Wendy DeBord

You can tell me to go take a leap but I'm still going to offer my opinion. And again I'll remind you that I have indeed been there, done that so I'm not talking out of my a___. How I'm reading your posts lately is: your too wound up. Yes all the things you've mentioned do happen. People do bitch, steal and lie. You do get solisited from every other business on the planet. ETC........crap happens. Yes your working as hard as you possibly can. But there is a BUT.....your looking at a bunch of trees and to reach your goal you have to block out all those trees and ONLY look at the forest. Don't waste one second of your time dwelling on this small stuff, it will trip you up, piss off you and everyone who has to be in the same room as you and turn you into a negative vibe! And don't tell me that you have to or that you only do it here online to blow off steam in private. People can read your thoughts with-out conveying one word. Stop the thoughts. Get positive and stay that way 24/7. When someone spits on you say thank-you and mean it cause indeed you learned something from that. Be an executive chef 24/7. Don't act, think or look like a mom and pop bakery.........and INSIST your employees do the same! Your not going to grow out of being a mom and pop bakery if you act, think or let any employee act or think anything less then professionalism at all times. Treat every solicitor as a professional chef would. Take NOTHING personally, it all business.

O.k.........I've gotta add my two cents. First, making a chocolate mousse with that small of amount of ingredients is actually harder to do then a huge batch. It's just too little.........so everystep, every temp. becomes magnified in it's importance. It's very similar to learning how to temper chocolate with 1 cup of chocolate. It's just harder to do somethings in small amounts! I know this might seem risky to you if your worried about waste, but I really do think you'll do better tripleing or at least doubling that recipe. When you have a small amount of chocolate it's hard to incorporate something else into it. I'd suggest that 3 things factored against you......and in that regard as the teacher I think I would have chosen a little simplier chocolate mousse recipe as my introduction (skiped the yolks and corn syrup altogether). 1. The time, between making and incorporating the rest of the ingredients is too long given the amount of ingredients....letting your chocolate set-up (not sieze). The warm water helped melt out/heat-up your chocolate. I would have had all my components ready at the same time for that particular recipe. 2. The temp.'s, cooled down waiting for the other ingredients as you prepared them. You have to work darn fast with that small of amount of ingred.. 3. Method, being too timid to force the too cooled chocolate into submission. That's my best guess where you might have varied from your roommates. You can't be shy/timid when working with that small amount of chocolate. Literally a couple seconds in delay can make the difference in how well you ingredients incorporated when you dealing in that volume. Even with larger batches of chocolate mousse you need to pay attention to the temp. of the chocolate. If your chocolate becomes too cool it's very hard to incorporate the other ingredients. I also wonder if when you thought that your whipped cream melted.......that you might have underwhipped them (in a non-anglaise type mousse you can whip your cream stiffer and achieve the proper texture in your finished mousse) because it's hard to melt you whipped cream in that small of a volume heated chocolate. Typically when I see whipped cream melt out it's when it's added to an anglaise based mousse where there is a large volume of liquid easily sufficant to melt out whipped cream.

Welcome Anatolia, I'm glad you feel comfortable here. Hayasaka.K................... as Steve eluded to (a few posts back) you'll find the same nuences apply when baking as eating out of hand. Certain chocolates pair up slightly better with different flavors and that has to be true when baking also. I think it would have to depend upon when other ingredients your using and how your baking your chocolate. For instance I made some flourless chocolate cakes yesterday and since it barely bakes and only has eggs and butter the flavor of the chocolate is really important-it is the flavor of my finished product. But if I'm making say a chocolate cake where I have vanilla, buttermilk and coffee mixed in with my melted semi-sweet......-those other flavors are bound to influence the final chocolate taste. As to the availablity of E. Guittard.........I found it in my area thru a tip from someone here. It's a special order from that company and it takes 3 weeks to recieve an order. But even my chef is happy because it's less expensive then what he was previously buying.

Well I had a frustrating and enlighting day today. When I arrived at work I noticed that the freezer door was not properly closed. The latching device on top of the door was locked downward so you couldn't even manually close the door tight-until you reset the device into it's proper position. I mentioned this to the chef, so the crew would double check when they leave the freezer. Apparently they all knew this problem already existed and no one told me. Then the chef added that someone had shut off the freezer last night, cause the morning crew discovered it was off. Naturally this angered me quite a bit. Here I am throwing out my time and efforts because of some dimwit. I cleaned out my cart and moved several things around in the freezer..........and I did run into a couple other items showing freezer burn outside of my cart. So now I know it's not just happening inside my cart, whew. The cooks just haven't noticed it on their work yet. I'm going to do my best to pressure them into buying a recording device or I'll buy it myself for x-mas (less stress is certainly a worthy gift) just to nail down who's so careless. I'm glad I took the time here to write about this and learn too. I might be back for more help, but for now I'm releived having more info. and insight. Thank-you everyone!

