Wendy DeBord

The joconde cake is a specific cake designed to be very thin. You spread it very thinnly on your sheet pan. If you took that cake batter and made it into a deep cake, the cake would be dense and spongy. Likewise there are many cake batters that if you spread them as thinnly as the joconde they would bake up to be dry like cardboard. So you pick the right cake for the right circumstances. As of yet I don't have a cake levelor, but I have instructions to buy one on the net this weekend for work and they'll re-imburse me......finally. Usually, it's easiest to bake your cake layers thin, but I've gotten fairly agile at slicing cakes. Having a long very thin serated knive is important. There are some cakes that I just can't slice horizontally nicely still, for instance: carrot cake-forget it........just bake it the right height the nuts and such don't like to be sliced horizontally. Oh, I'm talking about slicing whole full sized sheet cakes not smaller rounds. I've had to learn how to handle them with-out breaking. over the years, I've never seen a pastry book address that issue. I find the very best way to handle cake is while it's frozen. You slice it when it's not frozen, but you freeze it and you can man handle it with-out worry. When my cake is soft or not frozen I insert a cardboard cake circle underneath it to prevent it from flexing and breaking. Then I carry it around on the cardboard and slide it off the cardboard onto the next layer.

Sorry, I meant to get back to you earilier. Yep, those are supposed to be brains. What they really are is floating islands (poached meringues) floating on fresh strawberry sauce. I put food coloring into my meringues and then piped them into the poaching milk randomly. I was really worried that no one would know what they were supposed to be, yet alone taste them..........but my Chef told me they were the first items gone off that sweet table and they asked for more, that makes me happy. I've never seen a brain shaped mold, but that's pretty cool.

Pastry chefs have a completely different relationship with equipment then hot side chefs do. I use more dishes/pieces of equipment per day then probably both our morning and night crews. Hot side chefs rely mainly on cutting boards, knives and pans. For vertually ever task I use multiple pieces of equipment. Just for example when I make a mousse, a very simple item. I need: a mixing bowl and whip, a bowl to melt my chocolate in, a scale, a spatula to touch my raw ingredients, a whisk to fold my mousse with, another spatula to touch my cooked ingredients, a bowl to store the item in. When you work in a professional kitchen you become extremely savey on how to reduce the amount of dishes you generate. Currently we are with-out a morning dishwasher, so everything you need you've gotta wash yourself. That's not so easy when you don't work in the same room or floor as your dishwashing machine. So I have to cart my dirty dishes upstairs, wash them and bring them down. Most of the time I hand wash my mixing bowls in my sink downstairs and wash each one of them maybe a dozen times a day. I have two 40 qt. mixers, one 20 qt. and one small table top kitchen aide. I took some photos of our upstairs kitchen and what specialty equipment I've purchased out of my own pocket. I'll load them up tommarrow and show you around more, let you see the great guys I work with too.

Exactly! You've got it.

No the acetate sheets are cut to the length of the tubes. The circumference is dictated by the circumference of the tube. It doesn't matter how wide the acetate sheet is because your rolling it into a tube shape that coincedently has your joconde cake in it. Try to think of it as rolling up a news paper, you can do it loose or tight. Then your squeezing the news paper into a tube. The paper just rolls over into itself so it doesn't matter how wide the sheet is. I hope that made sense.

Thank-you Rjwong. Currently I work for the best chef I've ever had the pleasure to work for. He's young and was raised in the "business"...he's a total natural, he has no formal culinary education either. BUT he's a natural born leader too..........truely! I've never worked for someone as organized, respectful, intelligent, sharing, oh man..........I can go on and on. If I was his parent I would be so proud of him, if I was an unmarried young female I'd be chasing him around the parking lot. He's auesome! In my past I've had some really horrible kitchen working experiences. Including racial and sexual discrimination running rampent over me. When I used to talk about it to others online they never understood what I was talking about. Why I was so negative. At one point I thought all working kitchens were run by horrible chefs. I'm very very pleased to have found a work enviroment that I can brag about and now I can understand that those kitchens aren't all kitchens. Oh, and I'm the first pastry chef he's ever had work for him. I was just temp. help when I met him and he really fought to keep me and make me a full time employee. My job cut into an already tight budget and he doesn't complain about that at all.

