Tri2Cook

Ok, I already admitted I'm no cake artist but I was picturing four 8"x1 1/2" square layers (+ icing and filling) for the bottom and two 4"x1 1/2" layers (+ icing and filling) for the top. Something like this (random web image I searched up as an example) stacked which didn't seem too difficult in my head. Is the main difficulty getting everything nice and square? Disclaimer: not being argumentive, just trying to learn from those who do this sort of thing.

I'm not an expert on the subject but I hate to see your post just sitting there unanswered so... It's just cooking. The additives are ingredients in an expanded pantry. Take them away and Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, Ferran Adria, etc. would still be great chefs. I picture them going "I want to thicken this jaboticaba puree a bit without having to heat it, somebody toss me the ultratex" not "I really want ultratex to be on the menu, let's find a way to get it in there". Using what they have to work with to make their food what they want it to be. That's what they do. That's cooking. Doesn't need a buzzword.

When I used to have time to do holiday baking I would usually put it all in one tin. I did my baking, packed them in well washed and sterilized 5 gallon pails (previously containing margarine) and stored them in my front porch (where the temp is always well below freezing by that time of year). When it was time for them to go, I brought the pails in and kept them where it was cool but not freezing overnight then packed them in the tins. Fun stuff, cookies and tins everywhere trying to pack them all in one go. Nobody ever reported problems with crispy items (like lemon crackers, princess gems, drommar... all ammonium carbonate cookies and quite crispy) having been tinned with not-so-crispy or even moist items. I tried to arrange things so crispy items weren't sitting on moist items and called it good enough. I'm sure there would be some loss of crispness eventually so I guess it depends how early you need to pack them. Moist items can be as much a problem as crispy ones if you have to do it too early, they have their own nasty (fuzzy) little problems after too much time at room temp. I usually only baked about 10 - 12 dozen each of 12 - 15 different types but it was all to give away... never wanted to take on the additional hassle of selling them. Still, I'm a picky b$%#*rd and would not have packed them that way if it was causing major problems.

The only thing you may be overthinking, keeping in mind that I'm no cake artist, is that a 4" cube on an 8" cube probably won't need a whole lot of support. Just a little something to keep things from sliding during transport I would think and probably not even that if the weather's not too warm.

For cinnamon marshmallows, I cook cinnamon sticks in the pan with the syrup then pull them out before adding the syrup to the mixer. Caramelizing a little sugar with the cinnamon sticks then adding in the rest of the syrup ingredients gives a really nice flavor as well.

Good ol' New Orleans stye pralines. I have to make huge quantities of those every year around christmas. I think people in this area where I live must have been deprived of the fact that they exist because I made a few for friends when I first moved here and now I have a whole list (that keeps growing) of people who order them every year along with the friends who expect them and get a bit grumpy if I don't do them. I don't mind making them but pecans are really expensive here so I have to sell them for more than I feel good about.

I did this one back during the summer but it may be a little more unusual than you have in mind... ...it's Thai Red Curry Sweet Potato Ice Cream. This one... ...is Cherry Pit Ice Cream. I didn't come up with the recipe but it's really good.

You could pickle them or do a chutney or relish with them.

Search it on google and almost every result will have them for less than $9000.00 so it depends what you consider a "decent price". Even the polyscience stuff (which is not the least expensive you can find) is much less expensive than that. Are you sure you didn't mean $900.00?

Thanks Mark. I'm not at all happy with the look of the peach dessert though, too dull and drab. I'll figure that one out before I actually need it. Just in case anybody wonders, I went with the mousse over an actual ice cream for holding purposes. It's going to have to be able to survive outside a freezer for a bit at this particular event. I found that if I mold the mousse into little balls and freeze them then dip them in the mousse for a more natural appearance and freeze them again they thaw nicely within the timeframe I'm working in. The outside gets soft with a small soft-frozen core to compliment the ice cream idea.

I'm thinking it may depend on your definition of buttercream as well. Are you talking about the meringue based types? That might be a bit tricky but you could probably work it out with some experimenting. I sometimes use a slightly modified (I find the recipe as written a bit too soft to work with so I use less water and I also alter the shortening/butter ratio in favor of the butter) version of the "house buttercream" from the Whimsical Bakehouse book (yep, some people actually find the all-butter type "too buttery" so I try to make them happy as much as it pains me) and I could see it easily adapting to working in some sour cream, yogurt or buttermilk. Especially if you drained the yogurt or sour cream in a cheesecloth first. Of course there are buttermilk and yogurt powders out there too. That completely eliminates the water factor.

