Wendy DeBord

I'd like to address this part of your post. I definately have a limited list of components I make over and over. Then there's left-over mousses or cakes I have from making something else, that I turn into mini's.........so I have very little waste. In my mini pastry section of my file here's what I have recipes for that I carry to work everyday: (I'll bring in additional books when I've found a new recipe I want to try. But typically these recipes are the staples of my mini pastry items. Petite four sponge Almond opera sponge Cannoli filling Dream cheesecake Pecan nut cups Herme's pate a choux Mom's pate a choux Chocolate pate a choux Viennese Triangles (a recipe from Sweet Minatures book) Pineapple Tea Cakes (a recipe from Payards book) Apricot Tea Cakes (a recipe from Payards book) Swedish Profiteroles (a recipe from Friebergs book) Joconde cake Thats it!! I then use other recipes/components of whole tortes or items that I like. You said, Canadianbaker that you didn't have very many of these types of recipes, components. I'd be willing to bet you have more then you realize. If you take out every recipe you have that you like you've got at least one and up to many components in each recipe to steal and use in your mini pastry production. mousse recipes bavarains pastry cream recipes cakes tart dough cookie recipes cheesecake recipes pie filling recipes frostings caramel sauce So I dare you to take out your whole recipe file and look at each recipe as I do. Heres some examples: I make key lime pie, that recipe gives me a keylime filling I can use in tart shells. I like the exotic orange torte recipe FWED posted here at eG. From it I get 4 great components. I use it's honey cake, orange vanilla bavaroise, vanilla cremeux, passion fruit gelee. And so it goes I can take any good tasting component from any recipe and use it in my own applications. Then I have a number of basic items that I buy in and have on hand all the time. I buy in: Mini tart shells Chocolate mini tart shells Mini cannoli shells Chocolate cordial cups Chocolate assorted shaped cups Then the one thing that really makes the difference between what a home baker has and what a professional kitchen has, is our pantry items. My pantry items are HUGE time savers and I try to have a large variety of items I can use to flavor other products/recipes/components. Heres some catagories of my pantry items that give me TONS of possiblities when I'm working: nut pastes: praline (hazelnut) pistchio paste, peanut butter, nutella oils: peppermint, speriment, orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, anise, almond extracts: almond, lemon, vanilla, coconut emulsions: (they make dozens of flavors, I feel lucky to have a dozen on hand at any time) I like Driopple brand the best so far. I have raspberry, strawberry, lemon, orange, mango, banana, coconut, kirsch, tirimisu, amaretto, mixed berry, coffee Another part of my pantry goods are items like: nuts (as may different types as I can afford), chocolate curls, white chocolate curls, chocolate jimmies, coarse sanding sugar, coconut bits, coconut, mini chocolate chips, mini butterscotch chips, rolled purchased chocolate cigarettes in plain white chocolate, dark chocolate and duo striped, chocolate coffee beans, frozen fruit purees (as many different flavors as I can afford), sea salt, vanilla powder, vanilla bean paste, cocoa paste, fueatine, oreo crumbs, graham cracker crumbs So now I've given you lists of my components/recipes in my files and the pantry items I keep in stock. You can do the same excercise and write down what you have in your pantry. I highly suggest you do. From there we can make just about anything.

