Wendy DeBord

I love you guys, you REALLY make me smile! I've faced everything you all have mentioned. I think (at least I've tried very hard to) I've gotten past most of those points and issues. Believe me it's been a long hard process of getting knocked down and picking myself back up and learning about challenges. I can handle almost anything now and really roll with it as a challenge. I'm even bored with-out challenges I like them. But something new has popped up and that's really at the crux of what's unnerved/challenged me. It's my room temp.. Our air system is really screwed up and my boss truly has done everything he can to make the room I work in better. In the summer my room is cooler then in the winter! The heating system and the coolers all vent into my space and there are not windows (I'm in a basement) or vents to open or change (I have a fan but that can't lower the temp, just move the hot air). There is no place to relocate to. The main kitchen is completely out of the question. I can master anything (so I tell myself- as I have in the past), but I can't master this issue and it's really frustrated me. It's just a couple degrees hotter - but it's effect on my product is enormous! It has turned simple work into excruciating work. I do work on heat sensitive items by working directly in the coolers.......but that works for only for some items (very few). It took me 3 hours to roll out 50 shortbread cookies for Thanksgiving (yep!). I'd take the dough out to roll and in two minutes it was too soft to handle, I'd chill it in the cooler, take it out- then stand there waiting until the exact moment it softened just enough for me to roll it, but zap- I'd get only a couple done and I had to put it back in the cooler. (Then I had multiple cooks help themselves to those darn cookies. When I told them not to eat those you'd have thought I told them they weren't good enough to eat my cookies) I have two guys now that are holding a grudge against me for asking them not to eat those items. ........oh well. Everything I do has now turned into being a huge challenge. I can't ask for assistance because even the little things have turned in expert level skills. What pushed me over the edge recently was a spun sugar garnish for a party of 200. Turn on your stove top burner to heat your sugar, your room gets even hotter. I struggled and struggled with what should have been a quickie project. In the end my solution was (after ruining 100 or so in the process) to heat my sugar upstairs in the main kitchen, bring it down to my room and spin it. Quickly swoop it into portions and transfer it to a room down the hall to hold (it goes flat in seconds in my room). I had to handle this in batches of 10 or less because that was all the time I had before my spun turned into a flat sticky mess. So it went like this: heat sugar, spin sugar, portion sugar, run it down the hall, reheat sugar, spin sugar, portion sugar, run it down the hall, hour after hour. Of course no one jumped in to help me and for some reason I chose that fact to really focus all my anger on. (I did ask for help, but my helper gave up quickly he didn't want to do this- Big SCREAM!) Things are getting busier and busier and my ability to meet these challenges has been greatly hampered. So I can't get myself over this. I can't rationalize, I can't master this. I cannot demand them to fix this issue, it can't be fixed in time for this months schedule. I start everyday with a fresh out look, tell myself not to let this change my attitude, tell myself not to let other little things upset me, remain pleasant and positive ..........but a couple dozen frustrations later I'm enraged within myself. OH MY GOD, as I'm writing here and now maybe I've thought of how to solve this. I wonder if I can work thru the night when we can turn the heat off. Oh mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.........maybe talking this thru has helped............

Most any fruit would have worked, lots of dried fruits too. I think I would have taken a different approach though. I would have thrown out the brownies all together. Sometimes it's better to call something a failure then to try and disguise it.

I'm talking about when your so frustrated your brain is in an all out rage! I'm not talking about logic, I'm talking about total insanity. Sometimes you can't talk about issues that are important to your job without seeming like a nut. Ever tell a chef that the carton of egg whites he bought won't whip no matter how long you try? Ever want to explain to your boss that one more project dumped in your lap during the busiest day of the year isn't your idea of something exciting and you'd rather not have them jumping for glee in your space about it? Ever try to explain to a cook why a 90 plus degree kitchen is slowing down your work? Why it makes a difference if you have a full oven and they turn the heat up to 500f, just for a moment or two? Ever try to explain to a coworker why they can't eat that item, and not have them get pissed off at you? Ever tell a chef that the whipping cream doesn't have enough butter fat to whip and you can't do your job without it? Ever prep for a party and kill yourself making the dessert only to be told after the fact, "oh, didn't I tell you the count went down by half?"? Oh...........come on guys, surely I'm not the only one who encounters insanity daily. Your just dying to explain the whys, but you know darn well that it won't make any difference?