Since you all are indulging me, I thought I'd dig out some older photos that I have in my portfolio for fun. None of these are digital so I'm taking digital shots of photographs. You might see my shadow as I snapped some shots. Please look past that. As I look at more of my work it seems that I have a shoe obsession that sneaks out on Mothers Day buffets......I really don't own alot of shoes but perhaps I like them more then my concience knows. This first photo is something I copied out of a book. I made white chocolate cones for the heels of the shoes, leaving them hollow I filled them with mousse. The soles are made out of a cookie batter called tuiles, then the area around the toes was cotton candy that was supposed to represent fur, like a ladys fur slipper. If your think your seeing double it's because I made the chocolate shoes for a Mothers Day where there were two seatings and they wanted everything the same at each party. So I saved the shoes from the first party and placed the on similar cakes for the second. These are shortbread cookies. I frosted them all white and then airbrushed on using stencils for the patterns. Next up is a cake I did that also for Mom's day. I swear to god, one of the older members picked up the cake by the thin chocolate handle thinking it was a real purse set down on the table. Thankgoodness you all have better eye sight. Here's more goofy halloween shots..........I LOVE halloween, the whole dress up thing is great and ideas for sweet tables on that topic is endless: The following was just like a gingerbread house but it was a haunted house. The house part came out just o.k. but I really enjoyed the witch flying into the chimney part. I got that idea from actual halloween decorations everyone was putting out on their trees that year. This next shot is two photos, one over the other as I've placed them in my portfoliio. I really liked what I did on this sweet table. It was back when I worked at a slow club, so I had time to make anything I could think of. The witch is totally cake, to which I wrapped some black fabric we had on hand to make it sort of look like her body. I made hands out of white chocolate plastic that I dyed green. Her hands are "holding" the tray of culdruns. Each culdrun is a chocolate cake hollowed out and I put green colored vanilla pudding in the centers to be witches brew (remember kids are eating this so it has to be plain flavors). Then I had piped out mini (and I mean mini) frogs out of royal icing and placed them so they looked like they were trying to escape from the witches culdruns. I made everything on that table something to do with a witch. I had decorated cookies to look like brooms, cupcakes that were eyeballs (eyes of nute), 3D witches hats (cookies stuck together)..............stuff like that. I really love when I have time to put together a table with some thought. I wish my work was at a higher level then, but maybe one day I'll dig out that menu and remake it at my current job. Here's more random photos of pastries I created and ate. This first one is a wedding cake. The bride came to me with a heavily designed silk scarf that she loved and asked me to make a cake based on the designs on the scarf. All the flowers on this cake are real flowers coated in egg white, then fine sugar. This "coating" preserves the flower and as it drys it becomes firm. Maybe some of you are familar with candied violets? This is very similar except you go to great lengths to perserve the flowers appearance. This wedding cake is a copy of a famous cake published by Martha Stewart. It's very common for brides to ask you to copy a cake they've seen in a magazine. This next photo is several photos on one page of my portfolio. These cakes were done as centerpieces for a large party. I forget how many I had to make....somewhere around 20 cakes. The theme of the party was purple and gold. The base each cake is resting on is made from poured sugar and the garnishes on the cakes are all made from sugar too. This next cake was another design that was used on all the tables as centerpieces in place of using flowers. I probably only made a dozen of these. The bees are made of marzipan and there are wires holding them up. More bee's, here on a chocolate wrapped wedding cake. I found a cake that shows more of what I was talking about when I said I use butterflies alot too. This butterfly is made out of royal icing, piped out. I also do them out of colored chocolate and will search for a photo of them out of chocolate. One Easter I did a table on the chicken and the egg. Here's a little from that: This photo doesn't show scale. It's really a huge table. The snowman was well over 2' tall. It was in the center of several tables pushed together then I put sweets around all sides of it. This one from the opposite camera angle, the gingerbread house has written on it's page the Night Before Christmas and all thru the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.........which explains the chocolate mouse sleeping infront. The next one was a buffet for a childrens christmas party. I was thinking about the nutcracker and all the sweets that a kid could dream of. The next two shots are a gingerbread village that was a pretty exact duplicate of the town in which the country club was in. I made the windows out of poured sugar and the chef at that club rigged up lights that the house sat on so it would illuminate. It looked really cool at night in a darken dinning room where it sat.