Is there any item you bake that you know as well as the back of your hand? Pick a recipe that you know perfectly and use that item to find where the right temp. is on your dial. Don't be shocked if you wind up going as much as 100 degrees lower then what the dial says. I had a hard time finding the right temp. using items baked from scratch. Because it's always when you in a new kitchen that you have the oven problem and then some ingredient problems too. Too many new variables to figure out which is causing what. For me, if I use a yellow or white cake mix and bake it off in ovens new to me, it becomes crystal clear if my oven is too hot or too cool. I know not only from how it bakes and looks but also from the time it takes. Or baking cookies can really show you how your dial is off. I know that my cookies bake in around 12 minutes..........so thats a really quick and simple item to use to see if your temp. is off. The current ovens I use, I set at 275F and that bakes my items correctly for a 350F recipe. I then live day to day as if that 275 is 350 so when I need to turn down my oven for a custard or turn up my oven for puff pastry........I use the 275 and then count up or down accordingly. So if a recipe calls for a 300F oven I set my dial on 225F. This greatly frustrates the people I work with.......it's not logical for them how a perfectly calibrated oven set at 350F can be actually baking items as if it was set at 450F. I've gone round and round in circles trying to explain this, it seems that other bakers are the only ones who understand this. Other things that cause you problems in a new kitchen: Every paddle for every mixing bowl reaches different lengths. In time believe if or not, metal bowls stretch out, metal beaters shrink. A brand new mixer fits together the best. The paddle should almost scrape the bottom of your bowl. In time, the friction of the paddle on the bowl is what takes metal off the paddle (making it seem like it's shrunk) and off the inside of the bowl (making it seem larger). So if you've bought used equipment this can throw you off. I have 4 mixers at work. I have one older 40 qt, the paddle is about 3/4" away from scraping the bottom of the bowl. Thats a huge problem, it really doesn't mix well. So I have to jack up one side of the bowl by inserting a towel to raise up the side. Then I occasionally lift up the other side of the bowl to make it even, and that clears/scrapes down the opposite side of the bowl. I can't prop both sides up or the bowl flys off the stand (I've learned that the hard way several times). Plus not to mention I need to scrape the bowl more frequently when using that mixer. New ingredients from new sources can throw you off. Different flour brands have slightly different levels of gluten or moisture content. We've talked here about buying heavy cream that wouldn't whip......the fat content was too low. I've talked about some brown sugar I got that wouldn't melt in a pan for the life of me. There are oddities. I had extra large eggs from one dairy weigh what a large egg should weigh so we had to order a different size from that vendor. Where you are located effects your ingredients. I once worked at a club just feet from lake michigan. The humidity level effected all of my ingredients. I couldn't store things air tight-enough. My flour was always heavy. Recipes that I had baked for years at other places, suddenly wouldn't turn out right at this place. I tried to find the science behind the problems, but rarely did. Then I have to tell you........I too have baked off a large batch of chocolate cake where the thing turned rubbery with air tunnels. It was a recipe I used many times........all of the sudden it no longer worked for me. I still can't tell you why, I thought I evaluated all my factors and still found no answers. My only solution, find a new recipe, and I did, found a better one at that. Sometimes you have to chalk things up to the "I don't know why this doesn't work" column and move on. You will definately get better in your kitchen. It's frustrating to have set backs, but all bakers do in new kitchens.

I mulitple "standard/home style" recipes all the time into huge batches. I think I can help you. Yes, you can make them fast enough to make a profit. Consider this a "growth period", it's going to be stressful, you should be struggling- that creates growth..........and then magicly (that could take a month or more) it will all become easier. Your speed and way of processing recipes will have gotten better. Even as an experienced baker, I too go thru these "growth periods" when I'm going from making 70 cakes a day to 130 cakes (for example). I too am stressed out, can't figure out how to keep up with demand. But I know it will pass and I will get better/faster/smarter. So I hope that helps give you some perspective......... First, convection ovens: I'm short on time, but I can tell you I and others here have talked extensively about working from them. Do a site search, there should be several threads on the topic to read. To breifly summerize: a perfectly calibrated convection oven bakes faster and hotter then a conventional oven, because of the air flow created by the fan. Believe it or not, you have to adjust the temp. on your oven dial down to compensate for this increased air flow/heat. Every convection oven is different so I can't tell you how much to turn yours down, it's a process of adjustment with trial and error. 350F set on your dial might in reality be as if your baking your cakes in a 450F oven. The signs your oven temp isn't baking at a bakers 350F are: your cakes baking differently, much faster or getting much drier then you've ever experienced before. Hopefully you can find all the little details on this topic in other threads. If you can't, please mention that and I'll repost and help you more on this topic. Mutlipling recipes: I have not found it necessary to change my ingredients when I multiply recipes into huge batches. Adjusting your leavening for the most part, is a myth and relates to the size of the pan your baking in, not the size of the recipe. So don't mess with your proven recipes. Instead I think working with a larger amount in a larger mixer may be what's throwing things off for you (as you mentioned). In some regards you have to ignore recipes that tell you how long to mix things. Instead you need to know what the right texture is/should be. You need to know what whipped butter looks like, how stiff is "stiff" when you whip your whites, etc.... And work your recipe in your bowl till you get the stages you need. You also have to really scrape down your bowl well, in a large bowl theres more to scrape then a counter top mixers bowl. It's tricky when you start working in larger mixers because sometimes you don't know how much will fix in your bowl..............until you get a feel for it. I probably would have made x12 and mixed all my cakes at once. You don't want to have to do multiple batches of the same thing.........that's not profitable......time is money.