It might be just me but it seems to "stick" better to the bar. I'd love to hear your opinion though. ← The reason I asked you is because of how it cuts. If your item is warm when you drizzle, that drizzle will melt on and stick better. When you go to cut it doesn't it break?.........since it adheared so well, isn't it hard to cut through it? I cut mine first (seperate them out a little) then drizzle, so it won't crack when I cut it. I haven't found a better way. I've scored them when the chocolate was still warm but it still breaks for me when I cut. So if you've got a better method I'm definately interested in learning it, please.

Believe me, this is not ideal and certainly not something I want to do. But the reality of the situation forces me to do such. If I didn't re-freeze the waste would be HUGE! Ideally I don't let my trays defrost before I take what I need off them and return them to the freezer. On all previous jobs I'd made mini's and filled them to order to keep items at their best. This particular job will not conform for quality, they insist I conform to their needs. Soooooo I'm trying to do the best I can with-in my limitations. Slbunge-you mentioned something I'm not familar with, didn't know about. Thermometers that record! Can I buy one myself, if so from where? We do have a self-defrosting freezer and I wondered if it was acting up and that's why now things are burning for me.......but I need to make a case so my chef will pay to bring in a mechanic to check out a freezer that seems to be just fine for their product. I needed to eliminate that it's something I'm doing causing this to happen. "Another issue might be the performance of the freezer. For example, if the freezer temperature is higher than what it was before you started having the freezer burn problem then you might start looking at potential issues with the system. Easy things to check are the timing and length of the defrost cycle which will result in periods of higher temperatures while the system is driving ice off of the coils. Perhaps the condenser needs a charge or needs to be cleaned as it is struggling to keep up a bit more than usual. Are you loading more foods into the walk-in right before your cart goes in that would temporarily raise the temperature and allow significant moisture migration before freezing? Essentially all of these things would be about the walk-in temperature riding too close to freezing and allowing too much time for the pastries to cool." Is there a one scientific answer why an item becomes freezer burned? Is it water being driven out of the product thru evaporation as the item freezes, so it's the process of how your freezing creating this? Can moisture evaporate out of a frozen item, so it's how your handling the already frozen item creating the burn?

I use the individually sized springfrom pans for it's size and bake or mold anything I want in them. To my knowledge I don't think there is a flexipan in that size and shape.............and anyway I don't own that size yet, but I do have those springform pans. The issue of leakage should be about water penitrating your pan when the item is baked in a dirrect water bath. If your batter is leaking out of your springform, it's time to pitch it in the garbage. Leakage can be solved by double foiling the exterior of your springform pan. BUT that's the reason why springform pans are a pain and not worth the hassle......a standard cake pan is a better tool because it doesn't leak ever. The time spent double foiling mini springform pans..........eek! Thats not for me. Instead if you want to bake cheesecakes in them don't set them in a water bath. Learn how to bake a cheesecake with-out a water bath, it can be done quite successfully.

