Wendy DeBord

I know the cream was not too hot because I always bring my cream up to a boil then dump my chocolate into it (as taught by Steve Klc). Then I stir to create my emulsion. Starting with boiling hot cream doesn't effect the emulsion, although most chefs will advice you to give it a minute or two to cool down before using. I have to add that it was only with-in that last two years that I finally had this happen to me too. In the past, it was like I couldn't comprehend what people were talking about ' broken ganches'........I couldn't get mine to fail no matter what method I tryed. THEN I switched chocolates and BAM, that will do it! I don't know enough of the science to give you a clear understanding why, perhaps Steve or Chefette will chime in and explain this? BUT I can not use Callebaut chocolate using tried and true ganche recipes and get a good emulsion. I've used a burwhip and that works to get a good emulsion, but when you let the ganche sit for anytime it's seperates again. So far, Callebaut brand is the only brand that I've run into that reacts this way.

I think I read somewhere that your studing pastry JGarner53, is that correct? Well theres lots to learn in this little project if your serious. Big lesson is: how sugar burns yolks. Why and when it happens and how to avoid it. Plus how to go around this issue, when to avoid a recipe and choose a simplier path that gives you the same results. Overtime I've come to know when I should beat my yolks with sugar like the instructions tell me to, and when to ignore the recipe because it's more likely to fail their way. Theres usually a number of ways to make the same thing using a slightly different method then published. Examples: 1. When you beat/whip your yolks with sugar and then pour a huge amount of liquid into that, the liquid disolves the air bubbles you've just beaten into it. You've wasted time with a pointless step. (example: creme brulee) 2. Adding sugar into a bowl of yolks starts to burn them upon imediate contact. Once that happens you might as well throw out your yolks because they won't work anymore as intended. First begin by whipping your yolks, then slowly introduce the sugar. If you have too much sugar per volume of yolks its going to burn them regardless of your methods (as McDuff mentioned). If your recipe tells you to add a huge amount of sugar to the yolks pc's will steal some liquid from further down in the recipes proceedure and add it sooner to prevent the yolks from burning. *Heating your yolks helps the sugar as it's being introduced dissolve into a liquid. So the sugar becomes a liquid not a solid. Warm yolks will accept more volume of sugar then cold yolks, without being burnt. If you over heat your yolks they tighten up/coagulate because their cooked-and they don't except the sugar (which is what it sounds like happened to you). The recipe you've chosen has become outdated. I'd guess the reason for heating the yolks in this recipe was to kill any possible samanila (at one point in time people thought the yolk contained the bacteria and the whites didn't, thats false) or to create a simple bombe. Today theres tons of recipes and methods for making chocolate mousse. Tons of former "rules" that are now broken, dis-spelled. If your in the process of learning I suggest you make a min. of 8 (the more the better) different recipes for chocolate mousse. In the process you'll learn ALOT. Chocolate mousse is a good product to learn from, its many methods relate to other baked goods and pastry making. You'll learn about making bombes, adding gelatin, hot and cold ingredient reactions, etc.....Not to mention learning what you like to eat and learning how to judge a recipe. HTH?

Yes, I agree the decimals are really hard to work with. Instead use your calulator and multiply. 1 ounce equals 28.35 grams. To convert grams into ounces, mulitply by 0.035 .

Sorry, I've never eaten or made coconut fudge.........but I did try that recipe from hersheys (a few years back) and got the same results kew!

Put my name on the list of people that freeze and cut when semi-frozen.

Well in my circumstance, I'm talking about fruit tarts for ala carte service. I"m not in a bakery position right now so they are buying for personal consumption, now. I use a wagner paint sprayer to apply.........but they just don't sell for ala carte for me. Does matter what kind of fruit I use or what else is in the tart shell (pastry cream, chocolate, frangipane, curd). I never have liked glaze on fruit items, it's just personal preference. My chef instists I glace to extent shelf life for more then one day-otherwise I never would. Neil-its always ready to spray? How cool!

