Darienne

Sad to say I have never tasted a macaron and indeed had never even heard of them until recently, but I have to say that you do make the most exquisite macarons. They are so perfect. Someday, maybe...

But what about the stains? I should note that our well water is very hard, with lime. All our taps are on softened water, except for the cold water in the kitchen. We do like our water, BTW. We have to run vinegar through our coffeepot every couple of weeks. Thanks.

DH and I have just begun to drink tea for the first time...Chinese tea with our Chinese meals...and I have no idea of how exactly to clean a teapot nor how often. All help gratefully received. Thanks.

My husband's macaroni and cheese reheated on the second day. He always makes enough for two meals and it's even better the second time around. I love the crunchy bits.

I'm not at all sure what your line of basketry is, whether gift baskets, formal or informal...what about plastic containers or even aluminum cooking containers that you can buy in the dollar stores. If you are filling them with dish towels and brownies, they might do the trick. If your containers could be more expensive...again I have no clear sense of your purpose...what about real baking pans? Just some ideas. I suppose that dollarama basins might be too large... Or what about the dollarama dishes...the bowls and such like...little trays. They are usually brightly colored.

A man of many strong opinions!

Maltodextrin is made from cornstarch. Hence, any ice cream that lists maltodextrin in it's ingredients has a form of cornstarch in it. Theresa ← Gotcha. Thanks.

This is one of those 'why didn't I think of that in the first place?' posts. I googled 'cornstarch gelato' and came up with more recipes than I could make in a year: cappuccino, Mexican chocolate, coffee, peanut butter, limoncello, ricotta, pistachio, etc, etc. Oddly enough, I have an Italian cookbook with a great number of gelato recipes and not one of them uses cornstarch. Is there any commercial ice cream or gelato out there made with cornstarch I wonder? I mean commercial as in a store... I know that many of you have the experience to just use this flavor or ingredient instead of that one...I can do that with spaghetti sauce, etc...but I am very unsure of myself in this new endeavor so I'll try the recipes once until I get it in my mind the theory behind making the different flavors. One thing I have yet to try at all, is to cut down on the fat content of the gelato to say 2% milk and see what happens. Today we make the Fresh Cherry Gelato in honor of the abundance of good cherries at the markets. And my DH loves cherries. Thanks all for all the help.

Adding a few tablespoons of cornstarch to an ice cream recipe instead of 5 or 6 egg yolks, while using mostly milk instead of heavy cream is of great interest to me. A number of obvious reasons spring to mind. I have made DL's Fleur de Lait and loved it and now today I made a recipe on Epicurious for Chocolate Gelato. And just my luck, while searching to ascertain whether there was a past thread on cornstarch in ice cream, I found the Fat Guy's thread on Gelato vs Ice Cream. A post by Krazed Mom said she had made the Epicurious chocolate gelato and tweaked it with added cocoa and vanilla. And so I did. With wonderful results. Has anyone else made any other cornstarch gelato or ice cream recipes which they would like to share? Any disasters / tips which we should all know about?

This post is two years old but I thought I'd try. Thank you Krazed Mom for your tweaking. I just made the recipe myself and thought...hmmm this is really lacking something, but I have so little experience that I am not comfortable tweaking some things. Then huzzah! I found your post, went back, pulled the mixture out of the fridge, tweaked it up, and yumm! what a difference! Thank you, mille fois !

I googled OCD and found that one, but can't find a useful explanation of Underbelly. That is the second recipe I have found for that title. Please, what is it? Thanks. The brownies sound wonderful.

I was already aware that processed foods contain a lot of salt, but I had no idea that there was such a strong geographical component, from products made by the same manufacturer! ← I had not known about the salt component, but certainly foods in the USA often have more sugar in them, notably Grape Nuts.

Just found this thread and laughed my way through several pages. Just what I needed. What about making hard tack lollipops and adding the flavoring to the just cooling sugar syrup and then bending over the pot to smell the flavoring...although you are not supposed to...and choking horribly over the peppermint or apple spice or whatever flavor as it blasts up your nose and makes your eyes water copiously? And what about doing it more than 3 times? Or 5 times? Because you can't learn not to sniff food?

You said no nuts or other inclusions, but how about a brownie made from black beans? Found a recipe...source now lost....from Baking With Agave Nectar: Over 100 Recipes Using Nature's Ultimate Sweetener by Ania Catalano. (Ten Speed Press 2008) calling for black beans and sweetened by agave syrup. Hey! I am just the messenger!