Pam, theres tons of mini pastries you can make that don't involve gelatin. If you can give us a hint at what mini's your currently doing.......perhaps we can help you come up with some new ones and or some spin-offs from recipes your currently using.

No, not at all. I'm happy to get feed back from members about what they would like to see demo's on. You can always send me a private pm if anyone has suggestions. If there's ever something you/our members would like to demo..........you don't have to wait for me to formally ask you to do a demo. Please feel free to step forward (drop me a pm), I'm always looking for people willing to do demo's.

I own many books on making mini pastries (which I can review them if you like?). I've always had to make tons of mini's in every job I've had. (This may not sound helpful at first) But I HONESTLY, honestly I find the best mini's to make are based on regular desserts/tortes/cakes that I make. You can come up with countless mini pastry ideas yourself. I used to think I needed a book to come up with ideas and recipes........until I reached the point where I wasn't finding new recipes that were simple/quick to make. I was buying mini pastry books that were all saying the same thing, same items/ slightly different recipes.....regardless of how much I spent on those books. If you think about it, you can come up with tons of mini pastry ideas yourself. You can take any recipe you like and adjust it down in size to make it a mini pastry. After all a mini pastry is only different from a large pastry in size, not taste or ingredients. For instance, take a almond cake bake it in a mini-muffin pan, then add: pineapple section in the center for 1 mini idea. Add raspberry preserves to the center, thats another idea. Add kircsh soaked cherries, that's idea #3. Top with sliced almonds. Top with a crumble. Top with chocolate chunks, etc......... For tartlets, start with a tart you like...........say a pecan tart. Change the nuts, you can make almond tartlets, pistachio tartlets, macadamia tartlets, hazelnut, walnut, etc... To that nut tart you could put fruit on the bottom of the tartlet, preserves on the bottom of the nut tart, etc......... Once baked you can add a piped on dollop of ganche or whipped cream, mousse, etc....... So chances are you already own a great list of mini pastries to make..........just taking recipes you know and like and making them smaller. If this interests you at all, I'd be happy to help you develop a list of pastries based on what components you currently have recipes for.

I'm tired, but wanted to respond this evening. Sure, I'll put together a demo on this. I'm assuming the part about how you make the patterns with the cigarette paste and put the cake/joconde over it, is what your interested in? .........I sort of thought this thread took it from there. But maybe I've not been clear enough? Simdelish: (first set of questions) Yes. You have the actetate around the cake then that's placed into the plastic tube to hold it rigid. You don't remove the actetate until the whole thing is filled and totally set, done ready to slice and decorate. You do have to choose your mousse recipe wisely. I'll really make sure not to whip my cream stiff and I'll pour it into the cake line tube the minute I've finished mixing up the mousse or bavarian...........so it's at it's most liquid state. It pushes out very easily. The acetate prevents the cake from sticking to the inside of the tube if there was any leakage. Once the cake is out of the tube I peel off the actetate. I can place it back into the freezer (remember it's frozen so it's not at all fragile) or cut the cakelets right away. Your cutting a firm cylinder of cake and mousse. Nothing hard about it. Like portioning out dough. You can use a ruler measuring out your cuts, if you want to be very exact. Last I looked they only had the round tubes. BUT technically, you can take this concept and put your joconde lined acetate into any shaped tube you can find. Easiest being an oval, it would involve more cutting to make a square, but it's do-able. I can't recall what it cost at this moment..........I think around 100.00 for the kit. I wrote it earilier in this thread or in my blog.