I know I can't be the only person that faces this. And a good stiff drink isn't a possibility until after you go home. Specifically I get frustrated from time to time with the lack of understanding between the pc position and the hot side. I do my best to communicate verbally, but sometimes the differences seem so great you can't communicate unless you start at square one on the how and whys of baking. In the fast paced kitchen that's just not always possible, so frustration sets in. When everything in your whole day becomes a struggle and you can't take a breather (or even if you do that doesn't solve your issues or calm you down) what do you do? You can't smoke, you can't drink, you can't solve the issues, you can't work with the issues, you can't get help, you can't take another path, you suck it up over and over all day long keeping your nose to the grind stone...........Do you ever "loose it" on the job?

Nice work Annie! ................I have to admit I didn't understand how your reversed image helped when it came to the raised dimensions for the face and house. Doesn't you base cover over that? Can you explain more, please? Aren't you free handing at that step?

But if, at the most, your looking to turn this into a part-time job I think investing in an expensive education doesn't make alot of sense. Theres places that will hire you now as a part time employee if you can demonstrate you have a serious interest. I'd tell you to go the formal education route if you were looking to make this a full time career.

Hum............I'm wondering if what you want isn't a completely different recipe, not a classic pecan pie recipe. What about a pecan tassie recipe where it's mainly brown sugar and eggs................or a stove top cooked caramel poured and chilled in a pie shell?

This peanut butter mousse recipe is from Gale Gand. I double the amount of sugar she uses because the peanut butter we get at work is kind of harsh. The better your peanut butter, the better your mousse. 2/3 c. peanut butter 1 c. milk 1 c. heavy cream 1/4 c. xxxsugar 1 tsp. vanilla 2 tsp. gelatin 2 tbsp. h20 Bloom gelatin in h20. Heat milk, pour into peanut butter and mix to combine until smooth. Whip cream with vanilla and xxxsugar. Combine by heating the gelatin to dissolve add it into the peanut butter mixture, when mixture is close to room temp. fold in whipped cream. I agree with your point Pastrymama,"The more choices the more of a pain it will be. " This makes me wonder how big places write up their dessert menus. From what you wrote Neil your place would need a multi paged menu.............surely they have simplified their written menu and mentioned custom desserts available, no? What about your plate selection, do the big hotels have many selections? When we do a big party or multiple small ones I'm forced to use dessert plates that are smaller then our salad plates. I've yet to design anything that looks great on those. What's your best sellers Pastrymama? Do you do all your own plating? What about your hot or warm desserts..........do you adjust your schedule to be there at all hours for those?

I would approach this as a card on the cake instead of making the whole cake a card. The thickness of a sheet cake underneath yet as part of the card makes it a thick gold card, ruining the realism. Instead I'd do a thin gold card out of gum paste and lay or support it on my cake. That eliminates any non-edible issues...........plus you can sell it to them as a souvenir they can keep. I'd like to see the card standing or leaning. I'm just not crazy about flat sheet cakes regardless of decoration.

Hum......I treat cream cheese like any other dairy product, 4 hours out of the cooler only. I refridgerate cream cheese based frosting. You can microwave cream cheese to soften it.