In the case when you have a delicate finish I apply my finish after the item has been de-panned. Still freezing the item to unmold it. Sometimes I have to wait until the item is defrosted to apply the final surface, sometimes when it's semi-frozen it can be done. It's still typically worth freezing just to unmold nicely. I like cutting thru a semi-frozen item, I get a cleaner cut. This almost always works best (except with buttercreams that will crack)..........but there are the occasional cakes/tortes that want to fall outward as you slice them. In that case, no matter when and how you cut that cake, it would have had that issue. Re-handling it to push it back together still is easier on a semi frozen item then a soft fresh cake. I unmold items just as Neil wrote. Thanks Neil! If you really don't want to unmold by inverting you can lift up one edge of your parchment and shove a cardboard (even a full sheet pan sized) underneath the item for support lifting it out of the pan. I know one bakery that uses plexi glass instead of cardboards because their stiffer (less likely to bend or crease) and it can be rewashed/reused. Lifting out a item with-out a ridged base ...........as CanandianBakin' mentioned is really risky because you can crack your base. For the bars drizzled with chocolate while warm I have a question. Why do you drizzle when it's warm verses room temp.? I reserve the right to tell you how I'd do that after I know your answer. As to the issue of "is it Fresh Baked?" if it's been frozen after baking. Thats a great question and something I'd love to see debated among us! The first thing that comes to my mind is how we label fish. It's been frozen at sea to preserve it's freshness until the boat makes shore-yet it's allowed to be called fresh and not frozen even though we all know it was frozen at sea. I think we'd have to define what is fresh baked? Is it being sold with-in a 24 hour time frame from when it was baked? A loaf of bread isn't at it's prime at hour 23. I think I have to restate that I'm not advocating keeping everything in your freezer for an unlimited time and calling that fresh! I'm trying to mention what a tool the freezer can and should be. Many times I'm not freezing an item until it's solidly frozen, I'm just getting it cold enough so I can handle it with-out it breaking or so I can cut it cleanly. Many times I'm baking the cake, freezing it, frosting it, serving it all on the same day. Some items I'm keeping in the freezer raw for storage and then baking to order. Some bakeries are set up to bake everything fresh everyday. Some places you just can't do that, you don't have the man power or time. If you bake a sheet pan of brownies and sell half of it in your show case, while the other half is frozen. After 5 days which half tastes better (after you defrost the second half)? I know of bakeries that sell that 5 day old brownie as fresh, just because it's never been frozen, even though it's now probably stale. Sure you and I would say I wouldn't sell a 5 day old brownie, but when every penny counts it's painful to have a high waste factor.

I'm typically working with numbers from 100 to 300 per order and I give each order a selection of 12 to 18 varieties. If I attempted to do as suggested, keep assortments on my trays in the freezer so I would completely empty those trays per order.....the numbers and items would never work out. Because I have orders of varying size. And because I'm always making new mini's. In the end I'd have a mess of a few pastries on this tray, and a few on that.......and those would become waste because I rarely ever need just a couple of one variety. It's more logical and practical to keep them in groups-all my eclairs together or all my carrot cake squares together. Once I use half a tray I do condense it with another selection I only have a half pans worth of too....and so on. Sometimes I'll have 4 or 5 different kinds on one tray and I do empty out that tray when I fill an order. First in, first out, etc...

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I have a closed door cart (inside the walkin freezer) that the pastrys are stored inside of. Inside that cart they are not wrapped, just open sheet trays of mini's. When I need to use these pastries I leave the whole cart in the freezer and pull out the specific trays of mini's I want. I take those mini's into my work room, which is warm. In a matter of a few minutes the frozen trays begin to sweat profusely. When I'm done taking the amount of mini's I need off those trays the trays go back into my closed cart in the freezer for storage. I'm certain it's freezer burn. It looks weird on frosting. The frosting rises up a bit and cracks, turning whiteish. On choux dough the freezer burn is whiteish too. The freezer burn remains cracked and dry after the pastries have defrosted (so it's not just ice forming on the item). I haven't tasted them, so I don't know what they taste like.........and I'm not about to either. The weird thing is: this only began a couple months ago. Prior to then I never had a hint of freezer burn. Lately, I'd say I'm probably opening my cart less then I used to. Other weird thing is this is not happening to any other items stored in that freezer. Theres items that have been in there longer which show no signs of freezer burn. I have a second open air cart with cakes and mousses that are wrapped in saran and they are fine, as are all the chefs items. It does seem to target frosting and choux paste items specificly so far. I have trays that have whipped cream, mousse, chocolate and those aren't forming freezer burn. Why wouldn't freezer burn effect everything equally? If I knew why it's just begun, perhaps I could reverse that and prevent it from happening further. It greatly complicates my work and I'd like to solve this.

