Wendy DeBord

We've (in every place I've worked including being self employeed) always left or given hosts any food that was on a buffet/on a serving tray. Left overs are typically eaten by the wait and kitchen staff, then tossed into the garbage if not eaten right away. None are reheated and served as an employee meal or re-sold. But you always prep for them to eat. Every chef knows to prep extra. If they run out of food it hurts their reputation can get them fired in the long run.......even if the host insists on placing a stingy order (which you shouldn't let them do). If they don't eat alot, some of the food that never got to the final cooking/or prep go back and get used on another party. An example, we might sear off 10 tenderloins and only use 7. The remaining 3 aren't cooked, can't be given to the host as is....and are perfectly good to use on another party. I'll prep 10 cakes, if they eat only 8 I roll those cakes into my daily special if I completed them. If I didn't totally finish them, I might freeze it. But at no time did they ever sit out of refridgeration, nor were they exposed to the public. For pastries I'm pretty picky. I don't want day old cookies/cakes/anything to be sold. I prep like the hotside and don't aways finish off all my items (I keep a buffer zone amount on hand all the time).........waiting to see if I'm going to get hit heavy. If they are eating big, I'll finish everything I have and tray it up asap. If they aren't eating much, I'll take what I had as my 'buffer' (extra prepped food) and use that for my next event. If I can't use it in my next event, I freeze it or sell it as my special.

Well I don't want to sound horrible........but if the host doesn't know how much quantity they need..........I'd probably sell them on the higher side of your guess. Just because everyone can eat/use left overs and running short on food is a nightmare for me. Theres ALWAYS the exception. You never know if your guest will eat heavy or light. The weather even effects how people eat......... We have repeat groups of people year after year so you'd think we'd know if they were big eaters or light eaters. They might be light eaters the majority of the time and then once in a while they throw you into a panic because we can't keep up with the volume their eating. Again, it's always best to put it back on the host. What if the guests turn out to be all large people who haven't had anything to eat all day............. If you have a group of wealthy women, chances are they'll eat nothing.............Not that sterio types are right but there are patterns.

What were you thoughts about the conference Artisanbaker? Did you demo or strictly attend? What or who impressed you, and why?

Yes we purchase the mini tart shells. I 'think' there 1.25".....but I'll double check for you tomarrow. A few years back the quality of the purchased tart shells really differed between brands. It was hard to buy a decent tasting tart shell. I like Hafner brand shells alot. But we've gotten other brands that are pretty good too. The thing I'd tell you to watch when purchasing them is the thickness. Some shells are too thick and dominate the fillings. On a side note: I haven't had any issues with mini tart shell breaking. But I have with purchased larger size tarts (around 3.5 to 4"). Mini cakes, I cut to size. The size sometimes is influenced by how difficult the item is to cut, or if it wants to fall over, etc... Sometimes the size is dictated by the size pan I own. I wish I could demand pans in all different sizes, but that's not the reality. On my mini pastry trays I do have "larger" and "smaller" pieces............ not perfect, but not horrible either. If you wind up with something too large, you can cut it in half then dip the cut in melted chocolate to reseal it........and pretend that thats how it was meant to look........like a circle cut into a half moon.....why not. I think of a mini pastry when we're talking in general about mini pastrys it should be 2" or less. Over 2", not a mini.

I wish I could be of help on this topic. For some reason all the teas I've been involved with, the women barely ate anything. They talked a great deal, but ate nothing. I prefer to sell per item and let the provider be responsible for the amounts. Put it back on the caterer or the host. That way you don't do more then your paid for, zero waste. But I assume the reason you ask is because your "catering" this? All I can tell you is from my experiences. I/my family owned a catering business for about 10 years. Working on speculation of quantities is not nearly as profitable as filling orders. Especially if you don't have any imediate source for selling your extras. If you have several similar events where you can roll over left-overs into the next event......that works too.

Ah Devinf, you've mentioned a few things that peaked my interest. Would you possible elaborate a little more? What did you learn about choux paste, exactly? If you don't mind. I love the tinyest of details.............. perfection is all in the details. And he put pop rocks in his ganche or on top of his truffles? What flavor matching did he do? heck...........I don't even know if pop rocks come in assorted flavors (Ted, do they?). I would be incrediably grateful to see the photos you've taken!!!! Overjoyed to see them.........please.

I've never come across this before. Where on the machine is the grease coming from?

I really wanted to hear more about Dories presentation! I'd love to learn what she told them (word for word). I wonder if she had any photos of to show of the lastest French work..............