This is our current banquet dessert menu. We do more volume then most country clubs so we need to keep with easy to make items and until recently (this past May) they didn't have a full time pc. Also we are a non for profit business so our prices are much lower then anywhere else. New York Cheesecake, served with strawberry sauce: $3.50 Flavored Cheesecake, choice of strawberry or lemon drop: $4.00 Caramel Pecan Tart, fresh pecans, caramel, chocolate mousse and whipped cream: $4.00 Carrot Cake, layered spiced cake with cream cheese frosting: $3.00 Lemon Mist Cake, Yellow sponge cake accented with citrus syrup and lemon scented butter cream: $3.50 Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake, chocolate sponge cakes layered with peanut butter mousse and covered in ganche: $3.50 Key Lime Tartlet, baked in a flaky butter crust: $3.00 Lemon Meringue Tartlet, baked in a flaky butter crust and lightly browned: $3.00 Bourbon Pecan Pie, baked in a flaky butter crust: $4.00 Apple Tart a la Mode, served with cinnamon gelato and caramel sauce: $4.00 Bread Pudding, served with a bourbon caramel sauce: $3.00 Tiramisu, espresso and liqueur drenched ladyfingers, with mascarpone and cream: $3.50 Fresh Fruit Tart, seasonal fruit and berries with pastry cream in a pastry shell: $4.00 Petit Fours, assorted mini pastries and cakes: $4.00 Assorted Parfaits, strawberry, raspberry, creme de menthe, or amaretto: $3.00 Flavored Gelato, Sorbet, or Sherbet: $2.00 The best sellers since I've been there are the apple tart, tiramisu, petit fours, parfaits and sorbet.

Elaine Gonzalez's books are Chocolate Artistry, published by Contemporary Books, inc. in 1983 and The Art Of Chocolate, published by Chronicle Books, inc. in 1998. The first book is hard to find, but I beleive she mentioned you could buy them through her dirrectly (get it autographed too). I've mentioned Elaine, her history and books in previous threads so you could do a search on that to find more info. if your interested. You have to buy the pcb colors, in my opinion. I use them all the time to airbrush stenciled patterns on my plates and cakes. I also create my own transfer sheets using them on acetate. Buy the white pcb colors too, I use it alot to gain an opaque base-then add other colors to it. I've also bought at Micheals small jars of candy colors and used them in conjunction with my pcb colors. Wilton has a couple hard to obtain colors, like pcb doesn't have a purple.

You can fill your pans more..........you could come up to 1/2" down from the top. Also try a deeper pan. I agree with Spyddie........theres a good chance that they are using cream cake batter. I think it was Neil that wrote in a previous post that he pours a line of butter down the center of his loafs before baking so the top splits nicely. That: combined with your cake strips should give you a nice looking product.

Make certain your dough is well chilled! You shouldn't have so much butter/fat in your dough that it's sticking or your room is too hot or your dough is too hot A little flour on your table should be all you need.........if your needing more, I think you need to work on your pie dough recipe or technique for making it.

I like Dridople compounds, I'm pretty sure they have champagne. You can get them thru European Imports.

Pastrymama, I too work at a private country club. They don't have seperate banquet menus for different purposes.............because we do any custom item they could desire. Typically at CC.'s in the slow months the manager firms up the next years schedule.......in doing so he sends out menus for their consideration, even though they don't have to comfirm their menu yet. My ala carte menu is a completely seperate issue, as are buffets and all holiday events, ladies and mens functions too. They like a seperate banquet menu partly to excite the host into purchasing an upgraded dessert product. A scoop of ice cream is the only dessert included in the basic price level. The reason for me starting this thread is to further educate myself on what others are doing, pricing and how they are writing up their menus. What my club has done in the past has room for improvement and I'd like to generate more sales/profit in our banquet desserts. I have to run to work now, but I'll post what our menu is asap to share. Anyone doing desserts and selling them wholesale might find this interesting, like all our bakery owners-don't you all have a similar list/menu?

I roll pie dough out on a flour dusted table with a flour dusted pin. Your not doing any harm adding more flour in this time tested traditional method. You don't have to be stingy with the flour either, it's not going to penitrate your dough unless you fold it in. If you must, I suggest buying two silpats and rolling anything and everything between them.

