Tri2Cook

Christmas Eve, we don't do anything special food-wise. Usually just snacks and movies. Christmas breakfast was always a big thing with us but with it just being me and the younger daughter now, it's not as big a deal as it was. Older daughter does her own thing with her husband and the kids at their house, they come by later in the day. Unofficially adopted daughter (best friend of older daughter who lived with us for a few years during high school and after due to some bad circumstances at her home) is married and moved away. Sister-in-law usually works Christmas day now, they pay her ridiculously well to do so and it's really just not the same without my late wife (her sister) here so I don't blame her at all. Christmas dinner, I haven't planned yet. New Year's Eve either. I told myself I'm making tamales at some point during the holidays but I don't know that it will be either of those days. I'm going to be off work between Christmas and New Year's this year so I'll have plenty of time. I like grazing food for New Year's Day. That's a full day of football, don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. So yeah, at this point I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing.

Yeah, maybe disclaimers regarding situation should be included with our answers. My work area is easy to keep in the recommended temp range for most of the year (for several months out of the year, I'm usually needing to bring the room temp up to be in range), I'm tempering with the EZtemper and I tend towards very simple or not at all with decorating. I suppose that last bit could very possibly lead some to write off most of what I say right off the top. Publicly, I'd argue that I pretty much always get well tempered shells that release cleanly. But I'd secretly be thinking "yeah, I really need to get onboard with the fancy decorating thing."

I can't answer for them or give a scientific reason but like I said, I also use the cw2295 that @pastrygirl uses. It's been my primary mold since I started doing this. Maybe the 4mm makes a difference, maybe I've been lucky. Zen patience is not a virtue I was gifted heavily with... if I had to fight with it, I would have dumped it a long time ago. 😁

Same mold I use and, with full knowledge that the chocolate gods are going to punish me severely for saying this, I've never had a problem with unmolding.

That's ok, I wasn't excluding myself from that "we." I have a few I could toss in the mix.

Crotchety bunch, aren't we?

My waffle iron, ice cream makers and meat grinder probably get used the least (and are probably pretty close to equal in that department) but I don't have any that get used so little that I wouldn't miss them if they were gone.

No microwaving it for me, I use a dehydrator that has a 30º C bottom temp. I keep my bottles of cocoa butter, airbrushes and the color cups in it all the time. If I'm going to be spraying, I turn it on set to 34º C the night before or early in the morning. But yes, I don't heat - cool - warm or do anything else to temper it for spraying.

I have to have eggnog and fruitcake every year during the holiday season. I'm not happy if I don't, doesn't feel right. But that's enough... doesn't matter that they're generally viewed as seasonal items because I don't even want either again until the next year.

Hmmm. Cleanliness definitely isn't the issue. Temp, I don't think so but possibly. It's rarely above 70 in my house during the winter but it's rarely below 65 so I think I should be ok there. I've never had a batch go bad, it just never really ferments. It ends up being a spicy cabbage salad. There's a point where I start to worry about spoilage and toss it in the fridge but I've gone as long as 2 weeks before panic fridging with no real signs of fermentation. I've had some very light bubble action a couple times but still never got that good kimchi funk. Anyway, don't want to steer the discussion off course but I am tempted to give the sauercorn a shot. Worst case, I just have the same success I've had with kimchi. Thanks!

I'm in the club as well, never heard of it before Rob brought it to our attention. Of course, now that he has, I want to try it but I seem to have bad luck with fermentation. I still haven't managed to get a batch of kimchi to ferment properly.

I have a bottle of Lucano but it's not the Anniversario. No Byrrh, but I have Dubonnet Rouge. So maybe I can at least kinda see the show from the cheap seats.

"Has to" might be a bit overkill... mine usually doesn't. And it could be argued that unless it comes from a box or uses one of the modernist methods, mac and cheese generally involves a béchamel base to build on as well.

