patris

I have made it many, many times and it always needs a good whack of cocoa butter to thin it out - sometimes up to 20% - and I always end up blitzing it with an immersion blender to get it totally smooth. I make mine in vacuum sealed bags in the pressure cooker. If I don’t need it right away I dry off the bags and store them with my other chocolate and when I want to use it I put it in a melter with about 10% cocoa butter, then add more as needed as it all melts. If I need it right away I take it out of the bags and add the cocoa butter to the hot mess while it’s cooling. Both ways work equally well for me. Edited to add that I use @Chocolot“s pressure cooker method, which can be found here:

The secret is twice the butter (browned!) and half the cereal: https://smittenkitchen.com/2009/11/salted-brown-butter-crispy-treats/

We have one here and I use their app to order - every time I have ordered my pizza is ready at the exact minute promised. Always amazes me.

More adventures in office confections. We have a temporary staff person who has a severe peanut allergy, which made me realize that I use peanuts or peanut butter (and other nuts as well) in the vast majority of the chocolates I make to share with colleagues every week or two. So, although this person works on a different floor and our responsibilities mean that our paths will not likely cross often if at all, I have challenged myself to stay away from nuts in the office treats during their time with us, which will extend into mid-November. I had been thinking about combining caramel and marshmallow and wanted to play around a bit, so I made a sheet of @Kerry Beal‘s chewy caramel from EGCI and tried layering it. The first experiment is on is on the left - pumpkin spice marshmallow. I spread half the batch into a quarter sheet pan, laid on a thin sheet of caramel, and topped that with the other half of the batch. Incredibly tasty, but really difficult to work with as the layers kept sliding around, even as the chocolate was crystallizing. The photo doesn’t show it but these are some of the homeliest candies I have ever made. I decided to try again, this time with brown sugar espresso marshmallow. I divided the batch between two quarter sheet pans, and when they had firmed up a bit I used some dark chocolate to glue the caramel sheet between them. Worked a treat, though I think next time I will use a much thinner layer of chocolate. I decided to dip these up to their shoulders in dark chocolate, then dip the tops in caramelized white chocolate. We shall see how they go over with my work peeps.

I will also add that I once tried adding pulverized freeze dried raspberries to the base recipe during beating to make raspberry, and the flavor was pretty faint. The texture also suffered - they seemed a bit grainy and lacked full fluffiness. That was the only FD fruit experiment I did, though.

These aren’t fruit flavors, but I have made pumpkin spice, red hot cinnamon, peppermint, and brown sugar espresso marshmallows with great success. I posted my pumpkin spice recipe in recipegullet here. For the red hot cinnamon, I replace half the sugar in my base recipe with cinnamon imperials that I grind in my coffee grinder, and add about a half teaspoon of grocery store cinnamon extract at the end of beating. For peppermint, I just beat in a good whack - probably close to a teaspoon - of peppermint extract to the base recipe at the end. For brown sugar cinnamon, I substitute brown sugar for white sugar (honestly can’t remember whether I substitute it for half or all of it) and dark corn syrup for light corn syrup, and add about a tablespoon of espresso powder (Medaglia D’Oro is the brand I like best) to both the water/gelatin and the cooked sugar mixture. The brown sugar espresso and pumpkin spice tend to be a bit denser than vanilla or fruit flavors, but the flavor is great. I use fruit juices or purées in all my fruit flavors, though. I think I tried compounds years ago and couldn’t get the flavors intense enough for my liking. edited to add - my base recipe is 16 oz sugar, 4 oz water, 7 oz corn syrup, 1/2 tsp cream of tartar (citric acid for fruit flavors) cooked to 240f, beaten into .75 oz gelatin bloomed in 4 oz. water. Fills a 9 x 13 pan about an inch full.

Wonderful! So happy to hear this!

I did not, but thank you for telling me - I’m so happy to have been there in some small way!

At the risk of taking this too off-track, reading this thread has taken me back a few years to one of my late mother’s hospitalizations several years ago. Each patient was given a menu and allowed to order from it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a time of their choosing. The menus were quite nice given that it was a hospital - hot and cold choices, and several of them, with sides and desserts, for each meal. Everything was always plated with some care and, though it was underseasoned, of apparently good quality and freshly prepared. On top of that, there was a dietary attendant assigned to her floor who made it a practice to serenade each new patient with a little song at their first meal - and she had an absolutely exquisite voice - and it was obvious that she cared about every patient on her route. I have been fervently wishing that Anna could have that level of choice (and even the singing!), but more so that she get out and back to her own home and kitchen!

@Anna N so sorry to hear you are in the hospital! I caught up on all your posts and have come to the conclusion that the head of dietary at your hospital is deeply misanthropic. If @Kerry Beal comes by at lunchtime before you get sprung you should order from that guest menu and do a Ladies Who Lunch, Hospital Edition. (Of course, Kerry should bring backup pho or something just to make sure you both get some nutrition in you!)

Not sure there’d be a cut that’s not trayf!

I sincerely hope you are never in a position to be shopping for long pig!

Indeed. I was concerned that it wouldn’t work because of the temperature, but it tempered flawlessly every time.

They are something else. Most of my recipes are stored on some device or other - either on a website or in a Kindle cookbook - but this is one of the few that only lives on paper, which is why I tend to forget about it for years at a time. I am always delighted anew when I dig it out and bake up a batch!

