Panaderia Canadiense

For flavour differentiation, I'd be very very tempted to make the mousse a B-52 or similar (flavour it with Kahlua and Gran Marnier), to offset the pure chocolateyness of the ganache (unless you're into flavoured truffles - then I'd be very tempted to introduce burnt sugar as a note there). Texturally, you can add in chocolate rice crisps to one of the mousse layers (they hold their crunch rather well, at least the ones I can buy do), or think about a hard caramel concept - take a bar of something like MacIntosh's Toffee, freeze it, whack it with a hammer, and use the resulting caramel shards, which are somewhere between crunchy and chewy. Or try crunched up butter toffee or brittle (another excellent caramel flavour, with a crunchier texture). HOWEVER, Rolos are not at all crunchy (unless they're very very stale) - and if you're staying true to your influence, neither should your cake be. I'll second Chris' recommendation for Dulce de Leche or Manjar - it's a more manageable gooey caramel for cakes, and it can be spread on your chocolate sponge layers rather easily. It also freezes very well. I buy it by the 1 kg jug - that's how much I use it (it's the "icing" on my caramel-apple cakes.) You'll be fine in the freezer until serving - in my experience, if you go direct from freezer to table, it ends up sort of like an ice-cream cake bombe, which is a neat effect.

I realize the difficulties inherent in this typeface, but it's one that's been part of my bakery's branding since the beginning and I can't do that much about it (unless I fudge miniscules using squashed caps - I'll try that). When one actually has the tag in one's hands, there's no problem reading it - I've tested this on a wide range of people and had zero complaints about it. I might try another for the cookie descriptions, but I'll have to stay within the Deco-Nouveaux style range that has become my trademark - simple, tasty things in simple, elegant packages. Interesting point about the red bottom for the red-white top; I'll give that a try and post it up a bit later. (edited to add my actual point - I probably shouldn't post before I've had my morning Guayusa...)

Emily - these are produced with my inkjet printer and Bristol-weight card (in white or red) - then I cut them out with my nifty little scrapbook cutting gidgety-widget, score with a ruler, and assemble using silicone glue. It's a very easy solution to the packaging problem.

Les Habs through and through here, too - it made me very unpopular in Edmonton, though.... ETA - ...and the customer is always right. Even when he's so, so wrong....

The gold ribbon is 3 mm thick (so quite thin; more like string but still broad enough to be considered ribbon). Red with white lettering looked awful when I tried it; it was therefore vetoed in favour of black on white (which is also a little bit less expensive, printing-wise).

If you're a designer, I'd say open up InDesign and start playing around with layouts and formats. I've done cookbooks before (I moonlight as a graphic designer, editor and what used to be called typesetting before the digital age took over; now I'd say that I do layout), and I'd consider that photos are an absolute necessity, be they colour or b/w, and in complex dishes it's nice to have step-by-step photos or illustrations for the tricky bits. Family anecdotes and photos would be a really nifty touch.

I'm deliberately playing on the Toronto Maple Leafs (I'm perfectly aware that it's more grammatically correct to use "leaves" but at the same time, there's a tremedous in-joke at play here with the client that ensures that the cookies remain Leafs.) ETA - in Spanish, these cookies are actually called Butter Leaves with Nuts (Hojas Mantecadas con Nueces).... I'm also wedded to the typeface - Baroness, you're the first person to ever tell me it's difficult to read (and those are actually the miniscules for most of the typeface; the majescules are far more ornate and difficult to read and hence I rarely use them at all).

Hi folks! I've been faced with the challenge of gift packaging for stacks of 6 shortbread cookies, and I've come up with the following solutions. I have to bear in mind that the cookies are maple-leaf shaped, that I'm hand-making the boxes, and that they're typical butter-tacular shortbread cookies, and as such I'll have to pack them in plastic before they go into the boxes. I'll be tying them with gold ribbon (which will also bear the gift tag, which is trilingual). Opinions, please and thank you!

Pecan can also be p'CAN or pay-CAN.... Mocha is a fun one - I've always pronounced it MO-ka, but down here it's mo-CHA (and there's a town about 20 minutes south of me that has that name), so anything that is actually mocha flavoured has to be spelled phonetically, hence Moca, Moka, and Mokka are all common spellings for it.

Bernzomatic torch fuel canisters say on them, in large letters, "not for culinary use" - or at least, they used to... There was a specialty kitchen store in one of the megamall plaza thingies out on Calgary Trail South (Gateway Boulevard? Gretzky Drive? I hated it when they changed the names) that had nice compact culinary torches for about $50. I can't for the life of me recall the name of the store, though, and I've been gone 5 years so it may not even be there anymore.

I've always heard it as pa-YE(l)-a; this is how a master Catalan paella chef of my acquaintance pronounces it, and he'd be the one to ask, wouldn't he? The L is almost a vestigial sound, pronounced but very softly and almost like an afterthought.

Think of it like corned beef, only moosier.... That's less gross than other canned meat applications.