Ah........... Sometimes I think English is my second language. Getting a point across is painfully hard for me sometimes. YES to Chefettes points! YES! I hope everyone follows?..... I wish I had been able to sum this up that well!! I'm a blabber........ _________________________________________________________________________ I keep thinking about how we could have fun with this........like a game. Eclairs keep coming to my mind as the perfect vechical to explore how you can create your own mini pastry. I bet I can think of 500 * ways to make eclairs, seriously. You have a plain choux puff casing, to that you can add almost any flavoring. Choux puffs/eclairs/cream puffs are a basic dough that can be flavored. Although I rarely see anyone doing that (but me). Then you can do a chocolate Choux puff and double the list of possible flavors you can make. Then you've got your pastry cream filling you can flavor a million and one ways.........but who says pastry cream has to be the center filling of your eclair. You could fill it with a mousse, a bavarain, a ganche, a fool, a frosting, etc......... Then to each base component you can adjust that flavor. So I can make a chocolate mousse filling and flavor it with orange oil. I could make a lemon mousse and insert that from one end of my puff, then make a raspberry mousse and insert that into the other end of my puff...........giving me two distinct flavors/filling in one eclair.........and so on. Last I've got to top my eclair. Well who doesn't love it topped with ganche. But again the possiblities for topping your eclair also becomes a long list. Sometimes I top my eclairs with fondant (you can see an example in my photo above) and pipe on another flavor (chocolate ganche in my photo above). Sometimes I flavor my fondant or ganche. I could make a lemon flavored eclair shell, fill it with a coconut mousse and put a pineapple flavored fondant on top. See the possiblities? They're endless. We can/could go on talking about all the posiblities forever. AND if you have a couple base component recipes you wouldn't even need to look at a book for another mini pastrie idea. Chefette mentioned to me that she thinks of the opera torte similarly as the perfect vechical to make zillions of versions. And so forth.........you could examine tart shells and again dream up hundreds of ways to fill them. No book I've purchased on mini pastries has taught me how to think on my own about making mini's. Every book I own on mini's keeps me dependent on a book. Not that I think theres some sort of conspiracy in the baking book publishing circles. But the whole thought process of baking and on baking we/I try to address here honestly and openly with you all. Too many web sites and book authors seem to think people can't catch on to any greater understandings. That's just silly and insulting. ____________________________________________________________________ Going back for a moment to something Chefette mentioned, naming your items. I do feel frustrated at times that we talk names of items too much. To really share the thought (in my mind) you have to say how you made that item with the' cool sounding name'.

So I took some photos of my current freezer to let you peek into what I do. So as you can see all the items are ready to be plated..........all garnishes are on, no last minute prep allowed........which also limits what garnishes you choose. Some break very easily. For those trays I use a sheet pan extender around the sides of the pan and then I either loosely lay plastic wrap over the top of the tray or I don't wrap the item at all. Instead I use them up quickly. Besides the guys always grab for the most elaborately decorated items the most. We buy in sheet pan covers, which are basicly large baggies. You could use a garbage bag instead if you can't find these. It has protected my items from freezer burn (so far). I let the mini's freeze uncovered, so they don't get mushed by the plastic. Once they are solidly frozen I go back and wrap them. Wrapping them verses using covered storage containers like tupperware has their advantages and dis-advantages. The plastic gets torn pretty often sliding items in and out of the type of racks I have. I can easily see what's there. And if you look at photo that shows the entire freezer open.......on the bottom of the freezer you can see that I've got items dirrectly stacked on top of each other. Those are cookies, nothing that will be harmed/smooshed. But it's great when your limited on freezer space to be able to dirrectly stack items. I have no wasted space. I've worked at bakeries that used tupperware items to store pastries in. They never all fit into the freezer well. There were always awkward spots left vacant. Or the container would be a little too small or a little too big for the amount of product you needed to store.

For future reference heres a link to a demo on making joconde cake: Demo: Joconde Cake

When choosing what you can or cannot freeze you can think of mini's like you would cookies. If you combine a crisp cookie with a soft one, what happens: they both turn soft. And the process of freezing a crisp object.........does soften it, typically. In the case of mini pastries, there are none that I've done that will remain crisp once they've been made, frozen and defrosted. BUT I combat that as much as I can. So as I said earilier freezing isn't ideal, but you can make it work. When I have a mini tart, I try to line my shell with a thin coat of chocolate. Using the chocolate as a barrier between the shell and soft filling. Unforunately my shells do lose some snap anyway. But having that layer of chocolate gives you items some crunch and fools you alittle. If I'm making pecan tarts or a tart where the filling is baked into the shell.......I don't know of a way to retain any crunch unless after you've baked it you dip it in chocolate to seal it. You hope your tartlet is good tasting enough that it still holds it's own. Or you make your tart shells and line them with chocolate, store them empty in the freezer and fill them to order. Which really is easy...........but my job won't tolerate that last minute filling. How good your freezer is means alot. I've had freezers that freezer burn my items in a couple days. I've also had freezers that worked so nice I didn't even have to cover each individual tray to seal them. I put them in a cart that closed well, and that held my items just fine. So there will be a little trial and error for each freezer you use.