The latest sugar shenanigans for work - treats for a coffee cart to kick off an annual fundraising drive and get the building into a giving mood: Serious Eats cutout cookies augmented with orange, lemon and lime zest and lots of crystallized orange, lemon and lime, which also went into the royal icing for extra citrusness; macarons in passionfruit and espresso (though not nearly as gorgeous as @RWood's!); little chocolate bars with a layer of peanut butter meltaway spiked with a mess of Rice Krispies, a sheet of @Kerry Beal's chewy caramel from EGCI, and a thin layer of marshmallow; and a rustic but delicious cookie with oats, coconut, chocolate chips, pecans and a hint of cinnamon - the recipe was printed in our local paper many years ago - probably more than 20 - and I have never seen it anywhere else online or otherwise.

I eat Beyond Burgers whenever I get a hankering for a burger (maybe once a month or so) and I do like them very much. For me they do not taste like beef (a flavor for which I do not care so much), but they satisfy a desire for the good kind of greasiness a nice fatty burger can have. I totally agree with @lemniscate that it is all about the condiments (de rigueur for me are cheese, mayo, tomato, dill pickles and mustard). I have also used them as a kind of salisbury steak substitute, which works reasonably well. I just picked up a package of the reformulated burger, augmented with coconut oil and cocoa butter if I am not mistaken, which I took to a barbecue yesterday where the main meal was hamburgers and hot dogs. I do not have a charcoal grill so it was the first time I had eaten one of these burgers cooked over coals and I have to say it was absolutely delicious, though I do not know how much of that was down to the perfection of the day in general, the quality of the burger itself, or that lovely charcoal grilled taste. I also keep their hot Italian sausage in the freezer and will cook one every now and then to eat with fried peppers, onions and cheese. Nice fennel taste and a bit of a bite, and an oiliness that works for me. I do not love the texture, which can be a bit mushier or mealier than I like (though meat-based sausage textures were not something I cared for when I did eat meat). Beyond is now selling a straightforward ground beef substitute that can be used in meatloaf or other dishes where the usual frozen crumbles would not work. I picked up a package and am planning to use it for taco filling this weekend. Hoping it works better for that than Morningstar or other crumbles, which always smack of soy to me in a not entirely pleasant way. I will say I am looking forward to a nice meatloaf when the weather cools down.

Spied this in the cheese case yesterday: Delicious, if a bit salty. Good pimento flavor and the cheese is nice and sharp. I enjoyed it slathered on some fresh crunchy veggies for a quick breakfast.

This week is another of our monthly lunches at work. I generally try to make something for both the chocolate eaters and the non-chocolate eaters, which generally means at least two different recipes altogether. This time I decided to try to please everyone with one recipe: His Mother's Oatmeal Cookies, which were the only oatmeal cookie my mother, an exceptional baker, ever made. I am not a big oatmeal cookie fan, but these are something else - light and crunchy, a bit buttery, and not too sweet. My mom always sandwiched them with Smucker's blackberry jam, which I will do to some of them the morning of the lunch to keep them from going too soggy; I will also serve some plain/un-sandwiched and some dipped in chocolate so as to please as many as possible. Yes, that is a LOT of cookies. A single recipe makes in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 dozen cookies, which is enough for almost any purpose. This morning, however, working from my mother's battered Betty Crocker cookbook, I got distracted by her handwritten notes about doubling the recipe and didn't realize until I had mixed the dough completely that I had added milk enough for a double batch - so I assembled a second batch sans milk and mixed the two together. I sincerely hope I can find a home for them all, as they are absolutely addictive and I definitely do not need the extra calories!

Tomorrow is our annual staff “retreat” - a day offsite to work on our culture and think about the future - and again this year I volunteered to provide dessert for lunch and snacks for the afternoon break. I always try to accommodate as many tastes as possible, which usually leads to an assortment of goodies. Before I wrapped them up on their platters I kept one of each aside for ... quality control: Clockwise from 12:00: tangy citrus sandwich cookies, brown butter chocolate chip cookies with pecans, almond joy cookies, and extra-gooey Rice Krispie treats with handfuls of freeze dried blueberries, raspberries and strawberries mixed in. We have a few folks on staff who shun gluten, so I thought I would try King Arthur Flour’s gluten free measure-for-measure flour blend in the chocolate chip and citrus cookies. It seemed to work just fine - I usually get more spread on the chocolate chip cookies with wheat flour, and there is a distinct grittiness/powderiness to them both, but I imagine they will get eaten by gluten free and gluten full folks without complaint.

Such a lovely bowl! Looks like it was a wonderful weekend!

What a delightful day it was! I take for granted sometimes that I live close enough that a visit with the OG Lunch Ladies is an easy day trip, and I aim to make it a more frequent occurrence. I am lucky to have @Kerry Beal come down to visit several times a year, but I dearly love seeing @Anna N as well. I am still dreaming of that wonderful, lemony cauliflower, and although I have no food photos to share I did get a shot of a most interesting appliance in the washroom: Can’t say I would ever use what appears to be a hand-held bidet in a restaurant - or maybe I should fervently hope I never have the need!

The staffer you talked to steered you wrong! They still have quite a bit, but they moved it over near the baking stuff. I doubt I will be adding more to my stash, though... still haven’t used more than a couple packages.

Bet you can't eat just one! Every month I run a meeting of my organization's leadership team where we talk about strategic issues - often fairly dry content, but this afternoon we had a rather contentious agenda item that spurred a lot of... discussion. Fortunately I had the foresight to grab the bin of these off my desk when I left my office for the meeting room; I can report that they do an excellent job of smoothing the edges of prickly conversations!

Resistance is futile!

The latest iteration of my office confections is one of the most popular with my colleagues - chocolate clusters with heavily salted David Lebovitz's candied peanuts. These peanuts are daaaaangerous on their own, and in combination with chocolate they are one of the few things that really challenge my Keto resolve. So simple and so, so moreish.