Neil that bakery is in Lake Forest, IL. I'm extremely familar with it and the area- I used to work at Shoreacres (in Lake Bluff, IL) down the street from it. Many of our members lived in Lake Forest. Before I went back to baking Lake forest was my best selling fine art suburb. They used to hold a very nice art show there (but all thats off topic)-fabulous sales-huge money!!!! There's more to chosing a neighborhood then just wealthy. That particular area Lake Forest consists of people that travel the world. They're people that own many homes and only live in town here for a couple months a year. Same thing for a couple other wealthy Chi town suburbs- like Barrington Hills, IL. Where as Highland Park, IL (as one of our members does own a bakery there) has big money but most of the people still work and live there most of the year. They party alot!!! They're very family oriented. You have your working rich and upper middle class and you have your truely wealthy. Those truely wealthy people have their own chefs, etc..... you can't build a business in their neighborhood because their so transient. Location, location, location. It isn't always what you think. Now on the other hand my family owned a bakery in what would have seemed to be a great location. Long Grove, IL.........a little tourist town with tons of gift shops-people go there for the day to shop. Who makes money in that town-the sit down resturants-why-the women shop but don't really buy, but it's ladies day out and they do spend on one treat- lunch. The gift shops go in and out faster then you can believe. Now the surrounding town of Long Grove is very wealthy. Huge homes, etc....but a little unknown thing we didn't know was. The locals won't bother with the tourist area....too much hassle. Tourists shop, but they don't buy. In Chi town area if you open a place in Oak Brook (suburb), people travel there to shop and buy. They are known for quality expensive shops and it draws people from distant suburbs. So does NorthBrook. You gotta know your area. Ted- I'll give you recipes and production methods to blow away that Uster crap. Nothing compares with your own danish. Just another crazy side note. My manager had a take out order where he priced cookies at .50 cents a piece for standard large cookies (made by me from scratch with real ingredients). We sold similar at my parents bakery in the earily 80's for that same price. This client got 200 cookies for 100.00............what was he thinking?

It's so good to see you post Melmek, I wish you had more time to chat! Your place looks fabulous!!!!!!!!!!!!! Beautiful mix of work, theres something for everyone. I would love to taste everything. The laminated items are very well done, breads focacia-beautiful, I noticed quiche too. Your selections and place shows how much thought and effort you put into it. Bravo! I love the clear acrylic platters you've chosen to use, it gives nice clear views. Your place looks very welcoming, tables outside-fab.! I hope you get slammed everyday, you rock girl!

The issues are pretty complicated, I think. This is just one of dozens of issues: The club I'm currently working at does alot of volume with a mininum staff. I can honestly tell you there isn't 1 lazy person hiding at this job. We all run all day long. Currently I make our desserts but I don't plate any of my ala carte desserts. Desserts go to the guy working the salad station. This persons knowledge of dessert is less then your average native person off the street. Why? Typically the person working the salad station in the US is Mexican with a small English vocabulary. They don't know American desserts since they don't eat them and we don't speak each others languges well enough to communicate on the topic. The salad person typically has a rather demanding job just doing salads. The concept of having this position plate desserts sounds good in theory, since the salad station is usually the first one done for the evening. But everyone doesn't dine at the same time so their doing salads and desserts at the same time most of the night until the last couple tables are in. If you buy in a pastry chef theres alot of other costs involved. Mainly, the pc can't work the line plus get their work done and be on site for every minute the restaurant is open. Adding a pc means making huge conpensations for the chef. It complicates their job. Etc.........on and on............ Anyway..........Ted.........I don't know the exact name of that 'maragine' stuff. I know it comes in boxed blocks and never needs to be refridgerated! It doesn't melt in the heat! Yuk! (I don't eat margarine at home so I don't know if thats similar, the stuff just doesn't melt? so it seems pretty fake to me) Glaze = longer storage time. Word spreads. I can't sell a fresh fruit tart at my job. They'll buy anything else........I think they've been burned too many times that they just aren't willing to try these any more. Perhaps thats only in my small community....? As far as how much do we have to charge to use good ingredients?.........I believe the biggest cost in bakerys is labor. So I don't really think the pricing would be prohibitive, yes you might need a more skilled worker to apply tempered chocolate verses non-tempering 'chocolate'. In Chicagoland, the wealthier suburbs will support a quality bakery and do. But it takes patrons that know the differences and will pay for them. Unforunately thats not widely spread. In the middle income suburbs people still buy based on cost and bakeries are trapped by pricing. UNLESS they do something really well and can wait to build a reputation where patrons are willing to travel to their establishment. I think the term 'artisain' could really help bakeries and pc.'s. Good points Carrot Top! But 'artisain' has already been stolen by chain grocery stores. Have you noticed they now all sell 'artisian' breads from some 'name' bakery. Have you bought any, I have.....their the same poorly baked stuff the grocery stores have always been selling. Soon, very soon "artisian" will mean nothing, they've ruin the word. "Artisian" means nothing.....buying a cake from a bakery means nothing........quality isn't something regulated. Nothing will help the industry in the US. It's up to each individual shop (like Brians) to build it's own reputation and maintan it. You can't even get a group of bakery owners together to promote the business. No two bakeries have the same quality......or 'quality' doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. If I own a decent bakery and join a bakery allience with other bakeries that aren't as good.....they bring me down.

