be working with a classic puff pastry for the shell and just a little sugar coating the apples with a touch of flour. I personally would put some cinnamon in them, but that would make them more American. I was just in Paris a few weeks ago and stopped in at Dalloyou on St. Honore. It was such a freaking fabulous shop. Anyhow, one thing that they had which was so super cool was a square cream puff. They must have special pans. My husband put a pic on his site, http://www.johnmccaig.com/index.php?showimage=264 Good luck with the Chaussons

You could do a lime curd and spike it with tequila? I've done a mojito tart in that way with rum and mint...yum.

I once had a recipe based on the Neiman Marcus cc cookie which had been tweaked by replacing some of the white flour with whole wheat flour. Sounds like they'd be too earthy and not very fun, but something about the wheat flour tamed the gluten and gave the dough a nice nutty flavor. I also like the addition of espresso powder (I just use Folger's crystals because it's cheaper) which rounds out the dough and balances with the chocolate. But I lost the recipe somewhere somehow, so have to try to recreate it

Also, I've made awesome banana whoopie pies...fabulous and they keep really well.

this is such a hilarious post, but I do remember ONE occasion where my egg whites failed after improperly cleaning the bowl previously used for buttercream. Since it HARDLY ever happens, it took me quite a while to identify the problem. So I think it's like 1 in 1000 chance of egg whites failing due to oil.

I don't want to stray too much from the original intention of the post, but to answer, one of Herme's desserts did hit my list of the top three pastries I enjoyed in Paris. It was a Pistachio Dacquoise (sp?) with this ultra-velvety pistachio creme topped with a pyramid of fresh strawberries and dusted with powdered sugar. Super simple, delicate, and fresh tasting. I found the other two desserts I tasted either too sweet or not sweet enough, and his bavarois (I think that's what it was) was almost inedible because of the weird texture. His coffee was good, and being from Seattle, I hold coffee to a high standard of excellence

It's so funny, and at the risk of opening a huge controversial can of worms, but I just got back from Paris, and visited all the major shops like Aoki, Herme, Lenotre, etc, and was extremely impressed by the imagination, albeit based in longstanding French tradition, of the patisseries I visited. However, when it came to taste, my favorite thing was a very very simple bag of cookies I got from Poilane called punitions, basically very simple simple simple sugar cookies. I was sad when I ate the last one. I know there is a lot of technical innovation and a lot of excitement with this whole molecular gastronomy thing, and I must say as a former artist turned patissier, I really appreciate the idea of transforming the very nature of food, redefining it and bringing it to a whole 'nother level, but I also find that what I go back to, what I really like to eat for dessert my most favorite course, are the simple foods, like really good vanilla ice cream, or a nice square of very well refined chocolate. So if you're looking for the winners in pastry in the US, I would start with who's doing the classics the best, they're the ones to watch. Take Elisabeth Prueitt at Tartine in SF for example, or the woman at Miette Cakes (also SF)...I'm sure there's more.

was just looking through my recipes and found a banana mousse recipe which called for creme de banana. You can use the actual alcohol or I've actually used the Torani soda syrups which have a good scent. Dehydrated bananas work better than banana chips for baking.

Oh my gosh! I never thought of using pantyhose! I'm going to try it next time! I found that the labor involved with pureeing fruit it's actually cheaper to buy the puree from napa purees. it's not as emotionally satisfying, and certainly not as fun as using (blushing) pantyhose.

I think k8 memphis could be onto something after all, cookies were invented by putting a dallop of cake batter into the oven to test if the oven was ready. Maybe take a banana bread recipe and increase the butter a bit and try that. The real problem you're going to run into is you have to add a lot of banana to get banana flavor, and that's not going to let you get a crunchy cookie. However, that's not entirely true as I sit here munching on some chocolate dipped banana cookies I got from Pierre Herme in Paris which are truly crunchy and have amazingly natural banana flavor. I remember trying to make a banana scone and I ran into a similar problem with not enough banana flavor, so I replaced some of the cream with bananas, but that was still not enough so I supplemented with a little bit of banana extract. However, because the extract was imitation, there was a slight chemical tinge to the scones, but they did have good banana flavor. Perhaps there is a natural extract avaialble? Another idea is I've made banana buttercream, just butter, pow sugar, bananas, a little citric acid to preserve color, and a dash of nutmeg (which really works with bananas!). Perhaps a sandwich cookie? Perhaps a parisan macaroon?

did you heat the apple jelly before glazing? I'm with gfron1 about the moisture..strawberries love to ooze when they are cut and come into contact with any sort of sugar. Seems to me an overgelatinized jelly would be good to seal in the action, no?

Ha, I was just at the supermarket and saw Guava Curd & Passionfruit Curd. They were like 7 bucks for a tiny jar. But yes, ok to sub out limes for lemons. Pam R is right about the oranges though. Grapefruit sounds fabulous! I add a tiny tiny bit of yellow and a teensy weensy bit of green just to give that visual clue that it's lime and not lemon.

here's another really really random link I found, which shows that puratos is one of the patent holders for inventing cold set glaze..interesting stuff for the geeks...http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2005077195

That's really strange...it seems to me that the glaze just didn't adhere to the strawberries, which I've never had a problem with. I used to use apricot glaze, or hero glaze which is similar to apple jelly in that you heat it up before using it. But then I discovered cold set glaze, which I get through my bakery supplier Puratos in Seattle. It saved a lot of time not having to heat up the glaze, etc. for each little random thing I wanted to glaze. However, the ingredients are not that great with potassium sorbate and some other nasty thing in it, so since we're trying to go all natural, I went searching to find a recipe for a similar thing on the web. I haven't tried it, but it seems easy enough. http://www.herbstreith-fox.de/fileadmin/tm...ge_englisch.pdf Let me know how it goes!

I've made simple syrup several times, and each time I make it I think I should make a little bit more and store it. Problem is, after a few days, it crystallizes. I've tried all the usual tricks... - using a squirt of corn syrup - making sure to wash the sides - making sure all sugar crystals are dissolved before it comes to a boil I don't have the ratio I'm using right off the top of my head. Anybody have any foolproof recipes/techniques that store well?

i've always used 70% butter and 30% veg shortening, and my crust is flavorful and light, but with all the people freaking out about hydrogenated fats, rightfully so, I suppose I should switch to lard, but it just grosses me out so much. I remember as a kid someone told me that oreos were filled with lard and sugar and I could never eat them for a while after that. I think I should try it, but lard just sounds so graphic to me

Hmm. this looks interesting. I wonder if it would make sense for me to go..I've been running a wholesale bakery and am searching for and hope to open a retail location soon. any thoughts?