Peach Pie warm spiced peaches - vanilla ice cream mousse - brown butter and sucanat shortbread The peaches were cooked with sucanat, star anise, cinnamon stick, vanilla bean, a squeeze of orange juice and a pinch of salt. The mousse is a vanilla ice cream base made with milk, sugar, egg yolk, a pinch of salt and vanilla. Some gelatin was dissolved in then whipped cream folded in. The "crust" is the shortbread. I'm very happy with the flavor, I'm going to work on the plating a bit. There are lightly scored areas in the shortbread so that when you tap it with a fork it collapses in on itself giving little chunks of shortbread to mix with the peaches and depositing the cold mousse on the warm peaches where it starts to soften and melt like ice cream. That part of the plan worked out fine but it looks a bit bland.

I've noticed that here as well. Chicken and beef are like gold, pork (fresh pork, bacon and ham are a different story) they practically pay you to take home with you.

It's an old one but I'll say it anyway... when in doubt, throw it out. If I decide to eat something I'm not sure about and spend some time kneeling before the almighty porcelain that was my choice. Serving it to a bunch of unsuspecting people isn't cool.

So just out of curiosity I ordered another 5 oz. from the alchemy-works site since my supply is low anyway and it went through fine. Already got the confimation email and everything. So I'm assuming they're still a reliable source at this point. Can't run out of coumarin cake to eat with my cyanide ice cream.

I really want to put them in mine and do (but then again, I eat cherry, peach and apricot pit ice creams so I guess we all draw our own lines) and I've ordered them here and here. Not recently though, I assume they're still available.

Hmmm... I somehow missed that part about the "English food theme". So disregard my completely off base reply above. How about a small piece of toasted, buttered bread topped with a bit of Branston pickle, a bit of peppery salad greens and a piece of Stilton. Ploughman's Lunch on a spoon. Or you could bake pieces of sausage and onion in Yorkshire pudding batter in mini muffin tins or small half sphere molds. Make a gravy with a bit of English mustard and Worcestershire added, put some in the spoon and top with the baked bit. Toad in a Hole on a spoon.

Thanks for the heads-up. No store by that name anywhere near here though.

Won't be long. I got an email this morning from ecookbooks.com saying they have it in now so I can't imagine the others will be too far behind. The Alinea book, the Fat Duck book and Johnny Iuzzini's book all in one general timeframe. I'm going to be in kitchen overload.

Chef Blumenthal's talk was great, but I think I would have given it to have been at that Christmas dinner! ← Yeah, that would have been awesome to experience. I already had my round of jealousy over that one when I watched that episode of "Perfection". I guess that episode and the "Fish Pie" episode (which discussed the sound thing) pretty much covered the topics but it would still have been fun to hear his thoughts on it now, a couple years down the road. I haven't figure out why he's still so secretive about using the word "gellan" though... it's not like nobody knows about it. Regardless, he's still one of my food heroes despite not having tasted his food. I just like the way he thinks.

I did some for a catering job a while back that were butter sauteed slices of plantain topped with a butter poached shrimp that had been dipped in spray dried coconut milk powder and topped with a bit of Thai basil. In the spoon under the bite was a bit of passion fruit puree seasoned with a little salt and just a hint of chile that was tipped in at the end to cut the richness and cleanse the mouth a bit. Nothing too fancy but it went over really well.

Great stuff. I'd give my left... well... my left something... to have attended Chef Blumenthal's talk. A little brain-picking with Johnny Iuzzini would have been really cool too.

Crush the dry ice really fine and mix it right into the ice cream base in a stand mixer. Heston Blumenthal did it in one of his "Perfection" episodes. Just make sure the dry ice is well crushed, you don't want to be chewing on or swallowing a chunk of the stuff... unless frostbite of the esophagus or mouth sounds fun. But to answer your question, the cold alcohol bath should work. Assuming you keep the bath cold enough. One of my ice cream machines (I bought it from eG member Kerry Beal) uses an alcohol bath between the unit and the container. It uses a compressor instead of dry ice but the principle is the same. One thing about the stirring rod, it won't function as a scraper so you'll probably get a thick layer of really hard frozen ice cream around the sides.

Chef Rubber has always been very reliable for me. The only problem with them is there shipping rates are way out of proportion to what you order. I'm sure they have some automated system set up but what it saves them in having to calculate realistic rates is sucked hard from the customer's pocket. We're talking things like $35 shipping on a $50 order (that weighs less than 5 lbs.). So, even though they usually have what I need at as good or better a price than most other places I very rarely use them. Only when I can't find what I need anywhere else.

Yeah, I've been waffling over ordering her videos. I keep telling myself to wait until I can get away and take one of her classes instead.