Just a stupid note on that fruit tart. If you put any glaze on it to extend shelf-life- you can't give the damn thing away in my area. Our 'upscale' grocery store sells those....I bet they sit in the case for months before just being thrown out. P.S. The cream cake mix is pretty good. One bakery I worked at used this stuff. You use it as a base and add whatever you want to it. I believe it's what The Corner Bakery (a chain bakery) uses to make their cinnamon bundt cakes. You can add extra liquids to the batter and it still bakes up like a dream. It's that fake texture that us Americans love, a cake mix-verses a scratch butter cake. You can keep the fake margerine stuff, I really didn't like that stuff. What can you do? Our bakery prices have to be low enough to compete with the mass produced grocery store products. Americans don't always get the price to quality link. Advertising can brain wash, we don't taste and judge for ourselfs.

Meringue powder usually contains sugar in addition to dried whites. You can't use it interchangably with dried egg whites. Although I bought some meringue powder from A Uster that doesn't seem to contain any sugar, it smells like pure dried egg whites........ the label doesn't tell exactly what the ingredients are. Do you have enough time to but the whites over the internet? Some companies are really quick with shipping. I forget what the percentage was- but Herme' uses something like 2/3 old whites and 1/3 fresh. I add more dried whites then his recipe calls for to make it thicker. Ditto on freezing for a couple weeks, no problems. Caramel filling-depends upon your tastes. I find the room temp. to be pretty darn important. I recall using a pistachio paste flavored meringue buttercream once that just fell apart in the room temp. If your caramel recipe is stiff when cool that would be good. I probably wouldn't use fleur de sel in this application onless you were putting it on top of your macaroon.........reg. salt will do the same thing in a cooked caramel.

It's so................ I know thats not a cool thing to admit, but it's honest. 'A little bite of cake' is fine, I make tons of varied cakes that 'a little bite of' tastes better out of then specific madeliene recipes.

I made 4 recipes, 3 from Bellouets petite four book and the traditional lemon version from Dorie Greenspan. Bellouets were good......not great. His flavoring is so subtle that they're lost by taste alone. I made his pistachio version because I love p. paste- anyway if any of you make this add some food coloring......the natural color looks very unappealing. I was more excited by Dories recipe. I think I will try each flavor from her book Paris Sweets. I got HUGE domes. I let the batter sit in the cooler for 4 days before I had time to finish using it. It bubbles up alot in the bowl but baked out fine. I also experimented with silicone molds verses non-stick and reg. aluminum. I much prefered the silicone baked madeleines. I love the extra depth of the pan and I think that factor plus the tighter crumbed top leaves your madelienes moister then traditional pans. No matter which pan I use I don't think you can get a decent mini madeliene. There just isn't enough volume to remain moist. Both full sized and mini's were too dry if you let them take on any color at all. So I have these as my monthly special as I mentioned earilier on thread........and we do a tasting for the waitstaff on these. My chef came back to me after the tasting with the comments being "they're a bit dry".........no one was very thrilled over this dessert. At first I was bumbed out. Now I have mixed thoughts. 1. I never found the excitement over these myself as I've read from others. In otherwords I agree they aren't really anything special. 2. Perhaps it's just not an American item. We wouldn't be caught dead eating plain lady fingers either. To compromise, I've desided that brushing them with simple syrup after baking greatly increases it's appeal. I've haven't had time to flavor my s.s. but thats the next step I will take. So far my sales on this have been horrible...........so I need to rethink how I'm serving these. They totally need an accompaniment for my clientele. I feel left out, cause I feel the same way about traditional macaroons..........I want to love them like everyone else-but really when it comes down to it, I'd rather eat an oreo.

