Darienne

My heart is broken that I cannot come. Like Lior and others, I wish you all a wonderful time!!

WOW! and WOW! again. Chocolat is going to stop by our Moab house for a few minutes weekend after next. Do you suppose that she'll show me how to do that in ten minutes in the middle of our 'sell it to the walls' sale? Ruth, they are beautiful!

I am very unfamiliar with the taste of pomegranate and wonder which chocolate it would compliment best. My next-door-neighbor/landlady/friend loves pomegranates to distraction and I would like to make her something special before we leave...which is very soon. I now have Lisa2K's curd recipe which I think could be part of RLB Fruit Cloud Cream...whipped cream being another passion of said lady...and then? I see a number of desserts could be made and am almost paralyzed by the choices. Some direction would be nice. Please, nothing incredibly complicated. Remember that this is all new to me as I go along. Thanks.

Oh, I do like this idea. It will be a great day when all recipes are given by weights. I have a set of bowls which all weigh the same, and so they can be interchanged with my knowing that they are all the same. However, I will make a cheat sheet with the weights of common ingredients and hang it up. One thing I found at our local Dollarama...bought them for all my friends...and of course haven't seen one since...is a 2 Tablespoon/ 1/8 cup measure. ps. love this topic. Keep 'em comin' .

I often end up with photocopied recipes or even recipes that I have copied and printed out. I slip them into plastic sleeves when I cook and tack them to my stove hood using a little magnet.

Another second hand cookbook: Marshall Field's Frango Chocolate Cookbook. I had never heard of Frango chocolate before. Not too much in it, but it all adds to the chocolate collection.

What about E. Guittard chocolate couverture. It sells for under $4 a pound from C&C Baker in SLC.

Quoting from the pitango website: The Pitango is a semi-wild cherry that grows in almost every Israeli neighborhood. Finding the ripened Pitango fruit takes persistence, as the best Pitangos are always the hardest to find. Do you live in Israel?

The demo is so wonderful. I am just itching to try this. Lovely swirls on the balloon bowls. Oh boy!!

No advice. Just an overwhelmed WOW! at all the beautiful things you make!!!

No advice I can give you, but only to say that I read your post and you have my sympathy.

Gosh, dare I answer this? When I want chickpeas in olive oil and lemon juice, I just have to have them.

Have just been reading through this thread and was quite curious about it. I've never had creme fraiche...don't really know what it is. However, in Ice Cream: The Whole Scoop by Gail Damerow is a recipe for making sour cream which I tried and liked. Basically you add 1 TBSP of butter milk to one cup of heavy cream and keep it warm for 24 - 38 hours. I used the oven light. This is sour cream. Other recipes call it creme fraiche. Curious...

Very dark pumpernickel from Montreal, a small round loaf with corn meal on the bottom, which my Bubbie Goldberg used to serve me, chunked in a bowl of sour cream, which used to taste like sour cream, and cottage cheese with salt and pepper. This I have not tasted in decades but still remember with great fondness.

Thanks to all of you for the help. I am going to print out the posts and hand them to my genius DH and he can help me to understand the stuff. However..........I will never go blindly into a recipe again.

Thanks, I think I'll do just that, but I'll use the recipe from Candy.com just to make sure that the pieces are strong enough to withstand children and their enthusiasm. I don't know how strong the RLB recipe would be. At least, not at this point in my career. ps. Bought some Neccho wafers and looked up the company. It started in the 1800s and the name stands for New England Confectionery Company. Interesting website.

I wish there were a way to put this so that I didn't look like quite such an unthinking beginner...but so be it. I don't have the Wybauw book, but I did photocopy a few pages, including p.120, 'Ganache as a basic cream'. I set out to try it, and soon realized that I didn't have the quantities called for. I halved it, halved it again and then .66% it and finally had enough stuff to start. OK. It worked out beautifully, but I don't know where my mind was. I now have 4 containers of butter ganache, like icing in texture, with no idea of what to do with it all. Please. I know I can make little chocolate containers, like Snobinettes, and fill them and I can fill molded candies, but honestly I have no where to get rid of them all. What else can I do with this delicious stuff? Will it harden at all? Can I freeze it? Can I somehow add extra chocolate to it to make it firmer? Can I thin it and use it on ice cream? Would it make a good icing? I've put it into the fridge for now until I know what to do with it all. Go ahead and laugh at me, just give me some advice, please.

Merci Lapin d'or, I have found the series on Amazon, each of the various books at different prices...some low, and some high. I was going to start with just one. Thanks

In addition to the basic ingredients of 10x sugar, gelatin and water, the Aboutcandy.com recipe for what I now know is pastillage calls for 2 tsp corn syrup and the use of a stand mixer. (I probably burnt out my B&B hand mixer making the stuff.) The two recipes used by Chefette in her wonderful eG tutorial on making and using pastillage call for corn syrup and vinegar in both of them and a stand mixer. She credits Ewald Notter for her recipes. On the other hand, RLB calls for far more gelatin, additional cornstarch and an optional pinch of cream of tartar and she mixes it by hand. I know that I am comparing by this time oranges and cucumbers. I suppose the question embedded in all of this is: has anyone used the RLB recipe? I don't have a stand mixer. I am not willing to test my new KA hand mixer. I have to go to quite a lot of trouble to use someone else's stand mixer. So I might try the RLB recipe and wonder how it compares.... Considering I am making candies and not cake decorations.... Thanks.

You cannot go wrong with a chocolate bunnie.

Lovely photos. Lovely chocolates. And lovely you too! Thanks for posting.

This book is part of The Art of Sugarcraft series. They are written for use by beginner and pro alike. I keep these books in the "indispensible" section of my personal library, as many of my cake deco and sugarcraft skills are self-taught. Theresa ← Thanks, Theresa, I can't afford the set...which one or ones should I aim for?

Ditto for me. Two more from the thrift shop, including an old...old...candy book from the 60s. What a hoot!. Each recipe bears the name of its donor, most of them signed, Mrs. Husband's name, town and state.

An excellent idea. I'll put it to my friend and see if she thinks it could work for the group.

Thanks. This time I will get photos.