Tri2Cook

I wanted to comment, just wasn't quite sure what to say... but rest assured that any potential latent fantasies regarding the lead character from Attack of the 50' Woman in the nude, which may or may not have been lurking somewhere in the dark corners of my mind, have been laid to rest. Disclaimer: The above is not a commentary on the work (Elizabeth does awesome work), the subject matter or the cause it was done for, I'm just thinking maybe not everything is at it's best when viewed super-sized.

I mean, yay for techniques and recipes and all that stuff, but in the end, if something is good, that really is all that matters. And there's always a certain satisfaction in taking what you know and finding your own path to good.

It's warmed significantly this week and the snow's melting fast. If this weather holds, I may be able to break out the smoker by Easter. I'm not counting on it at this point but I'm going to plan something just in case. If that doesn't look like it's going to work out, I'll plan something else. Anything to prevent a turkey from happening yet again.

I'm guessing, based on the above question, you have no idea what it is Rob does and has been doing for a long time. And the typical modern high-end tasting menu does not have a choice of 1 each from 3 apps, mains and desserts. It's typically multiple courses set by the chef with very little to no choosing involved (though accommodation for allergy and other medical problems is generally made and some chefs will allow minor variances for personal taste). I'm sure there are exceptions but pretty much every high-end tasting menu I've seen in the past 10 years follows pretty closely to that plan.

Try 2:1 with pastry cream and butter (a mousseline)... if that's still not rich enough, I'll be thoroughly impressed.

Heston Blumenthal did a chocolate tea pot in the Afternoon Tea episode of his Great British Food series. If I remember correctly, it was made of chocolate flavored with Earl Grey tea and he did exactly as this company is advertising... add hot water, swirl a bit, pour. Then they nibbled on the pots. That was a couple years ago, looks like somebody decided to run with the idea. But I think this thread is more about people sharing their own work.

Pastrychef.com used to carry a plastic one. I didn't mention it before because I don't see it listed on their site anymore. You could try giving them a call.

Sorry, didn't realize that. I didn't watch the video, just looked at the picture on the AUI site. The place that does the cutting and drilling can use a countersink bit so you'd get the indentation around the hole on one side.

I'm not sure what you mean by you found them for $40 but can't find them for less than $65 but, if you found the same quantity and quality for $40 and this is something you use regularly, I'd say grab all you can afford. If you or someone you know is handy, it wouldn't be hard to make a plate. Just take a flat piece of sturdy plastic and drill some holes to match the spacing of the shells in their trays.

I doubt you're going to beat that price on the shells. Even if you find them for a few dollars less, I'm betting the shipping cost will balance it out or tip it the other way with Qzina's flat rate. If you're looking to invest in the filling plate, I'm assuming this isn't just a one-shot thing so you could even order 2 or 3 cases (or more) from Qzina and it'll still only be $25 shipping.

Last weekend was my first weekend with the EZ-Temper. That thing really is amazing, I wish I'd had one back when I was catering. I didn't do much in the way of chocolates but it would have been really handy for whipping out chocolate decorations for desserts at a moments notice and things of that nature. So my first serious attempt to jump into the chocolates world got shot down a bit by being overzealous. I wanted to try something other than what I should have done, just make some nicely tempered basic shells, and I haven't invested in colored cocoa butter yet. So I went with luster dust mixed into melted cocoa butter. Pretty much equal parts satin white and old gold. Not the best look as it turns out, but it was still fun. I'm calling them bigfoot chocolates because for some reason they're impossible to get a picture of that isn't blurry (which is my way of not admitting I'm a horrible photographer). I've tried 2 different cameras and an iPad and can't get a picture that shows that the actually do have a nice depth and shine to the finish. For this coming weekend, I'm going to concentrate more on learning to walk before I try to run and start on some stuff for Easter. I think I'm hooked and look forward to the learning process.

Looks good. I'd be in on everything except for the liver mousse. That bread sounds pretty awesome.

Thanks! Not a big deal if I don't find them, I'm not even 100% decided I want more. But I'll give chocolat-chocolat a call, I have a couple other things I want to order from them anyway. Edit: Found them on the Chocolate World site. Even after currency conversion and shipping, they'd be no more than ordering from any of the other sites. But I'll still ask at Chocolat since I'm going to be placing an order there anyway.