Ah..........that could be happening. We have a cart in the freezer who's wheels can get a lined incorrectly preventing the door from sealing tightly. O.k. the details will make your eyes roll, but I have to spill all the beans to correct this. I have a metal cart for my use only with a door that closes tightly, inside our walk-in freezer. This is what I've been using to store frozen mini pastries for the past year and one half. None of my trays are wrapped at all. Pastries are taken out of this cart/cabinet frequently. The reason why I haven't wrapped the pastries is that it would ruin/crunch the decoration on the pastries and well that's how this place has been doing pastries for years with-out issue. Making mini's to order is out of the range of possiblities to solve this problem. Each tray/sheet pan holds one or two different pastry types. So when assembling a mini pastry tray you would take out many frozen trays. Bring them into your room to tray/plate them. As your traying condensation does really build up and in no time at all (because I work in a hot room) there are water beads dripping off the bottom of each pan. So I wipe them off, when I'm finished I then replace the pans in the freezer until the next time I need them. BUT it takes a couple minutes for the trays to refreeze once their put back into the frozen cart so the condensation and ice forming does continue. Obviously I can't make or keep any crisp mini pastries under this situation. So is this correct and the most likely answer: it is the constant condensation from taking out the pans and bring them to rapid rooom temp. that creates ice when I place them back in the freezer and it's that ice that's stealing the moisture out of some items?

Exactly. Don't let your pan or recipe dictate to you. Change things around so they work for you. In the specific charlotte example andiesenji you mentioned you wound up ruining part of the cake. I still would have frozen the charlotte to remove it from the pan. A solidly frozen cake with piped on whip cream rosettes can be inverted with little to no damage, I do it all the time............hard to believe but true. If for some reason your rosettes got smashed you can scrap them off your frozen cake in seconds and re-pipe fresh ones. Another example...........just a couple weeks ago I had a couple pie shell disasters. I was baking pecan pies and I filled them too high, so the filling bubbled up over the crusts edge between it and the pie plate and it was permanently clued into the pie plate. Well I needed those pies and had to plate them too. I froze the pies as is. Then using a stove top burner I gently moved the pie plate over the heat. The sticky caramel melted while my pie remained frozen and I was able to pop it out of the pan cleanly, then slice it. Unless you viewed the bottom of the pie you wouldn't have known what a nightmare it was. I hadn't previously thought of that use for a pecan pie. I used to force a knive in between the crust and pie plate and force out pieces, which always looked bad. Just as McDuff did, it's when your really forced to find a solution, that you do. For a heat source to remove frozen items............I've used everything from a hot water bath (because I didn't have any heat other then water), stove top, portable stove, hot oven, to a torch. I prefer using a torch. If my item is small enough I place it on my metal turn table and move the item around as I heat it. I like how fast and dirrect you can be with the heat. In seconds your item is cleanly released. McDuffs mention of using acetate to line his pans is equally as good of a technique. I used to always use acetate to line my pan sides while I assembled torte in the pan until I worked someplace that didn't own any and I discovered you don't need it. BUT in McDuffs case it's saves a step because he'd be placing a acetate collar around his torte anyway. You also can use cardboard cake circles in place of your metal bottoms in springform pans. They tend to be a hair too large, but you can trim them in seconds with a sissors. Pop the springform sides around your cardboard base and you have one less step in the end. I used to line pans with foil to remove cookie bars and such. But the nice thing is that when you apply heat to a frozen item in a pan the butter or fat that's cold melts and releases your items with-out ever needing foil. In my pie example it melted the caramel. Sometimes less is more and we are wasting steps and product. As for the phyllo project mentioned: I use no more then 4 layers in a mini pastry item. More then that shouldn't be necessary or desirable taste wise. I cut my phyllo with a knive, into squares to line a round muffin tin. I don't find the little corners objectional at all. And the time saved it huge..........not to mention how badly your palm is going to hurt using the cookie cutter over and over. It really does depend on what exactly your making. You can also bring up your square edges into a purse shape, which looks nice. If I'm using phyllo in a mini muffin pan to be a container that I'll fill after I bake off the phyllo.......I cut it into squares and then fan out my edges. That limits me to filling every other muffin cavity but it does look nice on the finished product. For phyllo I think using a melt tin/muffin pan will be a cheaper and more practical pan then the silacone pans. I haven't baked phyllo in a silicone pan yet so I don't know if it will crisp up as evenly as it does in metal. Plus since phyllo can crack making wholes for your filling to leak out of..........I think using a flexible pan could be a pain.......depending upon just how thin and flexible your pan is.

