Tri2Cook

Almost Thai holy basil chicken... no holy basil to be found so plain ol' basil had to do. Still pretty tasty..

During the really long winters here, keeping my work area at 20 C would require additional heating beyond what I normally do, not cooling. There's usually only maybe 3 months out of the year that I have to sometimes resort to cooling the room. So I've become used to having my heat gun plugged in and warmed up whenever I'm working. But the gravity feed brushes were right there in my face when I bought the others, don't know why it didn't occur me to ask around about which would be better.

Of course I hear this about the gravity feed after I' already have 2 siphon feed airbrushes...

Sometimes one boasts just a little more than one probably should have and attracts the attention of the chocolate gods. Apparently attracting the attention of the chocolate gods via boasting is unwise and viewed as a challenge. It's been unusually hot this week for this early in the summer where I live and then today it clouded up and started raining. So now the humidity gauges in my house are reading somewhere around 73% and nothing is helping bring it down any significant amount. So I'm going to edit my answer to say: sometimes I turn on the air conditioner and, if needed, the dehumidifier, and do chocolate work... if the chocolate gods find it within their hearts to allow me to do so.

Managed to get a few minutes at the farmer's market yesterday. Pretty disappointing if you wanted vegetables but that's not unusual here this early in the season. Two of my favorite vendors were there though, the lady from the elk farm and the guy from the beef and pork farm. So I grabbed a few things from each of them plus the lady from the elk farm always brings a selection from the semi-local cheese maker so I grabbed some of that too. The bread lady was there so I grabbed a couple things from her as well. So meat, cheese and bread... at least the important stuff was covered. The wood fired oven pizza guy was there too but the line was longer than I had time for so I had to skip that. I bought a small package of beef and cranberry summer sausage at the beef and pork guy's booth, didn't want to invest too heavily because I was a bit skeptical. That was a mistake, I'll buy a larger amount of that next time I get the chance.

Nobody... not even me. I don't make myself a cake, I don't buy myself a cake and I'm fine with nobody making me a cake. I'm not a birthday humbug. If somebody does something, I'm a good sport about it and it's appreciated. It's just not something that's all that important to me.

That is, has always been and will probably always be, my biggest weakness. It was tempered to a degree by it being one of Ann's biggest strengths... now it just runs free and causes me no end of trouble.

That might do it, I haven't tried it since. I started doing my PB&Js as shell molded pieces with actual jelly and peanut butter ganache. If I ever get to a point where I need better shelf life, I assume I'll have to find something to replace the jelly which is why I've kept a close watch on Jim's posts about his piped PdF experiments.

I understand, for the purposes of the class, he has to evaluate results based on what he's trying to teach and how he expects them to look (although they look shiny to me). But I like the natural look of it. I personally, outside of doing what was asked if I was taking the class, would omit the stripe and let it look like a chunk of granite... but I'm not sure if that's for the rock effect or out of plain ol' laziness in not wanting to have to tape all those molds. Rob posted one of his pieces in this thread not too long ago that had a natural rock-like look to it, albeit a shiny, well polished rock, that I really liked. I've never known myself to have any particular affinity towards rocks but for some reason I really like the look on the chocolates.

That's the problem I had with Greweling's PB&Js. I tabled the peanut butter gianduja to temper (this was pre-EZtemper) and poured it over the PdF layer. When I tried to cut it once set, most of the cuts just shattered.

That's ok, I don't really see me getting into it anyway. I can't imagine it would be as simple as I made it sound to do it legally.

Welcome aboard. While cannabis is of no recreational interest to me and no medical need for me, it'll still be interesting to see what you do. With the news that it will be legal for recreational purposes in Canada as of Oct. 17 of this year, I could see cannabis confections becoming a lucrative venture here in the near future.

Those are really nice. I especially like the granite look of the first one.

I really wish I liked sponge toffee more than I do, it always looks fun to make. And look at those 28 year old chocolates... none of that 7 gram stuff!

I'm imagining the scandal among the local red hat ladies... they always show up in fully synchronized red hats.

I used 200 grams of the freeze dried corn, 250 grams of cocoa butter, and 100 grams each of the butter powder and sugar plus 5 grams of salt. I haven't done anything to temper it yet but the batch of milk chocolate I made before this hasn't been tempered yet either and it's solid, not soft at all. This stuff is literally like a really nice soft ganache. I asked the question regarding high milk fat levels from using butter or heavy cream powder having negative effects and was told by someone who does the bean to bar thing as a business that they haven't observed any negative effects caused by that. Edit: So with pastrygirl asking about the cocoa butter amount I used and another person (Rob... aka: gfron1) mentioning the same thing on my Facebook post, I think I'm going to give upping the cocoa butter level a shot. Nothing to lose at this point, it's not going to do what I want it to do the way it is now and the entire purpose of this batch was to learn.

I'm not calling it a solved mystery at this point but, unfortunately, I may have some evidence to present on the problem with starch. I can't remember where we were discussing it but there was a post regarding Michael Laiskonis running popcorn through a melanger with other ingredients and mentioning that it shouldn't work. We were puzzled why that would be a problem as long as there was sufficient cocoa butter present. While I don't know what the difficulties he was alluding to were since he never specifically said, I've encountered a difficulty with my little corn experiment and I can't think of anything to pin it on other than the starch in the corn. Everything I did is a proven process other than using a starchy item as the base. Regardless, after over 10 hours out of the machine, this stuff is still the texture of a nice ganache. I don't think there's much chance it's going to set up any more than it already has.

I don't know, I'm a fan of making the observer use their imagination a little bit every now and then. Besides, it got three (that we've seen so far) lessons out of one mold... so efficient too.

Not actually chocolate but I'm putting it here anyway... Freeze dried corn (a gift from Kerry Beal that inspired this idea), cocoa butter, butter powder, sugar and sea salt. The live action shot. It's actually out of the machine now and tucked away to cool. After about 20 hours in the machine, the final color isn't as nice as I'd hoped (picture the above with a slight grey-ish cast to it) but this was just an idea test anyway, there are ways to solve that problem if I decide the buttered corn bar is worth doing again once I get it tempered and molded. Assuming it will temper and mold, it's still pretty soft right now after 4 hours out of the machine.

Doesn't look like a little too much to me, looks just right.

Ingenuity, yes and they do look delicious... but I was thinking more along the lines of only Kerry would get a short break in a long and busy shift at work and spend it seeing if she could find herself some more work to do.

I enthusiastically searched a few recipes just to see what I would be getting into because I don't have a whole lot planned for today unless the rain moves out. And then I saw that I would be laminating dough and decided to file it away for fall or winter... or not at all.

I was thinking "have I ever had a buttery what?"... ...and then I saw that it's not a buttery anything, it's just a buttery. So nope, never had a buttery.

I don't think you need to worry about an apology for that. At least, if you do, then I owe a whole lot of people a whole lot of apologies. This particular topic is like a bullet train. You turn away from the computer long enough to take a drink of your beer and when you turn back, it's moved forward 3 or 4 pages. Add in me forgetting to check in on it for a couple days and I have to play catch-up all the time.

Guess I'll have to look back through those pictures again... I thought you were.