This was good: a nice start to the day. I used vidala onions, but they were still to hot so I wound up picking them off. I'm eating a store bought cannoli as I'm typing away. It's not bad at all!...........but then I'll eat any cannoli good or bad it doesn't matter. Looks like I'll be vacuming my key board soon. We have our first 'sort of' gourmet grocery store with in a easy drive. I don't know if it's a big chain of stores or small, it's called Joesph's. It's not large and most of the items aren't "fancy" but at least they have specialty items no other store around carries. Finally I can easily get the ingredients I want for my meatballs and gravy! I notice they have catus already chopped in packages to go...........I guess I should decribe the main product of this store as 'ethnic foods' and that's great! I'm sooooo burned out on our big chain grocery stores. I had an "iccident" at one not too long ago and I've vowed not to return there. What happened was, I gave the cashier my keychain that holds my Jewel card for writing checks and getting their 'special deals' that only card carrying members get, HA.....rip off. Things are going fine, I'm at the end of the order/purchase and I look to my grocery cart and notice that the tomatos I've purchased aren't in the top basket........they are buried in with all the heavy stuff (that drives me crazy inside). This store employees handicapped baggers...........no big deal, I'll just dig my tomatos out put them up in the basket and go home. While I'm digging thru the bags looking for the tomatos my casher comes around toward the cart to help me search (god knows I can't search alone). During the time she steps down by me a new cashier slips in behind the registar............and before I can blink the next customers stuff is coming down the belt hitting my stuff which I had place up there while I was searching for the impossible to find tomatos. I find my tomatos finally after two customers behind me had been checked out. As I step two registers down toward the door to leave I realize I don't have my keys. The cashier never returned them to me. So I quickly go back, mention what happened and search for my keys. NOW I'm suddenly capable and can search all by myself. But I'm in the way, I can't go behind the register and check there too. I politely go up to the service desk and mention exactly what's happened. The lady behind the desk says something like, "did you look in your purse?", then "maybe they fell into your bags as you were searching for the tomatos?", that after I told her the cashier never handed my keys back to me. UURg. I go to an empty register and totally empty my groceried from the bags, no keys. I empty my purse turning it upside down, no keys! I've got an audience of cashiers watching me struggle. "Did you check your pockets?"...........I didn't have any pockets in that clothing. So I repack my groceries get myself back together and think, "what next", I can't get home with-out car keys. AND slowly I stew, and stew and stew. I went back and insisted I speak to the store manager. He wanders up and researches everything I just searched twice....still no keys.........and no signs of apologies from the cashiers watching my new sport/hobby, key searching.....no signs of the manager really caring. I finally had enough and took control of the situation and began demanding an apology and told him what he should do to recktify this. I got him to research who the people were behind me and call them to see if they accidently picked up my keys. No luck! Oh...........now I remember it was Valentines day because I had to call my hubby to come save me from this store and I got lucky that he was almost home, so I had a short wait. I called that store multiple times and they never did turn up my keys. So from now on, I will never ever shop at a store that makes me hand over my keys to them while they swipe my discount card (their so expensive their discount still makes them the highest priced store around). I hope sharing this silly story will prevent that from happening to anyone reading here. Why us women are polite while "stuff" is happening.........I just don't know! I should have been forceful and asked the casheir to STOP and stop checking out people behind me while I was obviously in distress. Soooooooo live and learn. I had to go to work and tell my boss/Chef that I lost my keys and needed new ones...........that's humiliating at my age. He still teases me about that. end of story......... I went to Joesphs the first day they opened and fought thru the crowds. I picked up an Italian bread like a cabiatta and was so excited to have that with dinner. When I tasted it, it was just horrible....than to add insult to injury my olive oil stinks. It's not at all similar to what you'd find in a restaurant for bread dipping. So I'm excited to now have so many options for evoo. Before I do, I wanted to ask around here for a name of good breading dipping oil.....anyone? This store has the largest selection of evoo I've ever seen so chances are good I can find whatever brand is suggested. Oh guess what, I did buy some vegetables and healthy items. Now I just hope I'm up to bothering to cook them. I found a new brand/type of instant fake cappuccino at Joesph's: I bet your excited to see me drink something different on my last day tommarow! While I was away shopping my Hubby and I stopped at Arby's for a late lunch. I got a rueben and he got a super. If you don't mind fast food, the rueben is really quite good considering. They don't toast the bread, it's soft marbled rye, but all and all it's pretty decent. Since we ate a late lunch and then came home to snack on cannoli we won't eat a dinner tonight. Perhaps some popcorn later at the most.

Good morning. While my hubby is out chasing for lox and bagels I thought I'd drop in and see what's happening here. I'm drinking this: While I'm reading and typing. The answer to the above question: There's several ways to creat images in pastry work. For the joconde cake I use many methods. Mostly I like to draw with a pastry bag because I can do very specific images that you can't easily buy a shortcut method to do. Being an artist, I find this fun and rather ease to do. I suppose I could get pretty elaborate creating images but usually I'm just creating some sort of pattern that I think will look good. I have alot of photos that aren't digital, since I've only had my digital camera for like 2 years. Here's a photo of a photo (sorry) it's a cake I did for a halloween buffet a few years back. Using a pastry bag and tip I drew out the cob web pattern. Later I drew out cob webs in chocolate to insert on top of the cake to reenforce the pattern: Oops, breakfast has arrived........I'll return as soon as possible to finish this line of thought.

The chocolate cylinders, if I'm following you, are called chocolate cigarettes. And thankfully that's one garnish we do buy in! They come in a wide variety of colors (currently) and you probably can buy them from internet sources. I get them thru wholesale sources at work. If you like you can post a thread in the baking forum asking about where to purchase them retail and I bet you'll get tons of sources.

Sorry. Well theres two ways to spray chocolate (that I'm familar with). I use a badger airbrush to spray details with. Typically it's colored cocoa butter, it's never chocolate as that would be too thick to airbrush. The other method is using a wagner brand paint sprayer........exactly what you buy at the hardware store to paint at home. When your using that type of spraying you can use real chocolate, but it must be 50% chocolate to 50% cocoa butter to thin the chocolate down so it's very liquid. I'll show you an example of each. The chocolate coating on this is applied using the Wagner paint sprayer method. i should mention that it's applyed to frozen object, that's how you achieve the velvety appearance. This next photo, if you look closely you can see that it's a pistachio mousse (it's green) under the chocolate coating. In the next shot the white swirl pattern is applied using a badger airbrush and a stencil.

The green exterior is cake, joconde cake. In it's center is keylime mousse.

Ah, a new member, welcome to The eGullet Society For Arts & Letters pchef_247!

Welcome to The eGullet Society For Arts & Letters Ekaterina! I hope you are familar with Nicole Kaplan? You'd be hard pressed to get better advice.

Richard, brownies can be tricky to know when their done........as are many dark colored baked goods. You can use a standard toothpick testing method for them. I do underbake my brownies, pull them out of the oven before a toothpick comes out clean (which signals a baked good is done). Next time you make brownies use a toothpick and sample test your brownies multiple times, this will teach you. If you stick your toothpick in and it's breaks the firm surface but comes out wet, it's too underbaked. You can take your toothpick and sort of crack/break thru the top surface to see what it looks like further down. Brownies unlike a really wet cake won't deflate if you open up the raw center to peek. So go ahead and do that until you become more comfortable being able to tell when their done. If a toothpick comes out clean from testing a baked good, technically that's correct. But for a brownie that will produce a more cake like/dryer texture then if you slightly underbake and let them cool to set up dense and moist. When your beginning to learn baking, you shouldn't be judging the doneness of a baked good only with your eyes and definately not by time. Many pro.'s test by touching the item and seeing if it springs back. I prefer to use a toothpick to test for doneness and still use that method everyday, day in and day out. (Too often if the cake bounces back it's over done, not right for me.) I still have to open up some items to see inside them to tell if they are done.

Creme brulee and creme caramel should be very different in texture from each other. I don't believe one can get a true creme caramel using heavy cream. Milk is the right dairy for it.

I'd just like to add this note: you can add flavorings to rolling fondant and chocolate fondants. You'd be supprised how much better they taste.............and in my opinion they can taste better then homemade if you do so. Plus you still keep the advantages of purchased fondants. I've made a couple different recipes for both items your searching for and haven't found the definitive recipe for either, so I'll step aside.

Oh, I want to acknowledge the nice comments some of you have written, Thank-you..........I appreciate them. Here's some more photos..........just more random stuff as I look back thru my photo files. I'm beginning to forget what photos I have and haven't shown.....so forgive me if you see any re-runs. Can anyone guess what that last photo is? I'll give you a clue..........it's from my halloween buffet.

