tammylc

Ah...c'mon...tell us one... but nothing with bacon in it, please. ← I make a milk chocolate bark with applewood smoked bacon and smoked almonds in it, and it's always a huge hit. So don't diss the bacon!

I've had a mojito chocolate done in dark chocolate before, and it was fine. I don't think white chocolate is really all that more neutral, IMO. Key flavors for a mojito are mint, lime, and rum. If I were doing it, I'd do a cream ganache, infuse the cream with mint and lime zest, then add some rum and probably a drop of lime oil. The best you're ever going to get in a ganache filling is an homage to the flavor of a mojito. One of my favorite flavors I've ever made was something I through together at the eG Heartland Gathering event in Cleveland, which was a dark chocolate ganache infused with thai basil and thai chiles. I think thai basil and chocolate are a pairing made in heaven. Last year I did a double layer piece with a layer of cherry preserves and then a thai basil ganache on top of that. Also a hit.

If there's anyone out there like me (with no TV), note that you can download episodes from Amazon for $1.99 each. They usually come available the morning after the original air date. It's how I watch all my Top Chef!

Thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up going with the radish and butter idea. I cut the radishes in half, piped the butter on, and sprinkled them with some pink Murray River sea salt. It worked out really nicely. The butter was delicious, and the guest didn't object to the rest of us putting the excess on bread, so we totally did that. The color of the butter is just amazing. I'd also planned on using it for a compound butter for the fish course, but the timing didn't work out, so I ended up using some other butter that I had on hand. Pictures from the rest of the meal are up on my blog.

My adventures in PdF making... So last night I set out to make a batch of blackberry for the supper club I'm hosting this weekend. Got to the end, and did what I (almost) always do - got so distracted by watching the temperature, that I forgot all about adding the acid until after I'd poured it in my frame. Other times that I've done this, it's set up just fine anyway, so I'm not sure why last night I decided it would be a good idea to scrape it off the silpat and back into the pot, add the acid, and repour, but I did. Needless to say, it had already started to set before I got it into the frames, so it didn't pour well and was all lumpy. Taste was great, though, so I cut it up and brought it into work today. But I figured I'd better make a second batch for the dinner. This time I put my bowl containing the acid right in the middle of my frame - that way it was impossible for me to forget to add it. Worked like a charm. Thought I'd post about it just in can anyone else has the same forgetful streak!

There is - I'd just stumbled across that in the butter thread. That's where I'm leaning right now. Radishes cut in half with butter piped on top and sprinkled with coarse salt. Served as an amuse. Also thinking about doing the fish course with a tarragon compound butter. Chris has it right - the trick is to think of something where the butter is the highlight, and doesn't get overwhelmed by other flavors.

My summer project is to host a little supper club at my house, benefiting various food organizations. For my first dinner, one of my guests has offered to bring some homemade raw milk butter for me to use. However, same guest is gluten free, so all the things I would normally think of to highlight butter - bread, pasta - are off limits. Any suggestions and how I can make good use of a 1/2 cup of butter?

More pop tart pics: First, the "money" shot on the ones I posted earlier. This one is blueberry: At my impromptu pop tart party last night, we made one mini pop tart each of a bunch of different flavors, some sweet, some savory. So we'd be able to tell them apart after we baked them, we docked the dough with a letter: The "P" has pesto and parmesan, and the "M" has mango chutney. We also made one with sundried tomato pesto and parmesan. I haven't tasted any of the savory ones yet. But we thought olive tapenade would a good filling - just didn't have any. When I frosted the sweet ones this morning, I colored the frosting so we'd be able to tell the difference later. It's like a rainbow of fruit flavors! White frosting is caramel (that one leaked like crazy!), yellow is apricot, pink is raspberry, red is thimbleberry, and purple is blackberry (all from random half jars of preserves and jelly and stuff in my fridge).

I can't be much help, I'm afraid. I decided halfway through measuring to use weight instead, and then just scooped kind of randomly until I got up to 645 grams. But that took about 4.5 not at all carefully measured cups of flour, so then I just scooped out some flour randomly. I think I weighed it again after that and IIRC was at about 560? There's so much room for inaccuracies in flour - the measuring cup difference, how densely the flour is packed - which is why I figured I'd best go for weight. The good news is that the recipe seems to be really flexible and doesn't much care...

The recipe definitely works! The little turnover I had last night was great, and I'm looking forward to sharing the rest with friends tonight at my impromptu "pop tart party." Just not sure if the ultra-tender crust was a goal or a mistake I made. And the one I had last night was still warm anyway, so the crust may have set up a bit more since then. Here's mine, in progress, and then finished. The red sprinkled ones have strawberry jam, the multi color ones are blueberry jam, and the chocolate ones have a cacao cream inside - kind of like nutella, but more chocolatey and less hazelnuty. The frosting for the chocolate one is just the same powdered sugar frosting with some cocoa added.

