pastryani

So I’m thoroughly confused (not uncommon for me 😄) I thought adding fruit at the beginning and therefore cooking it longer would reduce that “fresh” fruit flavor? Also - is it better to have a slow and steady heat or a quick and high heat if cooking all the ingredients (including the fruit) together?

Agree. It must be blast chilled to withstand the heat of what looks like a hard caramel candy coating. When I was a kid there was a Mexican restaurant that made deep fried ice cream (ice cream ball coated with crushed cornflakes and fried) - so hot on top of cold is possible.

I might suggest a machine called Yonanas, made for processing frozen bananas and other fruit but I see no reason that it wouldn’t also process frozen (sweetened and flavored) yogurt cubes. http://yonanas.com

My favorite brownies are also crazy, crazy chewy. They’ve gotta have some bite to ‘em. Texture-wise, I really like the chew of boxed brownies, which I haven’t been able to recreate. I know sugar lends to a chewy brownie, but the problem is that I don’t like very sweet brownies (which boxed brownies usually are). So how do you get that fabulous, toothsome chew without a ton of sugar? Any recipes out there with less sugar and more chew?

Fyi - even for orders from D&R that say free shipping to the US, they’re not really free (or at least they didn’t used to be). I’d ordered from there once during a free shipping event, only to be hit with a hefty customs fee that had to be paid to the carrier. I prefer Choc-choc - shipping can seem like a lot but they cover all the “extra” expenses and there are no surprises later. 😉

Update #1: I tried slicing a frozen log of cookie dough that had been out for maybe 5-10 mins at room temp in a food processor and this is what I got: Kind of a mess, and tough to separate the slices from each other. I wouldn’t try this again. Update #2: I tried the deli slicer on frozen cookie dough that had been at room temp for ~15 mins (I wanted to try straight-from-freezer, but got distracted 😄). Results: the deli slicer made a single slice pretty decently, but any subsequent slices (ie - pulling the tray back and pushing again) was not happening. I got a lot of partial slices and build-up of dough. There was far too much friction and I had to turn the machine off and reposition the log of dough every time. Here’s a pic: I suspect it would’ve been MUCH better had it not thawed. I’ll try it again. Given the friction problem, I wonder how cheese gets sliced so thinly. Any tips to getting something like fontina or havarti sliced thinly and cleanly?? I know it’s possible... but how?!

Note to self... don’t try frozen solid with the FP. 😬

I have one of these too. Great for a quick grate of things without the cleanup of the FP.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. By the sound of it, I think I officially “need” to get a deli slicer. 😁. I’ll keep you posted when I experiment with it.

Do you rotate the log with every cut?

Oh a fellow lab person! (“lab rat” sounded better but I didn’t want to offend 🙃 ). I haven’t thought about the microtome in years! All good points. It’s true, even if the FP cuts well, the slices would likely all mush together.

Thanks I’ll check it out. Btw, What else can a vegetarian use a deli slicer for besides cookie dough and bread? 😃

Yup it’ll accommodate the log of dough. I was just worried about the blade being able to handle something frozen solid.

Do you know what the better way might be? I was thinking of getting a deli slicer but then remembered that I have a slicing blade with my food processor which seems like the same idea as the deli slicer (though I don’t know how delicate the food processor slicing disk and if it could handle frozen solid foods).

Slicing through frozen foods (like cookie dough)?