Panaderia Canadiense

Yes.

Mache, you should be able to find them at any cake decorating shop in San Francisco - they're a pretty standard item. If I could find them down here in Ambato, Ecuador (at the cake decorating shop, incidentally) then you, in a major metropolis, should have zero problems. Jeanne makes an excellent point as well - try reducing your leavening a bit and see if that firms up the cake structure.

Cake/flower nails, all the way. I just got through baking 20 large (14" square and 14" round) cakes of various flavours, and the nails in the center of the pan work wonders to conduct heat up the center at the same rate it's coming from the sides. For a 14" square, I use 4 nails, and for the round I use 3.

Definately. Just last week I was making a huckleberry pie and many of the recipes called for quick-cooking tapioca. I couldn't get over the vision of little eyeball gels staring out of a slice of my huckleberry pie. Tapioca is definately a product that turns into gel--and it gels other foods. (Just not in my pies). You mean you can't get powdered tapioca up there (almidon de yuca)? That solves the whole "wonky eyeballs" thing, and very easily too. For my part, since I now know what's possible with this cook-off, I'm going to experiment with using the less traditional gelling agents together with tropical fruits, in dessert style applications. A medium-set tapioca mousse of passionfruit and mora-carambola is calling!

I was very fortunate in that both the bride and her auntie, who were the ones in charge of planning the event, are very good friends who trust me deeply. When we were planning out the cake, they basically said "fantasty fairy forest for 200, shaped like a 4-leaf clover. Have fun with it." I've worked with some real bridezillas, but this (thankfully!) was not one of them. The look on Babsy's face when she saw the cake finished was more than worth the effort it took to do all those figurines. Incidentally, I actually flat out refuse to do the "standard" fondant and roses tiered white cakes - which means that most of my business is for things more like this one. We'll see what happens - with 200 highly impressed guests, I'm fairly sure that quite a bit more business is coming my way.

For those of you who are curious about the final decoration and fate of the giant fairy fantasy cake, I've detailed it over in Daily Sweets (clicky linky!)

Well, my friend's wedding was on Saturday. Those of you who have been following the creation of some of the decorations in the Confections thread have expressed extreme curiousity as to the final product, and here it is (I'm finally rested up enough to download the camera and sort the photos!) Without further ado, I give you the "Fairy Fantasy Cloverleaf Cake" - the only thing on here that I didn't make are the two tall gnomes, which are the keepsake figures for the bride and groom. The only nonedible thing besides those gnomes is the bridge - they're too heavy to support with sugar. There are four flavours of cake here - orange walnut spice filled with orange marmalade (the section with the blue dragon on it); white coconut filled with cherry (the section with the green dragon and the sheep - this was the first section to be cut); apple raisin walnut spice filled with manjar de leche (the red dragon); and carrot filled with cream cheese icing (the rainbow dragon). Each section is 52 cm in diameter, which means that the full span is more than a full meter; each section weighed about 15 kg. It's frosted in vanilla flavoured ICBM. The entire cake was shipped as bare, stacked sections, then frosted on site; frosted sections were carried to the cake table (in the middle of a field, under a tent) and once all four were in place, decoration started, a process that took about an hour. I don't, unfortunately, have photos of the cutting of the cake, since it's traditional that after the bride and groom make the first cut, the baker is the one to part it out. I have never seen anything quite like what happened with this cake though - it was like a shark attack. I couldn't get it cut fast enough for the 200+ guests, all of whom reached in as a single, frenzied unit to get at the figurines (very few of which were eaten - they became keepsakes for the guests). Wild. I'll see if I can get that section of video from the bride - it's really got to be seen to be believed! Guests made a point of seeking me out and telling me that it was "the coolest cake I've ever seen!" and "most wedding cakes look lovely and taste like cardboard, but this was beautiful and I want fourths." For the curious, I have closeups of some of the elements (ie the flock of sheep and its faun shepherd; the dodos; the dragons) - let me know if you want to see them.

David, would soft gels based on cornstarch fit in here? What about tapioca?

Fair enough. But bring on the real fats, the animal based ones. Margarine is an abomination.

You could shred the meat, throw it into a coconut-peanut curry with a few chopped veg, wrap that stuff in green plantain dough, then fry the resulting empanadas in shallow oil.... Ecuadorian comfort food.

If you want the extreme? I own a high-end bakery, one of the most exclusive in the country. We offer 5 flavours of cake on a daily basis, and 4 seasonal flavours that are available for one month each, one of which requires 2 months advance notice when ordering (NS black fruitcake, available only in December, requires the time to age properly - I take orders in September and October for December's deliveries.)

Life is short. Bring on the butter!

I'm blessed to live in a coffee-producing country. The very best I've ever had was grown here, but I'm 100% certain that it's not exported - it's a gran cru cup from criollo-type coffee grown with cacao above 2,500 meters in Cariamanga, Loja. The cherries are picked overripe, then fermented a minimum time, then sun-dried and roasted in small batches, and ground by hand. It's comparable to a very good wine or whiskey - lots of depth and nuance in the flavour, and distinct notes of chocolate and cherry. Unfortuately, as it's a friend's plantation and he's growing primarily for his own and his family's consumption, I only get to drink it when I visit him. He won't even ship me green beans so that I can roast my own, the meany.