If you truly wouldn't mind sharing, please post the Mocha mahogany recipe too. Is this one also a low shrink/warp recipe? It is indeed - depending on how much baking powder you put in, it makes anything from a crisp and sturdy cookie (low baking powder) to a chewy and sturdy building material (higher powder). The less baking powder you use, the less warpage you get, but it doesn't shrink at all. The proportions I'm giving you are for the crisper of the cookies. Mocha Mahogany 0.5 C sweet butter (no other) 1 C brown sugar 2 TBSP instant coffee - I like one that's been microliophyllized, because it blends better 2 eggs 0.25 C strong actual coffee 2 C flour, minus 4 TBSP 4 TBSP cocoa, non-alkalinized is best (so not Dutch process) 1.5 tsp Baking Powder * 0.5 tsp salt 0.5 tsp vanilla 0.25 C rice or quinua flour 1. Cream the butter with sugar, vanilla, and instant coffee 2. Add the true coffee and eggs, and beat until well mixed 3. Sift the AP flour, cocoa, leaven, and salt into the wet mixture. 4. Beat. This will seem too moist for rolling; add the additional rice or quinua flour by tablespoons until the mixture shortens up a bit and stops clinging to the mixer bowl. 350 F for 10-12 minutes is ideal. Roll out with a bit of flour; about 1/8" thickness gets you walls about 3/16" and about 1/4" thickness before baking is about 5/16" thick when cooked. Both are more than sufficiently sturdy for house building. * Bear in mind that you can double the amount of baking powder in the recipe if you want very lofty results; I find that it results in warpage issues and have decreased the amount accordingly. However you should also bear in mind that I'm at a very high altitude and therefore need comparatively less leavening in most of my recipes than folks closer to sea level do.

Mjx, I've actually always precut before baking; that recipe has almost zero shrinkage/warpage/weirdness with it, which means I can plan fairly elaborate structures. This year, I'm going Spanish Colonial, with a mocha cookie tile roof....

What I have is a pair of recipes, one of which is a true gingerbread, and the other of which is a mocha mahogany dough. Both are perfect house-building material, and remain soft enough to cut and eat while hard enough to hold their shape. Here's the gingerbread: 1 C butter (or the fat of your choice) 1 C brown sugar 1 tsp baking soda 1.5 C molasses (the blacker the better) 2 TBSP vinegar 5 C flour (AP is fine) 2 tsp ginger 1 tsp cloves 0.5 tsp cinnamon 0.5 tsp salt 1. Cream the butter with the sugar. 2. In a separate vessel (I use a 4C measuring cup), combine the molasses and soda, stir, and then add the vinegar. Add this to the creamy butter sugar and beat (continuously - leave the mixer on stir). 3. Sift the flour and spices together. 4. Add the flour into the wet ingredients. The dough will be very short; to make it workable add water by TBSPs until it is just rollable. Roll out with flour to about 1/4" thick, cut your pieces, and bake at 350 F for about 10-12 minutes. Let me know if you also want the Mocha mahogany.

Well, adding just baking soda to the molasses I can buy here (which is one step darker than Blackstrap) gives me incredible expanding molasses, which would say to me that I'm seeing a neutralization reaction of some sort. Adding the vinegar spends out the soda a bit faster, which keeps my molasses from overflowing the bowl and also seems to keep the cookies lower. I know from experience that when I forget the vinegar, the cookies will always come out tall and cake-y rather than flat and snappy. .... and a quick trip into the kitchen with the pH papers, I also find that my molasses has a pH of about 5, which means it's definitely acidic. You should probably test your own, though - from what I understand, there's a great deal of variation between different molasses.

My hands-down fave gingerbread cookie recipe is from the 1922 Purity Cookbook that my gran gave me. It calls for 2 tbsp of vinegar to RETARD the rise of the molasses and soda, so that the bread snaps well. When I want gingerbread for houses, I leave the vinegar out.

mmm - beautiful as always. Where do you live that you've got such easy access to so much succulent seafood? Mgaretz - you're convincing me to try Char Siu... Prawncrackers - le drool. ChrisTaylor - now I want a charcoal-rotisserie and a duck! I fear that the former will be easier than the latter. Rory - welcome aboard! Lovely meatballs. I've been a horrid horrid absentee from this thread for the past week, as I've been test-kitchening for the Christmas line of cookies, which have been ordered by my embassy as the ambassadorial Christmas gifts. (No pressure or anything!) So, here's what I ate for dinner when I bothered to photo it - I was pretty lazy about both that and the dishes themselves after 10-12 hours of being on my feet with the cookies. To start with, a tomato and beef curry over noodles. Then, a stirfry with tuna and chunks of fresh mango (this was really good - I hope to remember what I did) Oven-roasted turkey with roasted potatoes (here a vehicle for as much butter as I though I could get away with), asparagus, and steamed carrots and beets. Corviche, because I was completely uninspired and they were in the freezer. The method for these is in my foodblog - they were almost better this time around than when they were fresh; I suspect because the flavours on the shrimp have had more time to meld. And finally, last night's dinner of roast chicken with all the trimmings.

All of the ginger-snap recipes I've got, both with and without white flour, call for the soda to be mixed with the molasses plus one or two tablespoons of white vinegar. I would assume that the same can be done substituting corn syrup or heavy golden syrup for the molasses, but keeping the soda and vinegar constant. You could also try using honey as your liquid sugar - these will turn out much crisper than cookies made with corn or glucose syrups. (Plus, IMHO, honey snaps are just to die for....)

Swings can be incredibly dramatic. I've done Comedor service before, and our heaviest days were Monday (market day), Tuesday, and Friday, with a swing of 200 covers down to 10. You'll have to take a look at your own area to make the calculations.

So long as you're not re-using the same paper towel over and over again (ewwww...), you should be just fine.

Enlighten us, oh great guru.

I learned scone as "skoon" from my Scots grannie. Skawn is the posh British pronunciation, and it was frowned upon in her kitchen (from whence fabulous scones often emanated).

a-LO-ss cor-TON. Follows the same rules as Freixenet.

I hear it pronounced ra-ta-TWEEZH-eh down here.... :blink: