Wendy DeBord

I'm a huge fan of Norman Love! I attended a demo he gave (a few years back) and he really influenced me. I use his methods and recipes for my truffles. Your very lucky Tonyy13, I wish I had had that honor. His ganche recipes may very well work poured over a cake. He tends to keep his ganches creamy verses a stiff ganche. Give it a try Oli!

Have you tasted their work yet? What specificly is he doing that's new and special? I know of a great bakery not too far from there. It's called Sweet Karma Baking Company and is owned by one of our long standing eG members, Brian Fishman. We've had several members post about how great his desserts taste! ...........in addition to looking fabulous. "Spreading sweet karma one dessert at a time....." SWEET KARMA BAKING COMPANY 550 East Meadow Ave. East meadow, NY 11554 516-794-4478 Brian Fishman Now, if your looking for baked goods further in land and on the west coast we have several other bakery owners that are regular members here too. What are all you bakery owners doing this year for Valentines? (any photos would be definately appreciated)

I ordered a couple items from them recently, it took over 2 weeks for delivery. Plus they didn't notify me in advance that someone thing I ordered was on back order.

When your folding a cold item into warm chocolate it is a bit tricky. But theres a couple things you can do to assure success. Your chocolate should be rather warm, just finished melting (around 110F to 115F) . When it's very warm it gives you the time you need to incorporate the whipped cream into the chocolate before the chocolate tightens up from the cream. If you use just slightly warm chocolate (at 100F or lower), it will sieze up before you can throughly fold in your whipped cream. You also might find it easier to add the whipped cream in 2 stages. Putting only half in at first gives you a smaller volume to handle and throughly blend into the chocolate. The mixture won't look light and fluffy, you have to give it some force to blend throughly. Don't stop, then add the second half of your cream and that half will lighten it up.

I noticed that the latest Albert Uster catalog has a couple recipes and photos of dessert sushi.

I recently purchased 2 coats and a pair of pants from Culinary Classics.........and I'm a little pissed off with them. I ordered female pants and jackets. The jackets were too small (length and width) and you have to call to get permission to return items that don't work out. They are charging me a 20% restocking fee for me to return my coats. Why, they are standard coats? Because they are "female" and those are "special order". So it's like going to the dry cleaners for some reason females should pay more then males. I will add that in the past I've bought clothes from them and I've been very happy with the uniforms. I just don't like their return policy and that will prevent me from ever ordering from them again.

Oh yeah do I have a wish list......a professional tempering machine (no counter top cheapie models), a paco jet, a guitar, about everything PCB sells, every silcone mat, mold and form out there, at least a zillion more baking books, tons of isomalt and equipment for pulling sugar, a top of the line air brush, etc... oh I forgot I have a very long list of chocolate molds I'd like.

You have no idea how badly I'd love to eat one of those heart cookies this morning. They're making my mouth water!!

Welcome to The eGullet Society of Arts and Letters Vin!

I'm finally back to baking at work, we re-opened for the year. My first weeks menu I HAD to make the tart Grenobloise after seeing everyones review. I agree it's a great tart. I made a couple changes, but stayed pretty true this time to taste it as published. I doubled the caramel and cut back on the amount of pecans. As always, I deep fried and salted my pecans, cooled them, then added them to my cooled caramel, YUM. I topped my tart with whipped cream. Theres so many ways you can play off this recipe....... and also keep components and use them in many other desserts. His chocolate crust, was o.k., not a home run for me, perhaps if I had better cocoa. But, I loved the caramel and will use it on many other items in the future. I would enhance my ganche next time, perhaps some praline paste or a drop of orange oil. Maybe a thin genoise, or a contrasting light mousse under my ganche. I needed the whipped cream on top to contrast textures. Next time I might make Sherry Yards caramel whip cream that includes sour cream, as a nice balance. I can definately see using salted peanuts in place of the pecans for a real American twist. This will definately become a standard in my recipe file and I'll change it up as time progresses. I also made his chocolate tuile cookies. Again, I think my cocoa powder should have been better, the taste wasn't as intense as I would have liked. But they are lovely thin cookies. I left some uncovered overnight to see if they remain crisp.

You can use purchased (or make it yourself) fondant. Not rolling fondant, dipping fondant, the type you use on napoleons. It drys hard/firm and it has great shine. You can also flavor it.

To whip a meringue the whites matter. But to make royal icing which is all xxxsugar with whites to bind..........they don't have to be whites that whip decently. By the way this is the recipe I use for royal icing. 3 whites 1 tsp. cream of tartar 1 lbs of xxxsugar

It is alot neater then I had guessed! Even though they are in the desert.....doesn't the air conditioning change the humidity?