I use the nacho cheese sauce from Chefsteps for my mac & cheese sauce. Sometimes with the jalapenos pureed in per the recipe, sometimes just the cheese sauce minus the peppers. I play it a little loose with the cheese, there's always cheddar but there's also frequently bits of whatever other cheese I need to use up replacing part of the cheddar. I also borrow from Serious Eats mac & cheese and mix in some additional shredded cheese after mixing the sauce and pasta. It's cooled enough at that point that the shredded cheese doesn't melt into the sauce and creates little pockets of stretchy cheesiness after baking. I'm not above eating KD if it's put in front of me but I haven't made it for myself in years. When I did, I used a lot more butter than the instructions call for and a lot less milk.

I keep thinking I want one of those but that's a lot of money when I already have two Paasches sitting here so I'm still trying to convince myself it's worth it. I found the Paasches on sale for a really good price and jumped on them before I was aware of the benefits of gravity feed, which they are not.

Fair enough but I wouldn't consider any moisture migration from the gel to be acceptable in that environment (a water soluble powder) and I would put 30°C as more like the midrange of gelatins melting point, depending on various factors. Regardless, wasn't intending what I posted to counter what you suggested. Just bringing up potential problems that may or may not arise based on my experience working with gelatin. I think it's an excellent suggestion if long term and/or room temp storage isn't a requirement. It doesn't sound like there's much chance we're gonna agree on the suitability if that is a requirement... but that doesn't mean I'm saying I'm right and you're wrong. Just tossing my experiences in the mix.

The potential issue being, you'll (and your recipients) need to be aware of storage temps and storage time. At the low levels of gelatin you'd want to use for this purpose so that it melts easily in the milk, it could potentially melt at warm room temps that aren't warm enough to melt the chocolate so you wouldn't see it happen. It will definitely slow-bleed liquid due to syneresis. Unrefrigerated shelf life would be really short and enough gelatin to counteract the stability issues probably wouldn't result in a product suited to this purpose. But I've never actually made a hot chocolate bomb with a gelatin-based gel inside so take the above for what it's worth. 😁

This sounds interesting. I'm a fan of bread and butter pickles so the sweet wouldn't be an issue for me.

So my molds are in and they're gonna make bigger spheres than I was picturing in my head but they'll fit in even my smallest coffee mugs (according to my measuring tape anyway) so they should be fine. I have a happy young'un right now, not only because she's excited about the hot chocolate bombs but also because when I ordered the dehydrated mini marshmallows, they also had the colorful Lucky Charms style version so I ordered a bag of those too and told her to have at 'em.

Maybe it'll be a refreshing change for you... at least it isn't me yet again.

I'm giving them a shot. I'd never heard of them either until someone asked me if I make them. I had to admit not knowing what they were and did some googling. I ordered 2.5" (63.5 mm) polycarbonate half sphere molds for the shells. I started ordering things before thoroughly investigating what I was doing and got a bulk supply of the dehydrated mini marshmallows like come in the packets of hot cocoa mix assuming that was the thing to use. And then every video I watched showed using regular mini marshmallows. I'm going to go with the dehydrated I already ordered initially and see what the reaction is.

Just your basic garden variety crockpot beef stew. For future reference (for myself), thou shalt not put rutabaga in thine stew. Seemed like a good idea. I like rutabaga. I now know I do not like it in my beef stew. It took over... the broth tastes like rutabaga and not in a good way. It's not that earthy sweetness of a good cooked rutabaga. It seems to have maintained that stronger taste it has when raw even after 10 hours of cooking. It's not actually offensive, just not what I expected. I guess it's possible it just wasn't a great rutabaga to begin with.

They're exactly what you want, you can use them for anything you'd use any other chocolate for. Tempered and much easier to work with than a big hefty block you have to bust up yourself. Edit: I shouldn't actually say that's exactly what you want. Nothing wrong with bars and blocks, I just like the convenience of callets. Weigh 'em and get to work, no chopping required.

For me, that'd be a bonus. Anything that makes a cake more dense (in a good way, not bricks) and moist is a plus in my cake-eating world. Nice work with the video!

I use canned diced tomatoes more often than fresh. Really good fresh tomatoes are pretty much impossible to get where I live except during a narrow window in late summer/early fall. The canned tomatoes are better pretty much 100% of the time outside of that window. Even during good tomato time, the good ones are only available at the once-a-month farmer's market. The grocery store tomatoes are no better even then.