Welcome to The eGullet Society For Arts & Letters Beanie! We'd love to hear your two cents and more........

The answer to you previous post Canadianbaking is: YES, that would work great. You've got it! Feel free to try some other ones from Brians list, if you want. I was hoping to see more people particpate in that interaction. It could be fun/interesting/educational. As to having that pantry. Collect ingredients one at a time if you need to. I promise it will make your job easier if you work with them as I've described. You can get small bottles of extract at your grocery store..........but they turn out to be more expensive then other sources. See if you can find the Borion (hope I spelled that right) oils, a little goes a long way and the prices are very reasonable. Freezing............yes I freeze 99% of my mini pasties completed. That's not ideal! My eclairs (choux puffs) do soften from the fillings. So will tart shells. I do my best to compensate for what the freezer takes away from my items.

Well what I use in a baked recipe and what I'd use to make truffles are two different things. I'd use something in-expensive in a baked good. But if I was looking to temper some to be eaten as is.........I've always been fond of Flechlin.

Marmish, have you seen this thread? I highly reccomend Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme, written by Dorie Greenspan. You can'/won't regret it.........plus you can read our thread and see how others have done, even get other members advice. P.S. The Duby book, is definately NOT for beginners, not for all pro's either. I don't think Marmish is ready for that book based on the other titles she says she owns.

I still don't know much on sugar free baking, forgive me for adding my two cents in a topic I barely know. But the few times I've explored it I found that the amount of splenda I needed to make the item taste sweet was very minute! I personally thought a light touch of it was o.k. and the taste wasn't too off. But recipes I've tried that were meant to be used with splenda all have called for way more splenda then I could tolerate.......they left me wondering if the recipes were written based on taste or to use as much splenda as possible to sell more. Make a small batch......see how it goes/tastes/works. Many great things were invented from accidents and wild trials.

The thing that strikes me the most is how you repeated your balls on the layers and scattered them around the table. If you hadn't done that with the balls I don't think it would have worked as successfully as it does. If you did something 2D I'd like to see it repeated also as you did the balls.....keeping the shapes of squares or circles. I like the idea of doing squares, and or a combo of squares and balls, including cutting out squares and circles from the 3d square or ball. I like anything in that retro. style when you tie it into the whole design....... Your work is stunning LCS, we definately need to see more of it!! Do you have a website?

Yes, Auesome, you've got it! Just so you know.........I truely was a paint by numbers type of baker for MANY years. I had to have a recipe where the person put all the pieces together for me. It took me a while to figure I didn't need them. It's really o.k. to be at whatever level your at. I'm just trying to explain what the next step is.........and it's this 'doing your own thing' that you'll eventually get to. I'm not saying you don't need recipes. You still need recipes to know how to bake a cake, make a bavarian. I'm just saying you can mix and match a mousse recipe from this author, a cake recipe from that author, etc....

You've totally got it. You can make things as simplistic or as complicated as you want. You can add other flavors in there too, if you choose........and still keep it a banana tatin. With most ideas you'll always have some details you need to "work out". A small trial run at times can be important if you haven't got a ton of experience behind you. Your going to run into a small glitch with what you've written, in that your banana will be over cooked by the time your puff pastry is done.........as you have this written. Can you think of a way to alter your recipe to avoid that? Anyone else? Feel free to tackle any of the items Brian listed, or to ask any questions. The pantry really makes a big difference. I forgot to add liquours. I run to the bar and grab whatever I need, all the time. My job really does work out alot as Retrevr explained. When I'm working I do my best to never run short of a component. If I need chocolate mousse to fill 10 cakes I'll make enough mousse to fill 15 cakes. Because stopping and having to go back and make something you've run short on......is a horrible waste of time (and time is money) and having left over components is a real time saver and sometimes a life saver. So just like it was mentioned earilier, I too need some different tastes happening in my mini's because they may be served on the same table with my large tortes (where I got my left-over to make my mini's from). SOoooooo I'd fill my chocolate mousse cakes then with my remaining mousse I'd evaluate what else I have laying around as extras and I'd try to use everything. Now even though that was a plain chocolate moussse, that doesn't mean it has to remain plain. I can add some orange oil and make it an orange/chocolate mousse, I can add some ground nuts or nut paste and make it a praline chocolate mousse, I can add some coconut emulsion and some toasted coconut making it a choc. coconut mousse. I could add some marshmellows and toasted pecans and call it a rocky road mousse, etc... I hope this makes sense and your catching on............? So I have this mousse I've turned into a orange chocolate mousse and I've got some left over chocolate cake too from when I made those chocolate mousse cakes. Now what can I do with them? I have some small chocolate cups (I bought in)........I could pipe some mousse into it, set a thin layer of cake on it, give it another dollop of mousse (maybe a different flavored mousse I have left-over too) or maybe some ganche I have left over, or some caramel sauce I have hanging around in my cooler. I have some chocolate choux paste piped into eclairs shapes. I can fill my eclairs with the flavored mousse. Dip the top of them in ganche (maybe flavor the ganche too). Then I could place a purchased chocolate cigarette ontop to decorate it. I could pipe on swirls with fondant. I could drizzle white chocolate over the ganche........ Are you ready for this? Am I explaining things well enough?