Question for you about your flour measurement - 3.5 cups of flour was way less than 645 g for me - it took me about 4.5 cups to reach 645 g. So then I wasn't sure which way to lean, so at the last minute I pulled out a half cup or so of the flour. Should I have gone with the full 645 g? I haven't eaten a fully finished pop tart yet, but when I ate the little turnover I made from the scraps, it seemed like the crust was perhaps overly tender - is that because of not enough flour?

I've found that I'll have ganache cracking problems with some ganaches, but not others. Temperature is a big factor, but it's also just the consistency of the ganache - some sets up harder and is prone to breaking when cut. Slightly softer ganaches have their own cutting challenges, but they don't break. Try upping your liquifiers a little bit in the recipe. I think Schott calls for refrigerating most of his slab ganaches - I'd be cautious about that and use room temp instead if you're having cracking problems.

i was thinking about how to make a caramel variant (that's dairy free). Thoughts - make a caramel syrup to puree into the tofu. If the added fat from the chocolate is important, melted cocoa butter would presumably work...

A friend of mine has been making chocolate tofu pie for years - basically the same kind of recipe, but uses honey in place of the sugar syrup. I just recently dug the recipe out for another friend, whose discovered that she's allergic to wheat, dairy and eggs, and is desperately craving anything dessert-like. I found a recipe in a book that uses raspberries in place of the chocolate to make a raspberry pudding.

I'd definitely be interested in attending next year, and location isn't important to me.

I am so sad that I wasn't able to make it! And here's another one begging for doing it again next year, please!

Going price for a new 6 kg melter in the US is around $640, and the buy it now price is $550, so for those of us on this side of the pond there's a little discount. ← But it's USED unit! So the discount is not very much really. ← But it's not like these things get much wear and tear on them, what with no moving parts. I expect they last a very long time. So the difference between used and new is really small.

Going price for a new 6 kg melter in the US is around $640, and the buy it now price is $550, so for those of us on this side of the pond there's a little discount.

Just a heads up to anyone in the market for a melter - there's a used 6kg Mol d'Art on eBay right now.

I love Easter! It always seems to bring out the kid in me, and I have more fun than usual playing with chocolate. The half eggs and the round box in the front were my Easter collection. The eggs and bunny are turtle (caramel/pecan) and the chocolate flavors are blackberry, peanut butter, rosemary and ginger. Behind that are my first experiments with hollow eggs. I'm still figuring out what the right amount of chocolate for my molds is, so the first batch I did had shells that were too thin, and in the second batch there was too much and the chocolate pooled on one side. But it was definitely fun having my 5 year old son help me decorate the molds - he did one side, I did the other, so each egg is truly a team effort. Then behind that the tulips I made last night, inspired by the ceramic bowl thread.

I ordered one at the end of December and never even got any confirmation that my order had been received. Or return of my phone call to followup. Customer service is clearly not the strong suit there.

Those look amazing, Kerry! I'd hoped to try my hand at bowls, but I didn't have the right balloons. But I was able to make some tulips, and that was really fun. It was much harder than it looked on the video to get the petals the same length. And the white chocolate didn't really turn out as stripes. But for a first attempt, I'm pleased with the results! I started with some with just dark chocolate, and brushed them with some luster dust for shine. I didn't have any bamboo skewers, so I rigged up a "clothesline." Bouquet of chocolate tulips. Closeup

Chocosphere.com has a wide variety of chocolates at a bunch of different price points. Will definitely better than buying Scharfen Berger at retail. And I strongly second what lapin d'or says - the Grewling recipes make a LOT of pieces, but are very easy to scale down to more reasonable quantities.

I'm going to be in town later this year for a conference, and I'm looking for dining recommendations in the neighborhood or a short taxi ride away. I like all cuisines, but won't be able the splurge too much on this trip, so I'm looking for good but not-too-expensive places. Thanks!

Oh, this would have been a lot clearer if the spaces I'd put in there to separate out the columns had actually stayed. Doh! John's example is clearer than mine, and yes, that's the idea - using the percentages. But by putting it all into a spreadsheet, you just have to plug in the finished ganache amount, and it will automatically calculate the amounts of the ingredients, which comes in really hand for me. If anyone wants a sample spreadsheet mailed to them, feel free to PM me with your email address, and I'll send it along, so you can see how it's set up.