Darienne

dystopiandreamgirl. You are my heroine for sure!

I have one which was brought to mind by answering another thread: how to hard-boil and peel quite / too fresh eggs. Using the regular methods, the eggs are often impossible to peel. The answer is baking soda in the water. Then plunge the cooked eggs into cold water. Crack them all over and leave them to sit in the cold water for a while. Then peel them. That should help. Of course, that is not a 'fix' in the real sense of the word - but rather a pre-fix.

You no doubt know the old remedy about putting baking soda in the water with quite fresh eggs. Works every time. Then plunge the eggs into cold water and crack them all over. Leave them in the cold water and peel them in a while. Running them under cold water as you peel them can also help. We are old hands at the too-fresh eggs scenario. (Personal aside: I hate hard-boiled eggs in any way, shape or form.)

Two Cuisinart appliances: a food processor and a grinder mill. The old versions just died in the past month. Not too exciting, but very necessary.

Not decadent or delicious enough? Add chocolate!

We have squared-off plastic pails with flat lids...empty muffin mix, etc, pails from local businesses which either give away or sell the empty pails. These are each filled with one type of item and I have a matching schema tacked to the oil tank which abuts the freezer. It's a chest freezer and SOMETHING has to go on top of SOMETHING. The price to pay here. It's working pretty well though. (Have to admit we just bought a second second-hand chest freezer in the garage and moved ALL the dog food into it. Makes freezer #1 more of a delight to work with.)

Is this a family name for the confection? I googled same and ended up only with recipes to cook possum. We don't have possums up here. As for your description of same: more information than needed...

We're up, but then we have dogs and dogs don't care that we were late last night and need extra sleep. So far just coffee. Our daughter is still asleep upstairs, but she will want bacon and eggs for breakfast because although she has been on her own for decades now, she still refuses pretty much to cook. Her BF is an incredible cook - he cooks 7 days a week for homeless Caribbean men - but he doesn't do breakfast. Then on to stuffing the turkey, etc. Totally traditional menu here in the far frozen north. Great BLOG, Chris. Don't know where you get that energy!!!

Christmas morning and I found this recipe for a Buddha's Hand online in Dessert First

And what kind do you recommend?

I'll probably be sorry I asked... ..."but what do you mean...the songs the cooker plays!"

Hi Chris, I have just read your menu and I am exhausted already. Not to mention that I have to go to Google to figure out what some of it actually is. My French cooking skills are, well, nil, so I am looking forward to learning from you this week.

More Chocolate coated toffee for friends, acquaintances and people who help us. Spiced pecans. Raspberry truffles with the most amazing booze-filled ganache I have ever run across. Coconut-peanut butter truffles (not my favorite, but I tried 'em and, as they say, someone will eat them). They'll go to the Christmas Eve party along with Ed's Tortiere. Chocolate-dipped orange marshmallows for a dear friend who LOVES them. Dipped orange peels. At least I don't have to make any more toffee for now. I simply cannot discipline myself not to snack on it.

Thanks Theobroma, Your post cleared up a number of issues about Mexican chocolate that were puzzling me.

Well, sir, perfect or not, they do look mighty fine and delicious too. I am not a decorator sort of confectioner so I think someone else could comment better on your wafers. One thing for sure, I do love hokey!

I have two recipes printed on one page. I have to start saving the provenance!!! Both came off the internet. I usually go for websites like Epicurious. I sort of travel between the two of them. I do use oil. I do use lots of spinach. I use 3 eggs. No onion. No garlic. Feta cheese. Lots of phyllo. Salt and pepper. Nothing else. Make it in a casserole dish. Cut it in lozenge shapes before baking. Love it to pieces. Eat it with Moussaka. Even freeze the finished dish and thaw and eat latter.

Well put, Mr. Pringle. One change I might make is to cut the slab into cubes before the chocolate bottom has hardened too much or the chocolate layer may not cut easily or straight. If I recall correctly, some chocolatiers do not even used tempered chocolate for the bottoming.

Brian, it's not my method at all. I am just a novice at this whole business and not very dexterous to boot. That's mostly why I used this method. It seemed simpler than the traditional ball shape and therefore less subject to failure on my part. Recchiuti, Greweling and Shotts all describe this method and use it in some of their recipes. Perhaps I have used an incorrect word to describe it and that's why you are asking me about it. And I don't have a slab ganache recipe either. Any ganache which is a bit stiff is suitable. I'm not sure what kind of information you want. You can find the directions for using slabbed ganaches in Peter Greweling, Chocolates and Confections, Andrew Shotts, Making Artisan Chocolates or Michael Recchiuti, Chocolate Obsession.

Exquisite.

Totally and absolutely brilliant! Both you and Chef Crash!!

would like to see a photo of the completed confection, please.

There should be published some International Codes of Endeavor for Darienne. First: never do two things at once. And second: when you start screwing up everything, don't get stubborn and push on, just quit and go and lie down. You can make it tomorrow. OK. I completely messed up the first batch of toffee, DL's Buttercrunch Toffee for putting into ice cream. I cooked it a tad too long and plunged it into cold water to stop the cooking process: it immediately adhered to the pot. Panic. Panic. What to do? No time to go and search for vaguely remembered instructions. So I added some water and the mixture came off the walls and floor of the pot and once again I had a viable batch. But because it was just slightly on the burnt side I thought, and I added too much water,I didn't know how to cook it to return it to what correct temperature or consistency. Poured it over the nuts. Oh what the heck! Poured the melted chocolate over that. (Burned the next batch of nuts. Let the meat pies where the dogs could get them. They didn't. Lucky. Left the candy too near the counter edge. That's past when I should have quit. Now I am done.) Now I have a delicious strange concoction of toasted nuts, hardened chocolate topping...and...very soft chewy taffy. What should I do with it? What can I do with it? Thanks. ps. Did I quit? No. Cleaning up, I put the unused baking soda, which I left out of the second batch along with the vanilla, back into the cornstarch container. Right. pps. One hour later but not to late to edit. DH suggests rolling the concoction into balls and making a truffle shape, dipped in tempered bittersweet. A great idea. NOT TONIGHT!

I phoned a store in Colorado looking for couverture which said it carried Merkens chocolate, both coating and couverture. I questioned them very closely on the subject, never having heard of Merkens couverture before and was assured that yes, Merkens now did carry an inexpensive variety of couverture. Didn't order it and made all my Moab chocolate using the Ghirardelli chocolate chips which are basically couverture...I think. Alas! It was too hot when we left for Utah to bring any chocolate with us and we weren't going to be there long enough to use 11 pounds of anything. Plus mostly what I used chocolate for was coating toffee and such-like. No one complained.

Looks delicious and a late welcome to eGullet.

You post that you made these cookies but with NO PHOTO?????? Alas.