Tri2Cook

Their loss... I'm way up here in Santa's South 40 and I'd buy them way more often than I should.

If I was doing it frequently or in varying batch sizes, I'd probably convert the measurements to weight as well. I haven't used the recipe in years but you never know when a tested recipe will be just the thing you need for a project so I held on to it.

Rather than dig for the original post, I'm going to assume this is ok since it's been posted many times... Nightscotsman Strawberry Marshmallows 4 envelopes gelatin 1/2 c strawberry puree 1 1/4 c water 3 c sugar 1-1/4 c glucose or light corn syrup 1/4 tsp salt powdered sugar and potato starch for dusting Line a sheet pan with a 1" rim with aluminum foil. coat the foil with vegetable oil or non-stick spray. Fit the mixer with the whisk attachment. Place the strawberry puree and 1/2 cup water in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the gelatin over to soften. Put the sugar, corn syrup, remaining water and salt in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until it reaches the soft-ball stage (234-240 F). With the mixer at full speed, pour all of the hot syrup slowly down the side of the bowl. Be careful as the mixture is very liquid and hot at this point and some may splash out of the bowl - use a splash guard if you have one. whip until the mixture is very fluffy and stiff, about 8-10 minutes. pour mixture into the foil-lined pan and smooth with an oiled offset spatula so that it's level with the top of the rim (it won't completely fill the pan). Allow the mixture to sit, uncovered at room temp for 10 to 12 hours. Mix equal parts powdered sugar and potato starch and sift generously over the rested marshmallow slab. Turn it out onto a cutting board or counter, peel off foil and dust with more sugar/starch mixture. Slice with a thin-bladed oiled knife or oiled cookie cutters. Dip all cut edges in sugar/starch mixture and shake off excess. Marshmallows will keep several weeks at room temp in an air-tight container. Variation - Chocolate Marshmallows: Replace strawberry puree and initial 1/2 cup of water in mixing bowl with 1/2 cup of cocoa disolved in 1/2 cup boiling water in a separate bowl. Soften gelatine in an additional 1/4 cup cold water in mixing bowl. Add cocoa mixture to mixing bowl and procede with recipe as above. This will produce a marshmallow with a strong chocolate flavor, but somewhat denser than the strawberry version. To get a lighter texture as well as a lighter chocolate flavor, reduce cocoa to 1/4 cup. Variation - Vanilla Marshmallows: Replace strawberry puree and initial 1/2 cup of water in mixing bowl with 3/4 cup water and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract or the seeds scraped from 2 vanilla beans. Edit: I saved it to a text file on my computer a long time ago when I was doing a marshmallow marathon of flavors one year just to see what I liked and didn't like. It's a really easy recipe to make variations on. Edit again: In the interest of having this accurate to nightscotsman's recipe as given, I altered it back to original. I'd forgotten that when I put it in my notes, I used straight 1 cup puree to hydrate the gelatin instead of the 1/2 cup puree and 1/2 cup water he calls for because that's how I was doing mine.

I like that too. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if the packaging for that set cost at least as much as the bars inside cost to produce but he's in a market and at a level where he can price accordingly. Packaging appears to be my next frustration now that the battle to find a mold I could live with has ended.

Doesn't look like it's made the website yet. Speaking of which, it's a small thing and I'll get used to it but my initial impression is that I'm not a big fan of their website redesign. It's not actually more difficult to navigate than it was before but it feels like it is. It's not as intuitive. But that could possibly just be due to me being used to the old site.

Thanks for the ideas. It was way too close to shrimp time when I posted that to be able to do even the quickest baking, the shrimp were already in the oven. I buttered the burger buns and heavily toasted them. It did the trick, really just something to soak up the sauce anyway. Edit: I'm pretty sure I haven't propagated the idea here that I'm much of a gourmet when it comes to cooking for myself at home but just in case anybody had that notion... now you know the truth.

In another moment of brilliance, it occurred to me late in the day that I didn't have intentions of baking bread today but failed to purchase something. So now my choice of bread to soak up the sauce with my shrimp falls between extra buns left from last night's burgers or a pumpernickel I got at the farmer's market. Obviously food was not at the top of my brain's priority list for today... though I have no idea what it was concentrating on instead.

That sounds pretty tasty to me.

If that includes Rob's (gfron1) peanut butter pie, I don't know what to suggest. That's peanut butter pie perfection as far as I'm concerned. Maybe toss a little ginger and hot pepper in and do a sweet play on the African soup?

Interesting. Something to keep in mind for down the road for doing flavor and idea testing. Might be nice for small "what you need right now" batches of nut and praline pastes too.

That remains to be seen... it still has to be tempered and molded. Molding the 50% milk this weekend so I'll know soon if I got that one right.

I just found out it existed about 10 seconds ago when I saw you post.

Not a good picture with the glare but the Venezuela Sur del Lago 70% dark chocolate is out of the machine. In the interest of not wanting the machine to be bored, I immediately got a batch of 40% milk chocolate going using the same beans.