TWICE now I wrote a paragraph or two and when I came back from obtaining photos my page had expired and I lost what I wrote. Sorry, but I just can't re-write it again this moment. But I will post the photos and tell you it's about how to make petite fours in mass by coating the bottom of your item in chocolate as a "foot". and this: is the finished product..........you can whip out 75 dozen mini's in like 6 sheet pans (probably less) and that's a breeze. Gosh I'm beginning to get tired...........I had to make 1 b-day cake today and this is what they got: The end...........of work that is. You'd think after eating all those sweets today I wouldn't be hungry for dinner, but I was. We were going to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant but once we were in the car and observed the clock, it was fast approaching 7:00 pm and we just didn't want to eat a big meal and then lay around tonight. We wound up compromising and going to Taco Bell for dinner. Now I admit I eat poorly but we have only eaten dinner at Taco Bell once before in 16 years of marriage and that's cause we were out of town and didn't know what else there was. I'm going to figure that almost everyone in the world knows what a hard shell taco looks and tastes like...........so I didn't photograph my dinner. I did however drink plain water and asked for light sour cream on my 2 taco supremes. That's pretty much my day. Kind of a jip. So maybe I should post more photos to give you value for what your paying for here........I'm sad to see hardly anyone is posting to my blog. I'm thinking I've failed.

Hello again. I'm starting to wonder what other bloggers thought as they did this. I like attention just like everyone, but it's really weird to come and just write about yourself and your eating. I guess I lead a sheltered life because I read so much only in the P & B Forum........I'm feeling like a fish out of water trying to do this. My life is just so much work and sleep that I'm lost if I have to talk about anything else. I started my day just like everyone before it. I do live near the actual town they filmed the movie "Ground Hogs Day", with Bill Murphy in........it's scarie how much my life must mirror that film. For some real excitement I drank my cappuccino is a different mug this morning. The 'mug' was an issue my husband teased me about when I told him I was doing this blogging thing. I began to go into panic mode the day before I was to blog, thinking I'd have to quick go out and buy a nice sippy cup. Certainly I couldn't show you what I really use. I've got dishes coming out of my ears, nice dishes actually. I've got a thing about having nice dishes..........more then having nice undies. I wierd out when at freinds homes if they hand me a ronald mcdonald cup or something discarded from their long gone jelly. I'm very particular about labels. I don't wear clothing that anounces labels intentionally either. Yet every darn morning of my life I drink out of these god aueful ugly mugs with store names on them. Here I am broadcasting, world wide, my dirty little secret/secrets. Good god! I figured out how to show you (while I was still not awake) what I'm drinking with-out letting you see that the front of my cup had some construction companies name on it. Saturday in the food biz is our busiest day. And today was busy at work!! Since I've been blogging I've been staying awake very late to post and now every morning I'm running late getting to work. It's o.k. my Chef doesn't really care as long as I get my work done. But I had to hussle today. The lunch party was for 191 people. I only had creme' brulee' to serve but it does take a while to torch that many off..........while taking photos during your day. My darn coolers have so much condensation happening that I have to dry off each brulee before I can sugar it and torch it. So I'm rushing and rushing, you can't miss your "show time". And well........I figured out how to speed things up. This worked GREAT! I'm more ambidextrous then most people and well: this is the result I thought it was pretty funny and I asked one of the guys to photograph me with my own camera. I had to crop my face (and more) out of the shot because I was laughing so hard, you'd think I did this as a prank. But I really was doing this first and then thought it would be a good shot. Crazy days bring crazy eating habits. While I was running thru the upstairs kitchen I grabed these: Normally I'd have eaten them on the elevator ride down to my room. But I saved them to show you all. Notice the darn h20 again. I'll be going to Sam's club tommarrow on my day off just to get a fix of the other flavors. Maybe on Monday I can excite you with a photo of a lemon h20, whoo hoo. While I'm upstairs gathering equipement I always have to check my cooler and see what I need to replenish for my ala carte desserts. I might have needed to retaste what was left of a couple items, just for the sake of knowledge..........you know, how long your pastries keep before theres flavor lose. So I might have eaten some of this......... Good news........they all still tasted great. I worked on replenishing my items and we have a champangne brunch tommarrow morning so those events took up most of my day. The cakes I put out for brunch are left-overs from other events. Well taken care of and still fresh and tasty..........but nothing to write home about. If I recall correctly I had a lemon mist cake, chocolate brownie torte, orange mousse cake, danish, some candies (which I can't spell), a cheesecake and one peanut butter pie ready to go for tommarrow. When I'm not there. YEH< I've got Sunday off. I'm so excited to have the day off, I'm more tired then usual and need some down time. I should cook for you...........but don't get your hopes up, the odds are bad. Around 2:00 I stopped for lunch. It was left-overs from the lunch party, pasta alfredo with roasted veggies. In my hast to upload photos tonight I accidently deleted that photo. Sorry. You can trust me that it wasn't a memorable meal. Normally our guys make the best alfredo you can imagine. But I think they took a total shortcut to manage this for 191 people. The sauce wasn't reduced cream, the cream wasn't at all reduced.........so that blew. Instead they used too much cheese to thicken it, which is way wrong and throws the flavor out the door. I felt deprived and well again for the sake of science and my job I thought I needed to sample my creme brulee just incase it wasn't up to pare. It was up to pare and I snarfed it down with-out thinking about you all. That was all I had left by the time I remembered you. Toward the end of the day I resumed making the petite fours I had started yesterday. We had a tasting for an upcoming wedding tonight and I didn't have enough variety in my freezer stock, so I made a small amount of the following to meet tonights demands. These are the anise shortbread cookies I was eating earilier in my blog. They are far too thick for this purpose.........but it tasted pretty darn good so I used them anyway.