I'll add how I handle the items listed and I hope everyone else will chime in with their tips. Quickly I have to mention cake rings. Those bottomless stainless steel circles that puzzle new bakers. Those silly things serve a purpose, their most often used to assemble multi-layered desserts in. Although they are used to bake in (more by Europeans then Americans), they are only used for stiff batters that won't leak out of a bottomless ring. A cake pan is really the same thing as cake ring, with a bottom. So I use cake pans as cake rings. A cake pan is the same thing as a springform pan except the sides don't release on their own. You have to take the item out of the pan instead of taking the pan away from the item. A cake pan is the same whether it's round or square, it still holds in contents. A cake pan is basicly the same thing as a tart pan, but it's sides are taller. A cake pan is basicly the same thing as a pie pan, but it's sides are taller. Etc...... Hopefully your beginning to see a pattern here. Cakes, brownies, tortes, all baked goods have different textures. Some are more fragile then others. For the sake of speed and ease many professional bakers temporarily turn their baked goods into a texture that's less fragile more managable and versatile for them to handle. Theres only a couple ways to change the texture- either baking an item or freezing an item. Well once you've baked your item the only other solution is to freeze it to change it's texture. Freezing baked goods is putting it into a temporary texture or state. You can freeze something to shock it into a quick cool, freeze something for a couple hours or freeze something for many days. Freezing rarely harms baked goods. But for some reason many people think that a frozen baked good is no longer a fresh baked good and it's inferior. Thats a very wrong widely held thought. A freezer is a very important tool for a pastry chef. Savory chefs typically use a freezer to store products to keep them fresh. Pastry chefs do that too, but they also use freezers as a tool that savory chefs don't typically. We freeze components all the time. Sometimes we freeze an item to make it easier to cut (as is the point of this thread) but sometimes we use the freezer to change the texture of an item so we can handle it. Example, layering a multi layered full sized sheet cake. If I freeze my layers when I place one on top of another I can handle that cake less gently with less chance of it breaking it...because the cake is less fragile when frozen. If I need to cut a fragile item it's easier to cut in a semi-frozen state then fresh. The item is less likely to condense downward as I exert force/pressure on it while cutting. It's also easier to move/lift a frozen item from one surface to another. So the answer to removing fragile items from pans is changing it's texture by semi freezing it or totally freezing it. Cutting a semi-frozen item is also one "trick" used by professionals to achieve clean perfect slices. Ok speaking to the items specifily mentioned. I would remove my charlotte even if I assembled it in a springform pan, by freezing it, then heating the sides of my pan to release. When frozen I can easily pick-up the whole cake and place it on a cardboard circle. Place it in my cooler to let it defrost to a semi-frozen state then slice it perfectly. Brownies: I always chill completely in the cooler or freeze before I dream of cutting them or moving them. I heat the pan, place a cardboard or another larger pan ontop of it, invert the pan to release my brownie. Re-invert my brownie so the top side is facing upward, then cut. When it comes time to slice my brownie or cookie bar having it out of the pan makes slicing much quicker and cleaner. I use a long knive and slice the whole width and whole length on each slice. Cutting items in the pan also ruins your pans in time....especially expensive non-stick coated pans. Soaking a cake then removing it from a pan is difficult due to how fragile and heavy the moisture makes it. When I soak a cake I first remove it from the pan it's been baked in. Depending upon how fragile that cake is, I might release it with-out freezing it (like with a flexible sponge cake) or I might freeze it with a more breakable item like a butter cake. Then I go about soaking it. If you place that cake on your final surface, cardboard covered in wax paper or serving dish before you soak it you won't have to figure out how to move that fragile item. Depending upon what your soaking, you may want to pick up the whole item and sub-merge it (as in a baba). You will want to set your larger cakes (on your wax covered cardboard) into a larger lipped pan so your liquid can drain off. In cases where I've accidently poured on too much soaking liquid, not having the item trapped in a sided baking pan has saved the product.

Heres some dialog from the springform pan thread: Yes, please! I've just started producing cakes and the like for a couple of local restaurants, and I've got one tea cake (soaked in buttermilk and unbelievably moist and dense) that I wouldn't know how to get out of anything but a springform. I've been eyeing my aluminum pizza peel as a thing to resort to, but I'm afraid I'd end up smushing the whole cake beyond repair. I'd be beholden, that's sure. Devlin edit: I meant to say I'm eyeing my pizza peel as a thing to get this unbelievably wet cake off the bottom of the springform because even with the parchment paper I've been afraid to try to get it off, it's so dense and moist and heavy. Any help and encouragement would be a big help. As it stands now, I'm afraid to try. ←