Thanks Mktye, thats exactly the airbrush he uses. I've bought mine (twice now) at a local craft store (Micheals). But buying it thru Badger dirrectly is a better route because you can buy replacment parts...........which are cheap, and you probably will need some in time. You DO NOT want to buy those more expensive models for airbrushing chocolate. This beginning model is the only one I know of that doesn't feed the liquid thru the airbrush nozzle. Thats important because if chocolate or cocoa butter colors went thru the brush it would firm up in minutes and your brush would constantly be clogged. The more expensive models are needed to do any fine airbrush work in other meduims. I also attended a demo by Stephane, he uses a good/expensive airbrush for his work. His work would be impossible to do with-out a finer brush. The brush shown above comes with canned air so you don't need a compressor. So it travels easy. BUT a word of warning is that the canned air freezes things up and can drive you crazy. Norman kept his in a bowl of warm water to slow down it's freezing up tendencys. These cheapy brushes also hook up to your compressors. Skwerl your on the right track now. Theres more technique to learn along the way though..........perhaps others would like to join in with their tips??????? I'd love to see Chocoartist jump in, you all do realize she's written a couple books on the topic and she's offered her help here at eg!! I attended a couple of demos by world class PC's on chocolate. The demos I attended where thru The French Pastry School and Albert Uster. I have a few more notes........... As far as Norman Love, I've yet to taste better chocolates! His ganches are a hair softer then anyones I've tasted and I do as he does. His flavorings that he demo'ed were pretty straight forward, using real ingredients, etc.... One tip he mentioned was about how he infuses. He infuses in his cream, then lets it set for the appropriate amount of time per ingredient. Then when he strains his infusions he made a big point about technique. Do NOT press down on you herbs or infusing flavors when your straining it. Usually that pressing down pulls out bitter or less desirable flavorings from your herbs. I think Norman does an excellent job in seasoning his ganches.........unlike many equally famous chocolitiers. You can tell what flavor every chocolate is in your mouth, no description or labels needed. Have you ever had Thomas Haas's fruit flavored chocolates? That's my favorite example of his work. He has the thinnest layer of fruit enrobed with-in his chocolates. It's sensational the way the two flavors happen in your mouth. You can see and taste the fruit layer seperately from the ganche.............then as you eat it the flavors combine in your mouth. I'd LOVE LOVE to learn his technique on that!!!! It's really amazing.............very fine work! As far as the agitation factor, it would be nice if someone more knowledgable then I could explain this. As I've come to understand from those demos, agitation is important-thats how you develop the good crystal you need. The way Norman applies his pcb colors with his finger in the mold is how he is over agitating. He's not over agitating his batch of couveuture. I bought my pcb colors from Classic Gourmet...........which was bought by European Imports........who quickly broke their promise to continue carrying all of Classic Gourmets line. (Can you tell that makes me mad!) So I've struggled getting all the supplies I used to get easily. PCB has a website, you can find out who carries their product........and get a couple ideas along the way. I believe Rubber Chef carries their colors.

I bet an electric saw would work great............but if you don't have access to this I use a serated knive.

Anyone care to share theirs, please? What are your best sellers? Anyone know of any good links to banquet dessert menus? In particular, I'd really love to see what the upscale hotels and restaurants are offering............ The reason for my interest, this coming year will be the first time that I've been in charge of coming up with our dessert banquet menu. I'm very interested in seeing how other companies write up their menus: descriptions, prices, what items they are doing. My Chef wrote up last years menu I'd be happy to share it if anyone is interested?