I don't know if this helps, but do any stores in your area carry Ben & Jerry's brand? If so, I love their pistachio ice cream it's my favorite.

I recently purchased Bruce Weinstiens book on brownies (well, a different recipe on the same topic is still different, no?).........I tried his basic brownie (outstanding, if I recall correctly it's flourless), his peanut butter accented choc. brownie was very good, his marbled (cheesecake) one that the photo is on the front cover of his book......is also outstanding.

Theres many ways to make the patterns. The material that makes the pattern is called cigarette paste. It's spread or piped onto your silpat very thinnly, you freeze it to set the shape, then while it's frozen you put your joconde cake batter over the top of your pattern, then bake to set. Actually getting the pattern in or with the cigarette paste: I piped it on in the swirled example (in the photograph), I used a rubber cake comb to make the striped pattern (in the photo, it's the orangeish colored cake), and I used a stencil to block out the pattern in the green and yellow cake (it didn't show up well, I used poor color choice on that). There's more ways.............if you want to know more?

Have you also looked thru this thread? I believe there are references to several pastry shops and chocolatiers in that thread. You may also want to read and ask questions in our French Forum for some really specific advice.

I'm a little confused about your question. Are you wanting to whip the caramel ganche or just use it as is? Every ganche recipe I've used could be whipped (to add air) once it was chilled down. Then it held indefinately (of course it will spoil eventually) if the room temp. was normal (not hot). If I whip my standard ganche, once I stop the mixer and let it set only for a few moments, it becomes VERY firm. It sets.....so in order to frost or pipe it I'd have to reheat/warm it to break the texture back down to a spreadable consistancy. I think you can whip the recipe you posted. If it was more like 50% caramel to ganche then I think it might not want to whip stiff. But you don't have to chill or whip the ganche to use it as a frosting. Pour it over your cake when it's room temp. as a frosting.

Personally, I don't think theres any advantage to RLB's tip. The crust is chilled too, so the whole items process of baking is slowed down. Yeah your very bottom 1/32" of a crust that touches the piazza stone might cook more, but that would be the case no matter what (of starting with a room temp. crust or a chilled one), that's why you use a pizza stone (it retains the heat).......... If you making a thick deep pie, then I freeze it before baking and do find that that technique slows down the filling so the crust gets cooked more. Give it a try, try out the various techniques, try using different fruits too..........see what opinions YOU form. I think of a 'galette' as being something open faced, as in no top crust (even though it could have crumbs or similar on top of your main item).......and/or shaped as a thin disk.....as in a potato galette........

I'm just going to ditto what others have already written. Fruit contains moisture and each fruit (even the same type of fruit) has different moisture levels. Baking a fruit breaks down the fruit into a more liquid state............plus the excess moisture runs out. SO you have to put something with your fruit to absorb or thicken the juices. Adding cookie crumbs or bread crumbs do absorb your moisture............but you've got to have enough in relation to how wet your fruit is, for this technique to work. If you don't have enough, your crust will still be soggy and if you have very wet fruit you can't add enough cookie crumbs to absorb your moisture well enough. You don't have to bring your fruit up to a boil for the crumbs to absorb. Therefore you don't have to bake your fruit as much as a thickener requires. Adding a thickener like cornstarch or flour is also a bit of a guessing game (hense all the talk and confusion people have over baking pies) as to how much to use, depending upon how wet your fruit is, or how soft it gets when it's baked. For these thickeners to work, you MUST bring the liquids of the fruit up to a boil, for the thickeners to set. So you can't underbake your fruit when using these. For the most part I think of using thickeners in fruit pies, not in open faced galettes. I tend to be in the group of people that choose a high heat and thinnly sliced fruit to make my galettes. Depending upon what fruit I'm using.......I'm also usually pre-baking my crust so I'm making sure it sets up well............because usually a raw crust takes too long to bake in comparision to my fruit (which sliced thin, doesn't take along time to bake). It's similar to baking a pizza, you've gotta keep your crust thin and bake it in a high heated oven. In addition to using cookie crumbs I use frangipane and pastry cream to absorb some of my extra fruit juice between by fruit and crust.