For anyone who hasn't read the springform pan thread, I'm starting this topic as an off shoot from it. I have to start this thread mentioning my own personal experience. When I began working as a professional pastry chef (even though I knew how to bake) I really had issues following alot of recipes as written making them work in my situation. For example, if you followed the exotic orange cake thread you quickly realize that getting all those components made and ready at the right stage of setting is a huge accomplishment. I had to figure out how to make that type of recipe work for me when I couldn't make all the components at once, when the author didn't give me any shortcuts. I'd make a nice spongecake covered in whipped cream and fresh fruit.........then I was faced with the delemia of having to pre-slice all my cakes for buffet service. At first I thought those delicate items just can't be done for buffets. But eventually I figured out I didn't have to make that item exactly as the author dirrected me. My party sheet called for souffles for 50 people, and there wasn't one souffle dish in the building. What was I supposed to do? For a baker serving items at home it's ok if your slices aren't perfect. But when your a pastry chef and people are paying the same amount of money for each slice it's not fair to give some people a huge slice and some a skimpy one. And besides value you have presentation as a huge issue that pc's must rise to. So what happens is professional pastry chefs have to figure out how to make items on their own terms. Even our professional baking books don't cover tricks and methods for doing many tasks. Thats why it's so invaluable to work with a more experienced chef to learn all their little tricks. I never worked for a pc more experinced them myself. So finding cooking sites online where I can learn from other bakers has been an priceless experience/education for me. I think that's why many professional pastry chefs go online to share and learn for others where their books leave off. So in my long winded way I want all of you to know that you don't have to be a professional chef to work and think like one. There comes a time as everyone becomes more knowledgable/experienced that they can and should learn ways to simplify recipes and make them work for you. Recipes are tools and not rules.

Releasing baked goods and cutting them is a seperate topic then talking about springform pans......so please look for a seperate thread I'll start on that topic. I want to make sure we get all our members chimming in on their tips for that issue.

Looking at the recipe linked I'd make these suggestions: When a cake pan is suggested to be greased/or buttered/ or sprayed then coated with flour. The flours purpose is to give the rising batter something to cling to as it bakes. If you didn't flour your pan for that recipe the batter would keep sliding down the sides of the pan colapsing in on itself. That will make your finished cake denser and probably chewie, not correct at all. I believe it was Karen here, that's repeatedly made the very correct point that you don't need to grease and or grease and flour your cake pans. If you line the bottom of your pans with parchment paper there is NO way a cake or baked good can stick to the bottom on the pan. So then all you have to contend with is releasing the sides of your cake or whatever baked good after the cake has cooled in the pan. All you do is run a thin knive around the inside edge and your item and it will release. Letting your cakes or baked goods cling to the side of your pan is a perfectly good and smart technique. It gives it better support then a floured pan will. To some extent people have become overly worried about a cake sticking in a pan. Your first and best line of defense is lining your pan with parchment paper. I lightly spray my pan so when I place my parchment into my pan it clings like clue to the pan and it can't shift as I bump and carry around my raw cake. You also can use a slight sprinkle of water in the pan to make the paper cling to it. Specificly talking about the recipe linked: Susans suggestion that you might have over beaten your eggs doesn't seem valid because the eggs are not beaten seperately the folded into your batter. In a creamed cake batter like this one you really can't over beat/over incorporate your eggs. Plus you have chemical leaveners that are giving your cake rise, the eggs aren't acting as a solo leavener here. One other thing that sticks out to me is the amount of cardamon used. 1 tsp. of cardamon is a huge amount (assuming your spice is realitively fresh), not many flavors can compete with that to be noticed........your pistachios will only give you looks and texture you can't possibly taste them through that much cardamon. I'd use about 1/4 tsp. tops.

Can I stear this conversation more into baked goods/pastry so we can look to this thread and find some references for actual desserts? Lets for a moment forget about how the person is managing their diet. I'd like to know specificly some frosting type recipes that I could use to finish a diabetic cake and still be able to label it as 'diabetic'. I hope it's safe to assume that most of you would agree that traditional frosting recipes making a frosting with large proportions of butter, sugar, xxxsugar or making whipped cream with heavy cream all are too much for a diabetic catagorized cake. What can a pastry chef use? Do any of you have frosting recipes that are diabetic you'd be willing to share?

At work I'm experiencing freezer burn on a couple of my items. This just began about 2 months ago in our walk-in freezer. Nothing else in the freezer seem's to be effected. I have very similar items stored exactly the same way inches apart and those aren't getting freezer burn. Can anyone tell me more about freezer burn? Is there really anyway to protect items from it? Why would it just begin out of the blue with this freezer and only effect a couple items?