It's Canada Day, the day to celebrate all things Canadian... and being the brilliant person I am, that completely slipped my mind and I got everything I needed yesterday to make Cajun bbq shrimp today. Think I could claim the Acadian tie-in and get away with it?

I'm looking at those pastries and remembering pictures of the pastries I've seen that he made (assuming that's alleguede) and thinking "if they only knew, they wouldn't have sent that to him".

Take away the paper packaging and the tray and dump it on a plate and it doesn't look much different than what I had for dinner tonight. Except I had to make my own... so you win.

Next up, Sur del Lago from Venezuela. This is only a few minutes in so it's still really coarse and the sugar hasn't been added yet. Intense aroma and taste at this point, as would be expected. End goal is 70%.

They actually sell Schweddy Balls! The SNL skit with Alec Baldwin as Pete Schweddy was funny. They did another one with Betty White as Florence Dusty and her Dusty Muffin that was awesome.

That may be the best reason of all to give it a shot... no ingrained "you can't" or "that won't". Just an idea, an end goal and an open canvas. I was by no means suggesting it can't be done or that compromise is the only option. I just don't have the answer myself, it doesn't fall within the scope of anything I've done. What I think will be the biggest hurdle, you've already recognized. Your chocolate of choice not being overwhelmed into obscurity by the other ingredients.

The thing is, some of your requests come with very specific parameters that make the likelihood of anybody having something that fits pretty small. That's not a criticism at all, it's great. I'm all for knowing what you want and going after it, I just think this is going to be one of those situations where a bit (or a lot) of experimenting is going to be involved. As I'm sure you know, sometimes what you want doesn't exist and you have to figure out how to make it exist. I don't think I've ever experienced a more traditional style cake where I could tell you which chocolate was used in it if I wasn't the one who put it in there.

I tend to agree with paulraphael on this subject even though eating in this manner worked very well for me with no bad effects that I'm aware of. The main reason being, unless it's going to be a permanent change in how you eat or you have a plan in place to replace the diet with something else once you get the weight off, it's not a great solution. When you stop doing it, unless you do something else to compensate, weight comes back on amazingly fast. Personally, I'd pick the exercise and change in eating habits over the diet every time now just because it's a preferable situation for me, not because I think the diet is necessarily bad. Boring, I just plain ol' got sick of eating that way, but not particularly bad and a large part of the boring was my own fault. Be prepared for one thing though, people who have decided this type of diet is bad will take every opportunity to point that out to you. If you sneeze in public or your feet smell that day, it will be the fault of the diet. At least, that was my experience. I had to have an emergency appendectomy (only emergency because my stubborn arse wouldn't see a doctor despite all of the pain and suffering I was experiencing until I reached a point where my wife told me I was either going or she was calling them to come get me) about 5 or 6 months into the diet and I don't know how many people told me after that "I knew that diet was dangerous".

I tried this type of diet once many years ago when I got into cycling as a form of recreation and relaxation and wanted to shed a bunch of pounds fast to make the cycling easier. A co-worker told me about their success with it so I gave it a shot. I didn't do any of the math or science that you're supposed to do to make it as healthy as possible. I just ate meat, cheese and eggs for about 3 weeks then started eating a "salad" of whatever greens were handy, flax seed meal and some form of low-carb dressing once a day in addition to my meat, cheese and eggs. Not at all the proper or healthy way to do this type of diet but that was when I was doing double duty working in a restaurant and co-owning a catering business and I didn't have (or, more accurately, want to take) the time for precision. It worked, I dropped a lot of weight fairly fast and after a short initial adjustment period, didn't have any lack of energy or focus as a result. One thing I did learn (the hard way), no matter how tired of it you get, drink A LOT of water and consider some type of low carb fiber source (which is why I started adding the flax seed meal to things). This type of eating, at least the way I was doing it, can plug the pipes like nothing else I've ever experienced if you fall behind on staying hydrated.

I don't know about arthritis but they certainly can cause or, at least, exacerbate my use of foul language at times.

Since last night's not quite holy basil chicken already had me crossing the boundaries of authenticity, I decided to go ahead and cross them some more today. I had some non-creamy slaw in the fridge left from last week's rib meal (this stuff seems to be indestructible, it's still tasty and crisp after a week soaking in the dressing). Shredded cabbage, carrot, celery, onion and apple in a vinegar dressing (just vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper and dry mustard heated and poured over the veggies while hot). I had a few Thai chiles left from last night so I chopped up those, some garlic and some basil and mint and tossed it all in the slaw along with a little fish sauce and sweet dark soy sauce before work this morning. So dinner tonight is rice, leftover not quite holy basil chicken and the modified slaw layered in lettuce leaves lined with more fresh mint and basil. Authenticity can take a leap tonight, this stuff is good.

I was pretty excited about those until I found they were incredibly difficult to find a source for that would ship to where I live and then, having finally found that, found out how expensive they are. The excitement was quickly diminished. I still like the idea of them though.