I know.........that's why I wrote that stupid warning in my first post. I do take a multi vitamen and extra calcuim everyday. Believe it or not I sort of get a work-out all day at work. I'll let another bomb drop about my life...........I haven't converted all my recipes into weights because I think I get a workout bending and dipping into my bins with my one cup measurement. If you do it right, you don't fill your bins, keep them low, so you really have to bend to get the ingredients out..........20 plus cups of sugar, 20 cups of flour, 30 cups of xxxsugar ..................hum or maybe it's my age catching up to me, but that feels like a work-out to me. Jeannecake, I feel like I'm getting pretty good at doing large volumes of mini pastries. I'm sure I could help you knock them out with-out much fuss. Can I tell you a story? Once upon a time, I attempted to partner with someone who owned a bakery. That didn't work out because of personalities, blah, blah. So I get my current job and my Chef is all familar with this person I was trying to partner with. He told me her work was really good! He wanted to buy from her so he asked her about pricing so he could order from her. She wouldn't price any mini under .75 cents wholesale. She was locked in to the mini's she had always made, traditional choux puffs stuff, bought in tarts, bought in cannoli shells and such (and those cost her money so she barely was making a profit once she added her labor and expenses). My Chef went round and round with her asking her if she could do anything less expensive cause she didn't fit into his budget, NOW. She got pissy and didn't deal with him. So he hired me part-time to make him mini pastries that were in his budget price wise. She lost out on TONS of perspective business (and eventually every other country clubs in the area, by pricing too high and not bending to make what they could afford). It could have been the start to making her bakery profitable. I'll give you a little peak at what I've done to make mini's in high volume. I do alot of sheet pan baked items then throw in some more labor intensive items to give some splash and the customers still love what you've got. Their bottom line is always taste..........so as long as your taste is there they don't care if every mini is a piece of art or not......you make a profit. AND the beginning to 9o% of my mini's start as left over product. Everything thing I make, every mousse, every cake, every basic component like pastry cream, lemon curd, caramel............. I make extra. For two reasons. First you don't want to run out of something and have to go back to make more. Second I want the left overs. I waste NOTHING! If I have some caramel left over I throw it in a mini chocolate shell, find some mousse and top it with that, if I don't have any mousse I'll use some left-over whipped cream, then I slap a little garnish ontop and I've now got a bunch of mini's out of left-over components that might have gone to waste. Believe me, I've eaten all of these, it's my most important meal......................this is just typical daily grind stuff.

I forgot to mention that I do my bear claws as two toed claws........It's all the same process you just cut bigger strips, wider strips and cut four toes instead of one down the middle. A regular four toed claw is too big for my platters. I do NOT use a proof box, ever. I like long slow rises. I love to retard my doughs in the cooler. I do freeze my danish dough after I make it but before I shape them into pieces. If you get the "Baking with Julia" book (the Julia is referring to Julia Child. It's very famous chefs baking with Julia and all their great recipes), I promise you can make great danish. It's REALLY well written and very simplified. AND I can tell you a HUGE BONUS............Dorie Greenspan the books author, has been regularly visiting and posting in the Pastry & Baking Forum and you can ask her dirrectly for help if you want. That tip is more then worth the price of admission to this blog.

Wow, I really like that idea. I've got to find a dessert or mini pastry to work that into or on. Thanks for sharing!!

I can't recall which brand I currently have. It's not sweet. If you look in my blog (currently happening) I've got photos of my products (I think thats on the first page) and you might be able to see the brand. It's in a huge white metal tin............on top of my stainless steel rack above my sink.

Definately make your own from scratch. Martha Stewart has a chocolate chip angel food cake that's very good. I make it often. You should be able to find that recipe easily online.