On the subject of molds, can you point me in the direction the f'ing bunny molds came from? I've searched google with every search term I could think of and browsed the Tomric, Chocolat-Chocolat and dr.ca sites as well. I figure I can just call and ask if they're still available if I decide for sure I want more but I can't remember where you said they were from.

I've made Jacob Grier's Smokejumper a couple times. Gin, lemon juice, yellow chartreuse and lapsang souchong syrup. I like it.

Have we seen those on here before and I missed it? They sound like they'd be an awesome combo with the f'ing bunny molds. I'm a fan of the irreverent and non-traditional.

I realize nobody's going to believe me but, about 8 or 9 years ago I was trying to mimic the swirl finish Steve Vai used to use on his guitars on dessert pieces and gave this very technique a try. To swirl finish guitars, borax is used to break the surface tension in a large container of water, oil paints are floated on the surface, swirled to the desired effect, the guitar is dipped through the paint into the water below, the excess paint is brushed away from above the guitar and it's pulled out of the tank. The paint adheres to the guitar on it's way in. The problems with doing that precise technique with chocolate on edible items are self-evident so using a pool of white chocolate instead was something I tried. It didn't allow for the exact effect I was after and the white chocolate muted the colors more than I wanted so I moved on to other ideas. None of which were ever successful to my satisfaction. I doubt if anyone would remember it, but I posted a thread here asking about food safe ways to break the surface tension in a container of water back at that time. That was just after the attempt with the pool of white chocolate didn't work out as I hoped and I was trying to think of other ways to do it. I like the way that looks on those pops though. Makes me wish I'd done more with it so I'd have something to point to and wouldn't sound like I'm making this up now. Just in case anybody's interested, this is a link to the effect I was going for and never achieved to any degree I was happy with.

I don't have Pichet's book but Michael Laiskonis discussed choux in a post on his old blog and, if I remember correctly, he attributed the recipe to him. I've never been disappointed with the results. This is the recipe Michael used, does it look pretty similar? 180g water 120g whole milk 120g unsalted butter 30g sweetened condensed milk 2g salt 150g all purpose flour 4 large eggs

She's not mentioned anywhere on eGullet by me because I'd never heard of her until your post. Make's mentioning her kinda difficult.

I'm in. I don't have the experience in the area of molded chocolates that most of the people posting in this thread have but I'm going to jump in with both feet and try to do some catching-up. I think the biggest benefit of this machine for me (at this point) is that it's inspiring me to want to get in the kitchen and play/learn. That in itself is worth the price of admission as far as I'm concerned.

The worm has turned... now you're the one wanting the information.

Hopefully not too perturbed. I just tried thinking about it like it was something I wanted to do and then watched while the internal fire brigade immediately stamped out that spark. I get the impression HST doesn't feel that approaching this from the angle of showing the difficulties related to the concept would be a good idea. If that's based on the teacher's expectations, I'd suggest the teacher needs to broaden his/her thought processes a bit. Demonstrating intelligently that something won't work is completely valid.

I had a feeling that might be the case. The flavor in the local wild berries is amazing but I wasn't confident it would stand up to the chocolate to berry ratio in a ganache. I knew somebody here would have experience with it, so now I know. Thanks!

That's okay... in my hurry to try to be funny, I completely missed the "millennials" part. I'm a tad older than that.

Dredging this from the depths to ask if anybody has made Wybauw's blueberry ganache and if so, how well does the blueberry stand out in it? I also have the following from one of the Boiron PDFs... 500 g blueberry puree 370 g dark chocolate 60% 735 g milk chocolate 38% 175 g butter 80 g sorbitol 65 g invert sugar 65 g glucose I'm thinking about a game plan for the local blueberry festival (which isn't until late July/early August so I have lots of time to work on it) and I'm fine with experimenting (still have about 6 or 7 gallons of the local wild blueberries in the freezer from last summer) but I figured if anybody here is already familiar with these recipes, it would save me some trouble. I'm completely open to other suggestions as well. Filling with a layer of blueberry jam (homemade from the local berries) and a layer of the blueberry ganache seems like it might be a good option but I'm kinda hoping for a ganache that's blueberry enough to not need that.