JB Prince, Company

You might find this thread helpful: Favorite Conversion Charts.

That comes from Simply Sensational Desserts, by Francois Payard. My review: this is a brilliant book I've baked alot from this, I think it's a must own book! Every single recipe in this book is fabulous, this is one of my favorite books that I'd be crushed to loose. This is NOT a book on petite fours although there are a couple recipes that are petite fours and many that can be adapted into petite four size. I was recently at his website and noticed you can still buy his book. Theres a photograph for every recipe.

Heres a list of the books I own on the topic of mini's. Short & Sweet by Gale Gand and Julie Moskin. My review: I've yet to make anything from this book. The problem with it is this is not a book about mini pastries. It's about pastries with short ingredient lists. Theres only one or two items in the whole book you could make as is and place on a mini pastry tray. Sweet Miniatures The Art Of Making Bite-Size Desserts, by Flo Braker. My review: I like this book alot. Theres a couple great recipes in there. I particularlly love her Viennese Triangle recipe! This is a great book to own to get started thinking about mini's. For other professionals, in time as I became more advanced the draw backs for me became the fact that I have better recipes for some of her components, some recipes really weren't more then cake and frosting, or cookies. Petits Gateaux Petit pastries For Tea Time, by Ecole Lenotre. My review: I've yet to make anything out of this book either. It all looks great though! Theres photos of every recipe. Whats stopped me from making anything from it yet: the pastries involve multiple components (which take time, multiple molds I don't own) it's more like making individual desserts not one or two bite items. Items look fabulous, theres some really nice looking items in here! I just don't have time in my days to make these. Instead it's easier for me to use left over components I have from other things I've made. In the back section of this book they have tea cakes. Items like: orange flavored gateau battu, morello cherry cake, saint genix brioche, savoy cake, basque cake, pear cake, apple cake, little sponges with grand marnier, pistachio domes, etc.... Then they have cookies, brownies, waffles, pretzel, etc... done with an Eurpopean approach, these aren't American brownies and sugar cookies. I don't think that the average baker will find this a book they use often. I think it's definately geared to professionals. It's pretty contemporary......not an old world type book. Plaisir de Petits Fours, by Pascal Brunstein. My review: sheesh another one I haven't worked out of. I find this book uncomfortable. Each recipe is written in both French and English with the English version in italics (which is hard to read). They have photos of every recipe. The sections are: base recipes like ganche, Tuiles, Macarons, sables (cookies), petite souffles (which are mini cakes baked like cupcakes lemon, almond, orange), tartlets (only about 4 recipes), Florenins (which are more cookies), pate d almandes (which are baked almond paste pastries like marzipan), specialites internationales (more cookies). Sooooooooo for my use this is mainly a book on petite cookies......of which my American customers don't consider 'petite fours". It's items are traditional European looking pastries, nothing real creative or cutting edge looking. Apprenez l' Art Des Petits Fours Sucre's et Sale's, by J.M. Perruchon and G.J. Bellouet. My review: I have baked out of this book. It's the largest of the books with the most recipes I've reviewed in this post. It's summary list is: dry petite fours (cookies), spongy petits fours (canneles, brownies, almond cakes), fresh petit fours (fruit tarts, eclairs, choux puffs), prestige petits fours (opera torte, chocolate baby savarins, tartes tatin), macaroons, sweet recipes annexe, canapes (savory), cooked appetizers, puff pastry appetizers, garnished vegetables, savory recipes annexe. It has a photograph of every recipe. Most recipes look contemporary but theres nothing wild or cutting edge.......definately classic. So far every recipe I'd made from this book as turned out well. This is an expensive book, but well worth it. Perhaps more geared for professionals but almost all the recipes are simple enough for non-professionals and also do involve too hard to find of ingredients. Half the book is on savory appetizers (classic European ones).............so that might not interest you. Then of course theres tons of books that have sections on mini pastries in them......