I HIGHLY suggest you begin using this method! Freezing does NOT effect your cheesecake at all. Just makes it so easy to handle. It's how I handle most desserts. When your top is browning before your center is set: your baking on too high of heat, turn your oven down. Cheesecake baked off in sheet pans, really does make cheesecake bars because it's so shallow. For a great white chocolate cheesecake recipe I suggest the one published in Chocolatier magazine..........they choose it as one of their top 20 recipes. You can use muffin tins, but don't use liners (for a more professional plated dessert). Fill them nice and full and do NOT over bake them so they sink in the middle. You just spray your muffin tin, bake, freeze and apply heat to release them from the pan. If your in a professional kitchen they should have a blow torch hanging around, use that-it's great. You could bake in ramekins but you'd have to be alot more careful removing them so you don't chip the dishes. I'd rather see you use a muffin tin..........BUT I prefer the looks of the straight sided ramekins when their on the plate. Technically you could use empty metal cans (well washed), one with-out ribs. I don't know if you buy anything in for the restaurant in that small of a size though. Otherwise I'd recommend buying silicone molds. I think they are the most versatile investment.

I do use pasturized whites in my royal icing. I do occasionally use unpasturized whites in recipes, but I find myself still always concerned that what I'm making is safe. If given the option (meaning it won't effect my recipe negatively) I'd always choose pasturized over non, just for safety since I work for others. What country do you live in JacqueOH? In the states, in my area (Chicagoland) all the stores sell pasturized eggs. They come in cartons in the dairy case. The fact that they are pasturized isn't how they are labeled so you have to pick them up to notice that fact. But they sell cartons of whites, cartons of fake egg stuff all in the same area. You can also buy dried egg whites in the grocery stores now, and they are pasturized.

Wonderful, I'd definately give that a try. Thank-you Chiantiglace!

I'm pretty much guessing. I not so sure you couldn't make caramels the way Weinstein is suggesting. I haven't, no. And quite frankly, I too would look for a better recipe Scott. I was just thinking about where Weinstein could have been coming from.

Are you a high school or college student? How much quantity are you looking to prepare, how many people will you feed? I think I recall you posting here before, but I forget details........what kind of things have you baked in the past? Have you ever baked a cake from scratch? Are you comfortable making multi step desserts or would you prefer items that are rather simple to make? Are you getting graded by the complexity of your project? I'm just trying to figure out what level you are in baking so we can be of help.

I'd charge more then $25.00 per cake. Just because that's about average for a small b-day cake with just writing on it, nothing fancy. To put the details on a mini wedding cake, probably using fondant.........I don't think I'd ask for a penny less then $50.. Heck we get $50.00 per b-day cake at my work. Plus, to work on a larger cake is easier then a small one and the cost difference in cake ingredients is practically nothing........so smaller doesn't equal cheaper...........your fee is all about time involved. Even though customers think a smaller cake should be cheaper-it doesn't match reality. P.S. Wow! Your sister did an excellent job Annie.

I've always admired Payards work/recipes. Where was that one published Chantiglace?...........I missed it.

Hum, Bruce Weinsteins recipes are usually reliable. I'm personally not familar with this recipe either. The temp. sited is off, 248f isn't going to caramelize anything. My toffee recipe is somewhat like this, in that your cooking all your ingredients together up to caramel. With my toffee recipe I cook it until it's the darkness/carmelization I want.............temp. becomes irrelavent...........one step too far, too hot and it's burnt/garbage. His recipe could be just fine, but the temp. is wrong. The softness of your caramel is going to depend upon how much liquid cream and butter you have to your sugar............not necessarily how you cooked them. Again, you can't get caramelization at 248F.

We use both of these products at work as well. The Trablit is an especially nice extract. ← I also use both.

Dessert at home consists of a handful of M & M's.

I use coating chocolate for writing on my plates (you can make some red or pink for your lettering, if you want). I put it on a plate on top of the steamer or oven to keep it workable. You can certainly use real chocolate or ganche.........anything you use, you will still have to monitor your temp.. My ganche gets hard to pipe at the wrong temp. up or down. But during a crazy service night I prefer to make all my plates ahead (the decorating part not the desserts on them). I hate to have to go back and remelt more chocolate during a rush. I use a speed rack to stack them on..........or if worse came to worse you can stack the plates on top of each other if you have parchment paper layered on each. I also airbrush my plates (alot) with colored cocoa butter and they stack perfectly in advance.

Ah, I'm glad that you enjoyed this cake. Everytime I make it it does pull away from the sides of my ungreased pan, it does do a deflating act of sorts. But it still tastes great. I make this recipe usually as a cake roll, it's been a while since I baked it in a round. But I don't see why you couldn't bake it in a deeper pan. If I recall correctly it's not the easiest cake to cut into layers (it's so moist the knive sticks)..........so you might find baking 3 or 4 shallower layers the answer. Even if it became more dense baked in a deep pan, it still should be a good tasting cake. Like I said before I don't invert this cake (because it pulls away from the sides of the pan). I think I'd leave the oven temp. alone on this one, even with a bigger and deeper pan. I usually frost this cake with whip cream or some type of mousse. Although I did use german chocolate frosting in it this past winter as a bouche de noel, it was a big hit too.