First off, no one here makes fun of others! We understand that there's usually a good reason why someone uses a particular product. We've had many threads on dietary needs and we fully understand many people have special needs. Off the top of my head, I don't think cocoa butter is going to do what your dreaming of. Even though it has the word "butter" in it's name, it's not "buttery" in taste or texture. You can't whip or beat cocoa butter (that I know of), therefore you can't use it in a recipe that relies on whipped or creamed butter. Cocoa butter doesn't taste good. It sort of tastes like wax. So it also won't give your items flavor either. Margarine has a more pleasant taste. I wonder if your considering 'cocoa butter' because you believe it's gourmet or may give you something better/or different then other butter substitutes (margerines).............but to the best of my knowledge it's not better either taste or texture wise then artifical butters...........

I haven't made a mango mousse with fresh mangos, instead I've always had purchased purees for mango. Off hand I can't recall if mango has that enzyme..........but off hand I don't think it does..........at least in an amount similar to how much a kiwi has. I can say I've struggled with kiwi mousse and boiling it, didn't kill that enzyme enough for my mousse to set. With-out having studied the recipe you used Ruth, I can tell you from experience that almost every mousse recipe sets differently. When your working from a recipe where the author is giving you stacked/multi layered mousses, the author (if creditable) should have tested each recipe and made them consistant in strength. You can't build layers on top of a soft-settting mousse. You may have just grabbed a mousse recipe that wasn't ever meant to be served free standing. When you putting mousse in a torte or multi-component item you gotta be sure your using a firmer setting mousse. If you take random recipes (with-out having made them before to know how they turn out) it's highly possible each mousse will turn out with a slightly different texture. You could have too much gelatin in one mousse or too little gelatin in the next. You have to consider your source and what the mousse recipe was developed for, bowl or torte.

It should work just fine with bleached flour. The bleached flour cake will have a finer crumb and the cake with unbleached flour will be courser. I find the biggest difference comes between the taste of a item baked with bleached verses non-bleached. AND you almost have to do a side by side taste test to notice. The differences aren't noticable in many/most items. But butter cakes (being a very simple flavored item) are the best example I know of where I can taste the difference between the two flours in a baked good. If I was going to prove a point between the two flours, I'd choose a butter cake recipe to show you. The unbleached flour has more taste to it. I don't know if I'm tasteing "wheat" or exactly what or why, but unbleached flour in butter cakes tastes the best to me. Thats not to say you can't bake a good butter cake with bleached or even cake flour..............preference really comes into play here because the different flours do change taste and texture. The extreme is the cake flour where the cake will have a nice fine grain, but the taste won't compare to the unbleached ap flour.

Isn't anyone looking at this thread? I update it regularly.

I just wanted to add: if you can add a photo or two to your post I think that really helps. What your batter looked like before you baked your cake, then after it's baked gives tons of clues.........besides being all around helpful to all.

Yes, I'm using the type you need to cook, Elsay brand. I used it this past week with my normal pastry cream recipe. I took out a percentage of flour (I use flour) and used Elsay in it's place. It was REALLY thick, bordering on too thick. I wonder what's in the instant Elsay thats so different. I've never looked at a box of instant pudding..........but perhaps the action of heating it cancels out the thickening powers? A cold set thickener verses a hot set................