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this thread. I'm going to rewrite my notes pretty much word for word, as the demo was a couple years ago. Norman buys his molds either from Chocolate World or Chocolate Chocolate companies. He likes the type that have magnetic closures. If you noticed, there are clear molds and opaque professional molds. After much experimenting he insists that the clear molds do provide as better shine on your chocolates, even though no one can figure out why that is. He thinks American consumers buy first by the visual appeal and to make his line of chocolates different he's using color and transfer sheets for appeal. He really likes PCB Creations chocolate fat soluble colors and dusts. He heated some up the micro. to 98F and with a gloved hand first spread red PCB into his mold. Then he came back with orange and then a light dust of gold powder. When he unfolded these they were Incredible! He used a dark chocolate to mold and the gold made the two colors glow on top of the chocolate! Before he molded any chocolates he temper it, etc.........and talked a bit about crystallization. There's 7 forms of crystal in melted chocolate. He didn't have any real tricks or short cuts on tempering and holding. Just mentioned how you need to keep adding your warm chocolate to your tempered bowl and agitate to keep what your working on warm. He thinks most people under heat and under agitate their chocolate while tempering. "Don't be scared and your MUST move around your chocolate to develop the good crystal." He mentioned that when he rubs the color into his molds with his finger that process actually over crystallizes the chocolate and that makes the chocolate shinier. Another technique he showed us was airbrushing color into his molds. He uses a 'mini spray gun set 250-4' made by Badger company (I've purchased this myself- it's aprox. $25.00). It's the cheapest air brush available. (It doesn't suck/feed the chocolate/liquid through the brush and that's why it works for this purpose without clogging up.) Those are all my notes relevant to this topic. But I did save an article that was published in Pastry Art & Design (I don't know the year) specifically on Norman's technique of airbrushing. It was written by Stacey Kramer and photos were by John Uher. On the back page of this article is 'Pastry Tips' and Nicole Kaplan had the first couple tips written-.........so perhaps she might know which issues she has had tips published in. Nicole is a member here at eg. My experiences following Norman's methods have been very successful. I think the shine on his domed chocolates is really about the mold itself. Because it doesn't matter what technique you use, everything comes out of that mold with a great shine. I purchased the same molds he uses from JB Prince. I also ditto Neil's recommendations- you need to buff each compartment with a cotton ball each time you use it.........and never let your molds air dry (in fact you don't have to wash them-just scrap them clean). Norman's technique where you see a swirled color blast is very interesting as I mentioned previously he credits the application process of rubbing it into the mold as over agitating it and that gives it more shine. But he also layers his colors for depth and frequently uses gold dust which really pops the sparkle. I credit the pcb colors as giving the best color effects in chocolate.........at least I can't get the same thing with powdered colors, yet. The airbrushed technique doesn't give you any better of a shine then the rubbed on color. It's ONLY a different visual effect.........and because of the type of air brush used-you cannot get any fine details and it's a rather large stippled effect. BUT he does go back over his airbrushed molds with more detail, like adding a layer of a contrasting color or gold dust so they do pop visually also. You dust the insides of you molds with gold dust before adding one color of chocolate....verses dusting them after they are molded. The gold dust is very interesting as are other metallic dusts. Also as Neil mentioned, you should quickly refrigerate your molds to set the pcb colors before molding. You have to do that step because it takes a very long time for the colors to set. I just take it back out of the cooler, give it a minute or two to warm up to room temp. then mold.

I've saved a catalog from a company called 'House On The Hill'. Their molds are quite nice looking in their catalog. Although they are made of powdered wood and resin stained to look like real wood......you might find them interesting. I'd guess their prices must be considerably less then a hand carved mold. They didn't have a website when they published the catalog I have, but probably do by now. You can contact them at houshill@flash.net , p.o. Box 7003 Villa Park, IL 60181, phone is 630-969-2624.

We've had a couple extensive discussions about making canneles, perhaps these might interest you. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=8090&hl= http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=28572&hl=

I didn't do it. I got so mad/frustrated making rolled shortbread cookies (because my room temp. is just toooooooo HOT! Lately it has to be in the mid to high 90's) I desided it's not worth it. My kitchen is twice the heat in the winter then the summer (the heating system is all screwed up and it just dumps the buildings worth of heat on me)...........lately it's really gotten the best of me. Begining level work is becoming expert level.

Very nice house.........so clean and perfect! Thanks for sharing with us!! I cut my gingerbread before baking but then go back and trim after it's baked. It's supprisingly not as fragile as one might think. I use a recipe from Martha Stewart........... I tend to think some recipes cut and stay shaped better then others. You do have to becareful that it's not crisply baked, then it cracks when you cut.