Rootbeer sorbet sounds good to me, I'd love it. Being a traditionalist type chef I think it would be well recieved big time and a fun flavor to play with. Your approach sounds fine to me. I keep wondering about actually using some rootbeer in your recipe with the ss and extract to intensify. One of those things I'd have to taste together to see how I'd want to make a formula for it.

Well I don't see anything horribly wrong with your recipe or procedure. I wouldn't be able to get that yield from that recipe though. All I can say is every oven is different and a little tweaking/playing around should help you find your answer in your enviroment. I'm not experienced enough on macaroons to solve your color issues. I've never colored mine. I can only think it has to be results of the intensity/quality of the coloring product your using. Personally I prefer less intense color such as you got. I wouldn't find a true red colored macaroon nearly as appealing as a pink one. But I suppose thats a matter of opinion. For baking- your browning issue, (I use Herme's recipe and instructions). For a non fan oven....a "sole" oven as he refers it to: He bakes 2 minutes on 475F to seal, then turns down to 375f to finish. For petite fours it's more like 7 to 8 minutes in the oven. For a fan assisted oven he goes with 285F, double panning with open draught. Even though I have a fan convection oven I prefer to follow the first baking method with the hotter temp.s and fan off or on low. Your not supposed to bake until they are browned (as you wrote), just baked/set.

As a host I just wanted to double check that you've done a search on this topic......... http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=Se...hlite=macaroons Theres pages and pages of info. including recipes and everyones thoughts on macaroons laying in our files here at eg. Maybe if you could detail what you've already tried recipe wise and how that didn't work or match what you were looking for it would help us help you more specificly. I personally can't address the caramel macaroons search, I have no experience with that. Perhaps with a couple more details from you, someone will come forward with the answers you seek.

This is my favorite lemon bar recipe to date. I got it somewhere else and they credit the recipe to Chef Laurann Claridge, columnist of the Houston Chronicle. Crust: 8 oz. butter 1/2 c. xxx sugar 1/4 tsp. salt 2 c. flour combine press into the bottom of a 9"pan, prebake until golden in 350F, while hot add the filling and continue baking until set. Filling: 1/3 c. flour 4 eggs 17 tbsp. sugar 2/3 c. lemon juice zest of 3 lemons I make this in full sheet pans. For that I multiple the crust by 3 and the filling by 7. I sprinkle xxx sugar over the top before serving.

It depends upon what convience products your talking about-sure I use them too. I was whining the other day to Chefette about how inferior I felt looking at the photos from the WPF. My work load is so demanding during our peak season that the most I can get accomplished is a two component dessert. It's a struggle right now to find the fastest easiest route to accomplishing a dessert in time. I get 100 and 200 people parties dropped on me the day of the event or with one days prior notice and bam I gotta pull a rabbit out of my hat somehow. I've used bought in canolli shells, tart shells, petite chocolate cups, cream horn shells. My chef used to buy in mousse mix and I hate to admit this but I've been backed into a corner a couple times where I had to use it. Days when we ran out of eggs, out of cream out of butter.........you pick up the next best thing and run with it. Days when I had to use premade individual tart shells and fill them with whatever I had left over and stick it on my ala carte menu. I think theres a couple different levels of work.....we have fine dining (which seems to get all the attention) and then the rest. It's all about survival in the jungle I work in. Fine dining is somewhat of a dream land to me. Bri, I can look at that qoute a couple ways........it doesn't offend me and I don't see it as something that should bother you,- but I totally respect that it has! I think theres a huge difference between an artisain product your producing and a mass produced product thats being addressed. It just about made the hair on my arms standup reading that new column in pd&a too. I have all the same gut reactions.......worried about our jobs being completely eliminated and not thinking this has any place in a professional publication. To some extent we look to pd&a to inspire us, showcase our best, promote our industry. Our industry-does it include all pastries including mass produced stuff or does that belong in Modern Baking magazine where they do nothing from scratch? I think pa&d is blurring the lines by including those articles..........and it's not a good step. Lets face it many of our great p chefs have gone on to create their own products with their names on it. (for many reasons) It's evolution. I'd rather see pa&d promote the artisain products being produced hands on by our best then feature Dawn premade cakes and how convient they are.