I'll have to look at the bag I have at work..........but I'm thinking it's not labeled as 'instant'. I'm confused a little, in that you added water. I can't recall any of the pastry cream recipes I've come across calling for pastry powder also having added water. Usually it's a somewhat standard pastry cream: yolks and or eggs, cream, sugar and flour or cornstarch, flavorings, plus the pastry cream powder. All the time ignoring any instructions on the pastry cream bag. Not making the pastry cream powder as a recipe on the bag might offer (which might be reconsituting the pastry cream powder with water). Are you saying you did that Pastrymama, then you added it to your regular from scratch pastry cream?

I just re-read something that I want to single out to everyone. Sarah's recipe calls for unbleached all purpose flour. I personally find there to be a noticable difference in taste between cakes made with bleached verses unbleached flour. So please stay true to the recipe and use unbleached flour. Also........if it's not too late I think we should go with only one extract or flavoring for now. If we have some people using the vanilla/almond and others using orange or lemon those flavors it will add some confusion into our testing. How about we go with vanilla extract only, for now? I'm not sure that I've ever read clearly defined definitions between butter, yellow and pound cakes. I have assumptions in my head for how I define the differences yellow, butter and pound cakes. But I'd rather see what someone else (an authority figure) has written to define the differences so we don't have any debates on the definitions. Hopefully someone will post some good definitions while we're waiting for people to bake the first recipe....... With those comments I think we probably should outline ahead of time what we think the perfect butter cake should be like. For me, I've found some pretty good butter cake recipes. But the one thing that does allude me is a butter cake that tastes as good after it's been chilled as it did when it first was baked. In my experience, the texture of the cake becomes so much heavier once you refridgerate a butter cake verses one thats it never been refridgerated. I've tried subbing out some of the butter and used oil as a replacement.........but I haven't found that to really make a strong enough difference. It's looses a little taste and still changes upon refridgeration too much to my likings. I'm curious what others look for in their ideal butter cake? Maybe we should come to an agreement on what were seeking upfront (which we failed to do in other Best Of's).

"Maybe we should start a "Best Of" search for the perfect butter cake recipe. Anyone up for it? For those of you that aren't familar with our format for beginning and writing to "best of" threads please read the following: The concept is for one person to begin the thread offering up their very best tried/researched recipe for all participants to try. Then, if someone has a recipe that they firmly believe is better then the one offered, they should post their recipe. At that time, we'll do our best to test that new competing recipe and all testers will post their results of that recipe..........and so on. We all bake the same recipe, with-out making ANY adjustments to the orginial recipe. We do this until we clearly have an recipe that the majority thinks is "the best". Please do NOT offer up any butter cake recipes that you have NOT already tried. Only offer up recipes that you think are great, please.": this qoute comes from this thread. So here I am starting a new "Best of" thread. I hope everyone will find this fun and interesting. Sarah feels confidient that her butter cake recipe is the "best of" so how about we start with her recipe? Those of us that wish to participate...........please give Sarahs recipe a try. Let us know what you think of it, how it turned out for you. THEN if you've ever made a better butter cake, please offer up that recipe as a challenge........and we will as a group then test the newest challenger. Stopping when we get a majority opinion.....

Maybe we should start a "Best Of" search for the perfect butter cake recipe. Anyone up for it? For those of you that aren't familar with our format for beginning and writing to "best of" threads please read the following: The concept is for one person to begin the thread offering up their very best tried/researched recipe for all participants to try. Then, if someone has a recipe that they firmly believe is better then the one offered, they should post their recipe. At that time, we'll do our best to test that new competing recipe and all testers will post their results of that recipe..........and so on. We all bake the same recipe, with-out making ANY adjustments to the orginial recipe. We do this until we clearly have an recipe that the majority thinks is "the best". Please do NOT offer up any butter cake recipes that you have NOT already tried. Only offer up recipes that you think are great, please. I've started a new thread for the Best Of: Butter Cakes. Please look at this thread. The current thread your reading "Replying to My cake fell!" is ONLY for replys on this topic. Please post new thoughts on butter cakes in the new best of thread.

I tried the CI blueberry buckle recipe over the weekend and wanted to add that I also thought it was excellent. Thanks for letting me in on it.