I've never heard sea foam candy refered to as honeycomb, but if were all talking about the same thing.......in my opinion the answer to "what's next?" is to coat it in milk chocolate or semisweet.

The one linked in Abra's post is the metal type I was referring to in my previous post.

I'm in the group that totally doesn't use or believe in buying springforms. They all break, the metal rusts easily, and the metal can leach a metalic flavor into the sides of your cheesecakes (non-rusted springforms I have at work do this), I've had the weld's on them break frequently. At work the bottoms often get lost or thrown out. They also warp easily. There's absolutely no reason to buy a springform pan other then fear that you won't know how to use a regular cake pan in it's place (do you know large manufactors of cheesecake use regular cake pans, not springforms). I'd be happy to walk you thru how you bake any item in a regular cake pan, if you like. I also agree with the previously mentioned 3" deep pans. They are the most versital pans for baking. I also use them to assemble cakes in and occasionally freeze a whole torte in too.

There are certain items I use non-stop and my turn table is one of those invaluable items. I don't think you can go wrong with the metal ones, they don't seem to ever break and 39.00 is a good price. The cheapest I've ever seen that metal stand was 45.00..........so 39.00 is a deal in my opinion. I think you'd live to regret the plastic ones unless you needed something light weight for traveling. I've used the larger rectangular one and that's really nice when your doing full sheet cakes. Technically that model works spinning your cake on the rectangle or the round base as shown. BUT I don't think it's indistructable like the metal ones.

Ahhhhhhhhh, lots of really great points Steve! I agree totally that out of hand and used in something can be very different.............and it's something I didn't consider well enough. I only bought one small bar so I'm eating it out of hand and making comparisions to what I'm used to. Normally if you were to hand me a milk chocolate candy bar I'd have it gone with-in the half hour. The Valrona milk chocolate is the first bar of milk chocolate that's lasted me for over a week of nibbling. The E. Guittard milk choc. is more mild taste wise (besides the differences in mouth feel which is the most noticable objection to the E. Guittard) then the Valrona. What is it that makes the Valrona different then so many other milk chocolates (all the milk chocolates I've tasted)? When I eat it out of hand it doesn't stay on my palate as long as other brands or it's just not as memorable making me crave more? Does it have less sugar then it's competitors? I've never tasted a milk chocolate quite like the Valrona and the thought of using milk chocolate with such aggessive flavor combos as you mentioned hadn't crossed my mind yet. But after tasting the Valrona I can see how it would be an excellent match in your dessert.........and how other milk chocolates wouldn't be as good of a choice. Until now (tasting the Valrona) I really thought all milk chocolates were pretty darn close. The differences in brands (eating out of hand) among semi sweets, bitter sweets and whites is up until now been far more dramatic for me then tasting various milk chocolates. Sorry to say that this is the first light bulb turning on moment for me in milk chocolate. That's really the essence of why this stood out to me and why I needed to ask others about their milk chocolate tastes/likes/dislikes. Side note: o.k. now I have to rethink why my shells are so thin lately. It would be nice to say I've gotten better, but I don't really think I'm doing anything differently. Other then my room is much warmer where I'm dipping now then from other kitchens.......... and now that I think about it my chocolate never gets cold to where I have to rewarm it= more fluidity. Hum............and I'm also thinking about the tip of warming your molds (I forget who taught that in a seminar, but it was someone major) ah shear dumb luck but I wouldn't be aware of that if Steve hadn't posted his previous response. YET.............why then are rooms designed for chocolate work cool? It speeds up your setting but works against your chocolates fluidity and your molds.

Specificly baking or baked goods with nutella.......think peanut butter or praline paste. Any recipe where you see those you can sub in nutella pretty much weight for weight. Think of it as any other component/ flavor, it can be infused, incorporated into almost everything. Mix it with your chocolate into a flourless cake. Mix it into any white, milk choc. or semi sweet mousse, ganche or frosting. Put it in with your cream into a creme' brulee'. Spread it as is as a layer in any multicomponented dessert. Mix it into creme anglaise. Mix it into your cheesecake batter, etc.........to taste or smell. If it's not stong enough add more. In your yellow cake example you could have spread nutella between your layers like a filling and for that fact combined it with other fillings like ganche. You also probably could have added more nutella to your frosting. If your temp.'s are o.k. the consistancy should hold up enough to use alot of nutella in your butter cream. You could have added nutella to some fueitine (sorry for the spelling) and chocolate and made a nice crunchie base or topping for your cake.