Yes, I have made Fribergs recipe several times. It was my standard for a quite a while........at this late moment (past my bedtime) I can't recall why I moved on. I think I found similar within either Herme's or Bellouet pastry books that came together quicker.......none that has left a lasting impression. Thank-you Neil, I'll give that one a go asap.

Boy, theres tons of reasons why a person changes jobs. I don't think pc's heads get any larger then an other chefs when they acheive recognition. Lets face it it's pretty hard to be noticed as a pc when we are always in someone elses shadow. The opportunity to stand in the spot light on your own is real recognition. To work in several kitchens and gain the respect of others each time you move is heart warming. The ultimate personal satisfaction of the job. It's also damn interesting to grow from others who influence you! The math is there. More money+new challenges+personal growth+possibly more recognition=time to change jobs.

Huh, you want it to taste like carrots, well then that version counts for a whole days servings a veg.'s.

Hi Jim_jimmers, welcome to eg! I don't think theres one answer with-out seeing your recipe and what your setting your oven at while baking, etc.... post your procedure too and it will make it easier for us to help. If you have a photo of your product you can show that would be great. Macaroons are all about subtletys.

Hear hear Brian! I agree completely.......... and you do us all a favor by selling quality to help familarize people to that concept in a dessert course. Gotta ask- whats up? Why the need to defend yourself? P.S. Exec.'s that can bake should, those that can't- shouldn't, etc.........huge tanget subtopic I won't write anything further on.

The perfect carrot cake recipe............you'll never find one that everyone agrees on, not on this subject. Actually I think so much of our preferences comes from previous experience. What I seek in a great carrot cake recipe probably ties back to some memory of a piece I once had. I can't be open minded from there. Sure I've tried alot of carrot cake recipes inluding newier versions with fresh ginger or cakes that just happen to contain carrots........but none of them seem right-they don't match that old memory. I gotta give these other carrot cakes a different name......they just aren't traditional enough for me....even though I like them. My defination of a traditional carrot cake must include: carrots, chopped nuts, pineapple, coconut and cinnamon. You can play around with using butter or not, buttermilk or not. etc....but it's gotta have those 5 main flavors for my defination. Then lastly it's gotta have cream cheese frosting............anything else and every midwesterner would rebel! It's ying and yang would be out of balance. Oh and this does count as 1 serving of vegetable on the food chart........

Just last weekend I had a wedding cake with a white chocolate mousse filling. I haven't got one recipe that I really love for this. So I tried yet another a new recipe (from the CIA's new baking book, by the way it stunk in my opinion) which I regretted. Man oh man, have I tried a zillion recipes for this and I still haven't found one to settle on. So hense forth this thread.........anyone have a knock-em-dead great recipe for white chocolate mousse with gelatin as a stablizer? What makes a perfect white chocolate mousse to me: 1. Having enough white chocolate flavor come thru that no one can wonder if it's just a plain vanilla mousse. 2. Having meringue and whipped cream, so it's light and smooth...not grainie! No liquid leaching out as it sits. 3. Having some gelatin in it so it can sit out of the cooler for a couple hours in a cake. Are any of you in posession of great white chocolate mousse recipe that you're really proud of and would share? Please and thank-you.