Thanks for your help, jon. Trying three different ways sounds like a good idea to get ingredients and proportions into my head. However, what I finally found on a website for Mark Bittman's cornstarch ice cream is a recipe for chocolate gelato made with cornstarch. Chocolate Gelato and I'll probably go for it first. However I will probably enrich the recipe from 3 cups of whole milk to 2 cups of milk plus one cup heavy cream...or something like that. It's not a DL recipe and perhaps I'll start a thread on cornstarch ice cream. I thought there was one but when I searched last night, just couldn't find it. Thanks again.

Could I inquire please about the micro-fiber cloth? Where does one get this item? Thanks

What I would like to do is to turn DL's wonderful Fleur de Lait into Fleur de Lait Chocolat, but I am not at all sure how to go about it. I have not much experience in this field and don't know if cocoa would be better or melted chocolate and how to figure out how much of what to use. Cocoa has no cocoa butter in it and melted chocolate has lots. And cocoa needs sugar and chocolate needs less. I could certainly experiment and get it right after a try or two, but you guys are here to help the newbies like me....please..... right? Thanks.

Hello Ilana, The ganache is simply ganache right now. No further steps were taken. Not even enrobing. Next step, I guess. Hello hac, Thanks for the information about the chocolate. I am almost a complete novice and everything is a new experience for me.

Made Ilana's ginger ganache recipe mixing dark chocolate with milk chocolate. (We live far out in the country and if you don't have what you need...you use something else. But then lots of eGulleters live this way I know. ) I used the proportions given...after halving the recipe...but found that the amount of ginger juice was not enough for me. Could it have been because half the chocolate was dark? The big surprise? The DH loved it! He actually loved it! He who doesn't like ginger loved it! Wunderbar. Thanks Lior.

After a similar discussion with friends last fall, I bought some *really* expensive matcha powder, some really cheap stuff, and the moderately expensive stuff I've always used. In ice cream, they all tasted nearly the same -- the cheaper stuff was a little better, having a stronger "green grass" flavor. In hot tea, totally the opposite -- the cheap stuff was unpalatable, the top-shelf stuff was tastiest. On a different note, the parallel saffron "experiment" showed higher quality saffron made way better ice cream, where quality didn't relate to price. The supermarket stuff was mediocre, and ridiculously overpriced. The saffron from Penzey's was much better, and the bulk saffron I bought online from an importer was amazing. -jon- ← Thank you Jon for that information. I just might try the Matcha ice cream soon. In the meantime I have made the chocolate biscuits for ice cream sandwiches, and now want to add chocolate to the cornstarch Fleur de Lait. Busy, busy, busy.

Dear P, You have done it, sir. You have tipped the scales in my mind, and although my DH does not like ginger, I love it and I will make ginger ganache later today.

Thanks for the answers. I'll try some others of DL's recipes as time goes by. I don't know what a Heath bar is but I'll look for it. My knowledge of chocolate bars is dismal. And I have to admit, I hate peppermints. Sorry about that! I'll try English toffee next. I was hoping that someone else could fill me in ahead of time. OK. Has anyone put crushed English toffee in ice cream and does it stay crunchy over time?

I am looking for the best crunchy bits for ice cream...a request of the DH. And they must stay crunchy over the long haul. Made the simplest, quickest such recipe from The Perfect Scoop for a quick test, but was disappointed in the end. No fault of DL I am certain. Although my almonds were deeply toasted...indeed, almost toast, so to speak...they were not truly crunchy in the end. Well, sort of crunchy, but not really crunchy. And I think perhaps the nuts need more sugar content than the proportions given. The DH is sometimes hard to please. He does have his crunchy standards. Still, it's only the beginning. What your favorite crunchy ice cream inclusion, please.

Today at lunch the Fleur de Lait passed the acid test. And was found rich enough. Rich enough is very important, especially to folks who find sherbet not rich enough. Interesting to compare the richness of ingredients of a few ice creams: * DL's Fleur de Lait: 2 cups whole milk, 1 cup heavy cream * Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla: 2 cups 1/2 & 1/2, 1 cup heavy cream * DL's Philadelphia Style Vanilla: 3 cups heavy cream or 2 cups heavy cream & 1 cup whole milk * DL's New York style vanilla: 1 cup whole milk, 2 cups heavy cream AND 6 large egg yolks. WOW! Next the Fleur de Lait goes through my current Alton Brown Serious Vanilla process, that is adding the various inclusions which I regularly put into the AB ice cream, most importantly, the Orange-Szechwan Pepper ingredients in this lighter ice cream and see what the DH and others think.

Here's an interesting one: Dede Wilson, Tuffles. Calls for 4 teaspoons of finely grated fresh ginger which is NOT strained out...and then chopped crystallized ginger on top of the finished truffle.