O.k...............so I know this probably still isn't meaning alot to you. Lets see if I can explain this further. In Brians example he posted mini pastries that he probably made up in his head (didn't find specific written recipes for those items) based on what he had in his shop. This is what I'm trying to suggest to everyone. How to make up your own mini pastries with-out a recipe designed to make a "mini" pastry. So I'm going to take the pastries that Brian wrote out and make them myself with-out knowing what Brians recipes sources were. #1. Coconut rolls with mango. I can take my petite four sponge recipe and add some coconut extract into the cake before I bake it off in a sheet pan to get a coconut flavor. I could also have added some shredded coconut to the batter in place of the extract..........but I won't because that might make my roll rip or break as I roll them. But I could chop it finer and then add it to my cake before baking it. Then for the mango filling, I could search for a mango mousse recipe. I could take a plain/vanilla mousse recipe and add some of my mango emulsion to it to flavor it mango. I could make a white chocolate ganche and add mango emulsion or puree to flavor it and use that as my fllling. I choose the petite four sponge recipe, accent it with coconut extract and bake it off. I then make some vanilla bavarian which I flavor with mango emulsion and spread a thin layer of that over my cake. I cut my cake into sections, aprox. 1 " tall by 2 " long and roll those up inserting a toothpick to help them hold shape until the gelatin sets. I then dip one end of my coconut roll in melted white chocolate, then dip/roll it in toasted coconut..........stand the roll up so it's sitting on the chocolate bottom, pipe a dollop of whipped cream on the top surface of my roll. Place a thin slice of mango on it for garnish and perhaps a chocolate curl too. Done. #2. Passionfruit Parfaits. First thought, I need a container to hold this. It will have to be edible and cheap. I could make "cups" out of my joconde cake and fill that as a parfait. I could make chocolate cups for this. I could use something I've purchased to contain this too. I could make a cup out of other tart making materials, like crushed cookies. I'm going to make this easy and use up somethings I have on hand. I'll use some petite chocolate cups I've purchased. To that I'm going to make a passionfruit mousse recipe I have from a recipe in my "mousse" file. A passionfruit curd would be good too, but I don't have a tried recipe for that yet. So into my chocolate cup I pipe some mousse, place a small chunk of left-over cake I've got in my freezer (kept from something else I've made, remember no waste!), add another layer of mousse. Top with whipped cream dollop and garnish. #3 Coconut Panna Cotta with a pineapple gelee. First thought< how am I going to serve this, I need a container to hold this. I either use a purchased tart shell, chocolate shell or a small disposable cup. I only have access to tart shells so that's what I'm going to use to contain this. I don't want my shell to get soggie so I coat the inside of it with melted white chocolate, thinnly. I've made a recipe from Michael L. for buttermilk panna cotta that I thought was excellent. So I'm going to use that recipe as my base. Now I have to flavor it with coconut. I coud add a little coconut emulsion to it. I could have infused my buttermilk with coconut and let it sit over night in the cooler to draw out some coconut flavor, then strained it and proceeded with the recipe. I could sub. out a percentage of the buttermilk and use coconut milk in it's place......or all of it. I choose to sub. out a percentage of the buttermilk for coconut milk and then make the recipe as written and put some in my tart shell to set. For my pineapple gelee...........this will depend upon what recipes and or ingredients I have at hand. I could cheat and use pineapple preserves as my gelee. I could take a can of crushed pineapple and thicken it with gelatin. I could take fresh pineapple and puree it and thicken that. I might have some pineapple puree the freezer I could gelatinize. I'll choose to make a pineapple gelee from a recipe card I just got from Boirion purees (online) using fresh pineapple I puree. I pour a thin layer over my panna cotta, let it set, then garnish. I want it too look different then my last pastry so I think I'll make dried pineapple slices. The recipe and instructions for that were recently posted in our forum. O.k. so lets see if anyone follows along with what I've been trying to say. Someone else make the next item from what you have in your recipe file right this second (it must be a recipe you've already made before) and use items from your pantry too. NO running out to the store. NO searching for recipes you haven't made before. #4. Banana Tart Tatin. Tell me how your going to make this? Many people can post how they'd make this...........perhaps it will spark ideas. Or post how you would have made one of the previous items I made from Brians list in my mind.