curls

Probably mentioned before... the CSO is amazing for reviving bread! I had some leftover tortillas from a fajita meal at a local restaurant. I had carefully wrapped them, sealed them in a freezer ziplock, stored in the fridge — looked fine this morning but not at all pliable. Put one in the CSO at 250 F on steam bake for a minute or two and it was just as good as fresh and made the perfect wrapper for my breakfast “taco”.

Beautiful chocolates and pacakaging @Pastrypastmidnight! If you don't mind sharing, who are you getting your packaging from? Are you going with someone local for your labels and box sleeves? I'm currently printing my own lablels and considering outsourcing.

Beautiful! Looks like EZtemper 2.0 with the new clamp closure is on the market. Any other upgrages? Was Chocolate Makers using melangers from Diamond Customs? Good luck to both of you at the show!

@Kerry Beal the Chocolate Makers facility looks quite impressive. Thank you for sharing your tour with us.

That could work! Thank you for the idea. I already ran with pastrygirl’s smbc idea with this batch but always good to have a few possible back up plans. Will post a pic of the cupcakes soon.

The Dutch love their whipped cream and other dairy products. Cheese! Kerry did your hotel breakfast include smoked fish? Was there a section of sweet bread toppings... chocolate sprinkles, apple syrup, hazelnut spread, etc.? Looks like a nice breakfast selection. Hope you get to show us the rest of it soon. When does/did your setup for the show start?

Thank you @pastrygirl that will be very helpful!

I vacationed in the Netherlands this past September. Here are the before and after photos of one of our panekkoeken from a restaurant in Lieden (https://www.oudtleyden.nl/). I think this one was apples & cinnamon sugar. Someone else had a savory one with speck & cheese. And another person in our party had a non-pannekkoek entree.

Yes, the shell is white chocolate. I have 105 to re-purpose. Thought of the whipped ganache frosting. Did not know I could make a swiss meringue butter cream and and re-purposed bon bons to that -- would you mind sharing your method?

So due to an inventory error I was short on passion fruit purée and my second batch of Valentine’s Day passion fruit bon bons were made with a combo of passion fruit juice, guava purée, and passion fruit jelly. They are too sweet for my tastes, should have tried adding some citric acid to the mix but I thought of that after the bon bons were capped and out of the moulds. Anyway, I don’t want to freeze the extras for future sales. Any ideas on how I can repurpose them in a dessert? I’m thinking along the lines of melting them and turning them into a ganache frosting for cake/cupcakes but any ideas are welcome.

@Hendrix they look beautiful. What flavors are they?

@MelissaH sorry I won't be able to help, not going to be anywhere near Syracuse. Looking forward to seeing you and your husband in May.

@Casey H. any changes in making your caramels? New batch of ingredients? New equipment? New employee? Change in batch size? Trying to help troubleshoot... it is annoying when a tried & true recipe starts causing you problems. Hopefully it will be figured out soon.

Honestly, I wonder if even that one bon bon is real. Much easier to create it in Photoshop. If he did paint a chocolate like that, wow, what a steady hand and a tremendous amount of artistry and patience.

I am planning the menu based on the team cities... Kansas: ribs, bbq San Francisco: sour dough bread (Whole Foods bakery makes a good one) & chocolate cookies with ghiradelli chocolate chips Obviously there are a few menu holes to fill in... I might go off theme for a salad, vegetables, sides, etc.

I did a quick google search and found two links (from sites I wouldn't run away from) with suggestions for how to use natural peanut butter for baking. This one https://www.thekitchn.com/quick-tip-the-best-peanut-butter-to-for-baking-172800 suggests baking a bit longer to deal with the extra liquid in the natural peanut butter. The second site suggests tweaking the sugar & salt in the recipe since commercial peanut butters will probably have more sugars and salt. It also states that for cookies, they will probably spread more... so you could make bars, enjoy a flatter cookie, freeze the dough before baking, etc.. https://bakingbites.com/2009/03/natural-peanut-butter-vs-regular-peanut-butter-in-baking/ @Anna N all your meeting snacks look delicous!

Safe travels to Schiphol! Hmmm... perhaps the Amsterdam trip is not connected to this one. Thank you for blogging and sharing about all these interesting places. Wishing you safe travels.

Could be very interesting! Do you have more details to share? Is the thermoformer for sale or just the pre-colored moulds?

Are these chocolates? Beautiful work! Any idea how they package the large 3D chocolates for sale?

How does it taste? Can you use it as a caramel sauce instead? I’d be considered that boiling it 6 times has changed the chemical composition of your original ingredients. Can you try a smaller batch with virgin ingredients and see if they behave properly?

Sorry no photo but wanted to add to the cooked in the CSO information bank... cooked five lobster tails in the CSO and we really liked how they came out. Cut the belly shell but left the tail meat in (for easier removal after cooking), inserted skewers so the tails wouldn’t curl, placed tails on racked tray, and steam baked for 10 minutes at 350 F. Served with melted butter and stovetop mac & cheese.

Excellent! Proof there was at least some hot chocolate under all that whipped cream. Was the cream sweetened?

Uh oh! Hope there isn’t too much to fix and that your show goes well. The breakfast pastries look amazing!

@Kerry Beal best of luck to you. Wishing @Alleguede all the best and hoping Bianca’s parents love him. He is bringing them some kougin amann.... right? 😉

@Shelby thank you for finding & linking to Larry’s obituary. My condolences to Larry’s family & friends. I’ll definitely have a meal in his honor.