Personally, I'd figure out exactly which cakes are slow sellers, then put them on seasonal promotion rather than offering them daily. So, for example, if you've got a cherry cake that doesn't move, try offering it for one month only each year to see whether that will move more of it in an aggregate way than the daily offering did. Also, you're worried about reducing your choices from 17 to 14-15? That's not so big a reduction that your customers will feel affected by it, and I'd always offer the "edited out of daily offer" cakes on the special orders menu.

Argument for detinning hot: the fats that you used to grease the tin are still liquid and therefore the muffins will slip out easier. Argument for detinning cold: the muffins have contracted as they cooled and are now no longer in contact with the tin, and will therefore slip out easier. Argument for paper: none of the above matters, because paper won't stick to the muffin tin, greased or not. Detin the muffins when they're cool. Additionally, if your muffin recipe has adequate fat and you peel the muffins when they're cool, hardly anything will stick to the papers. Edited to clarify what was originally a very confusing sentece....

I use papers, and when I run out of those (as often happens) I do as Kim does - they come out of the tins whilst still screaming hot.

For Canada and Great Britain, what you're looking for is The Purity Cookbook. That's one that will have to be sourced via ebay, since what you want is not the "modern" version but the actual wartime recipes. I have one from 1936, which was my grandmother's, and which contains the sort of down-home dishes you're looking for. Well, for Canada and Great Britain at least.... This one here is kind of what I'm talking about. It's far less abused than my copy, though!

Granite over Marble and Marble over Travertine, in the kitchen. Almost any stone will form a large enough heat sink, but you need to consider the properties of each before you jump in. Granites will often have a much finer grain than Marbles, and since there's more quartz involved in Granite (Marble is calcic) they don't have the same issues with acids either. I second the suggestion to get a slab of each and test them out - sink cutouts are a great size for tempering. Overall, though, I'd go with Granite any day. I've had fine-grained travertine work surfaces and boy howdy they were a bitch to maintain, although they did make fabulous pie crusts.

Thankfully, when I did my apprenticeship I lucked into a master patissier who was kind and soft-spoken, so I've not had the same experience as you're describing, but I can probably tell you what's going on. I'd be willing to bet dollars to croissants that your master patissiere was trained in much the same way that you were - by being yelled at and belittled by her master when she was an apprentice. Consequently, that's how she teaches - because that's how she learned. One of the panaderos I learned under was the same way, and because I've got a strong character I ended up hucking 8lbs of dough at his head, which ended that apprenticeship rather quickly, but made me feel a whole lot better. The panadera I learned with after that was a sweet and considerate person. In my experience, the good ones outweigh the bad - if I were you, I'd start looking for another patisserie to apprentice in. Perhaps try finding one where there's a master and only one or two sous (ie a small shop), as those are more likely to have a less stressed-out and kinder master patissier in them.

I can't help you with the Mexican tradition for this, but the Ecuadorian one is pretty neat. The two key dishes are something you should actually be able to cook up fairly authentically in California, as that's the only state I can think of where Babaco is grown. Ecuadorians make Colada Morada (a massively complex atole-type drink/pudding) and eat it with guava- or chocolate-stuffed guagas de pan (literally "bread babies"), at the graves of their ancestors, in order to share and reconnect with them. It's also a time to share the same with the living members of your family and all of your friends - recipes for Colada make several gallons, as it's meant to be shared with everybody you know. I blogged here last year during Dia de los Difuntos, and recipes and methods for both things as well as a more in-depth explanation of the holiday, are on about page 2 I think.

What type of passionfruit did you use? Maracuyá (the big, yellow- or purple-cased ones with very intense yellow-orange arils) are very acid and don't play very well with other flavours, but I've had great success combining them with another fruit before introducing them to the spices. Blackberry/Maracuyá is an excellent combo if you want to hit the heat with it, as is Maracuyá/Mango (which makes a fantastic base for medium to hot curry type sauces). If you can source it, Granadilla (smaller, orange-yellow cases with spots, pale white arils) is a much better passionfruit to base sauces around, as it's not nearly as acid as other types.

I'm in the other camp - it's not so much the heat that makes me lose the appetite (I love the heat!), as it is the constant proximity to food for such a prolonged period of time. I can tell you that as a baker/pastrymaker, at the end of the day I have almost zero appetite for bread or sweets. Ditto for many elaborate dishes that take most of the day to prepare - my guests or family will fall on that food like ravening wolverines, and I sort of sit there and *meh* about it unless I've deliberately not eaten breakfast or lunch in order to make myself so hungry that the kitchen effect is semi-nullified. For me I don't think it's a nervousness/emotional reaction, because I'm confident in the quality of the food - ooh, if nervousness got me, I'd never be able to bake for strangers! It's worth mentioning that catering for large groups is probably the best diet plan I've ever been on. I can lose up to 5 pounds in two days simply because I have no desire whatsoever to see or eat food during the process.

OMG, totally missed this the first time 'round. What's the word? Thunderbird! How's it sold? Good and cold What's the jive? Bird's alive! What's the price? Thirty twice.

My mother would like me to add something called 50/50 that was available for something like 69 cents a bottle, in Ontario in the 60s and 70s. She says that it was always "best" (although that's totally a relative term) to look for darker coloured liquid in the bottles, as it was slightly less noxious that way. I understand it to have been the dregs from the kegs of Baby Duck and Blue Nun, mixed at about 50% each.

If you're not tied to it being a true Champagne, and your mom prefers red wines to whites (when she drinks wine), then maybe look at a Lambrusco di Mantovano or a di Sorbara. Those are red frizzantes, rather than spumantes, and they're generally a bit sweeter. They should come in under your budget as well.