Wendy DeBord

Did anyone get a chance to bake this recipe over the weekend?

That stinks..........I don't know but I sort of wonder why the waiter told you this. But it really doesn't make alot of sense, as in your plating doesn't sound that "out there" to me. Personally I think there must have been some sort of confusion or that was a person that doesn't try ANYTHING new. Who doesn't stick a fork into something they paid for.? Can you post a photo?

Thank-you Duckduck. I just wanted to add another factor. The room temp can kill your best efforts. When I made those my room temp was about 90f. I HAD to use the cooler to set my chocolate, with-out getting a chance to score them first. I had to cut each piece with a hot knive. Which wouldn't have made any difference because the cakes I was enclosing are not cut perfectly enough-I can't free hand cut perfect sized cakelets -even with a ruler theres variation. I only had parchment-it works but you obviously get a dull finish. Did you ever tell us what your filling your boxes with?

I've never comprehended stablizers being used in whipped cream. The ones I've tried over the years had no real effect. If you use a high fat cream 35% it will last whipped for days. The biggest problem I've seen when observing others make whipped cream is they under whip. Under whipping is fine for many applications, but when you need it to last whipped or your frosting a cake with it, you've got to go until the whisk leaves clear tracks thru the cream. The people I've met that were most frustrated over how long whipped cream lasts were people that thought it would be like the fake stuff-dream whip, thats non dairy.

So Lorea, whats your final number 1-5 and do you have a chocolate cake recipe that is better then this one for us to test? TP, fillings.........wow I feel like I've pared this cake with about every filling known to man. But everyone has their own favorite taste combos. The quickest and laziest route would be pour a layer of ganche on top. Bring to a boil 1 c. heavy cream with 2 tsp. sugar and 2 tbsp. butter. After the sugar has disolved and the mixture comes to a boil, dump 12 oz. of chocolate into your pot. Stir from the center out, creating an emulsion. Pour on top of room temp or colder cake, let it set/chill down before cutting. I'm hoping many of you will get a chance to bake this weekend. I look forward to your results.

You tease, I'd love to have some right this second with my morning chino. Your shots are really nice. I'd imagine you could do very well selling these! Put a bench under some shade near your booth and you'll be rich.

Marjorie, if you've got a great choc. cake recipe I'm interested! Any chance you can take a moment and try the one I posted to use that as a reference point? I'd like to start a seperate thread on other flavors for easy future reference, so look for those, o.k.

May I restate, everyone is welcome to participate! Please! The more people the better! I'm worried that things could get confusing if we start comparing and sharing other favorites right now in our posts. My thoughts were: everyone bakes this one cake. Think about it, compared to all the chocolate cakes you've baked in life. Then, if you have a better recipe, you should select your 1 best chocolate cake recipe and post it. Then we can work thru those recipes that you feel are better. Until we find the 1 that everyone agrees is the best. Does that make sense-or is that too limiting? I also had in mind a narrow focus/description for the perfect chocolate cake. I think it needs to be a regular all purpose cake. Something that can be used for a wedding cake or in any torte. I love chiffon cakes too, but using them in large wedding cakes is not simple. Opinions? Or should we define the perfect chocolate cake together as a group?

o.k. I see that I forgot something. I never use, assemble or eat a fresh cake.........I'm sorry, at work I bake in bulk and work differently then everyone does at home. **So please if it's not too late make this adjustment. After baking and wrapping your cake once it's near room temp. put it in your freezer over night. Then defrost and use. **Another important note: since this cake domes you should cool it right side up so the flat side is down, and it's not sitting unbalanced on the dome. That will crack your cake. Freezing in general improves most cakes (with a few exceptions). They actually become moister thru the process of defrosting. Fresh cakes are always drier in comparision. I promise! !!!! I don't list times, sorry I've never baked by time. (this is a learning process for me to think like others, please have patience with me) But in this case it is important because it's such a low temp. baking should take a while in the oven. The recipe says, aprox. one hour! But I believe 40 minutes seems about right. Less then 30 minutes -your oven is too hot! Test for doneness with a toothpick. It should just barely come out clean. The sides of your cake should NOT pull away from the pan. If so, your oven is too hot or you've baked too long. P.S. Thanks for posting this in weights for me. There are plenty of charts out there as mentioned. My jobs are heating up and I will be very busy until after Mothers Day.

Thank-you for sharing your recipe and work finding it. I can't wait to try it for my freinds....it will have to wait until after Mothers day but I'll post what they think of this.

I prepare all my pans by spraying with a non-stick spray (that doesn't contain h20 in the ingredients-thats very important) and placing a parchment circle on the bottom for easy removal. I almost never use flour or butter in preparing a pan-too timely and rarely needed. I only have confection ovens at work. On low fan it works fine-use your typical adjustments when using a convection. My ovens at work have to be dialed down almost 75 degrees to equal a conventional oven. I think a home conventional oven should give you better results actually. Everyones oven does bake differently-just keep in mind that this cake requires a lower temp. then the usual 350F-so if your oven runs really hot, adjust it. I haven't converted this to weights.........one day.......I just use recipes as written for speed. Yes, weighting is very important-it would be helpful. I need to bake this at work so I'll try to find the time to convert it to weight and repost the recipe asap. Unforunately baking is an art and requires certain skills from everyone who tests this. Bake until just done. I'm a stickler for over baked cakes-thats a no-no! It will ruin any cake. Brand of cocoa-I'll double check at work and report back. Hey Brian-did you happen to catch Roker On The Road last night? He featured Scott as one of his guests-the whole show was great! I loved the other people he featured too, I've GOT to look up Joesph Schimt in San Fran........I loved his chocolate work......very non-competitive in style, but nice!

Hum good points Kevin........ Well I know most people have busy schedules, .....how much time should be limit each cake to? 1 month....does that seem reasonable? Keeping a seperate thread for each item makes alot of sense so if there are straggliers it will keep info. from getting lost or entangled. We were asked to contribute all of our recipes to RecipeGullet, you post it yourself. I think thats cool, but I hope we can label the 'one cake' as the "comunities favorite "so over time we can easily sort thru which was which.....and easily find the one that was best. So I guess we'll call this thread the "chocolate cake thread" and start a new one when ever the majority is ready. Yes, I've baked this in sheets-full sheet cakes. I put a sheet pan cover/baggie over it to steam, I don't unmold that size while hot. I don't think sheet cakes are a seperate catagory because were talking about the same batter. To be the perfect cake in any catagory I think it needs to be versitile enough to be baked in any pan (with the exception of a jelly roll which needs more flex. then ordinary cakes). Kev. you don't have to eat the whole thing. Take a bite and pass the cake on to a neighbor....the more opinions and feed back the better. We need to find the best possible. Even though coffee does add flavor- ideally I need a pure chocolate flavor.......being able to adjust the recipe in the future is something we all can do individually.

Your an absolute delight and treasure! I have no doubts that your bakery will rock. You got to be tough, got to push like hell and stick to your guns when your right-you've clearly got all the right personality traits to pull this off! Have you got a yes man ready to run your front end? I can't tell you how important that will be to free you up. I know you'll feel contrained if you don't. People read thru you like news paper, you got to have someone who loves to bs with the frequent overly talkative customer while you tend to what needs to be tended. When you get that frequent idiot who NEEDS a box for their .50 purchase you have to have someone running interference for you. That customer may never buy enough to pay for the packaging -BUT at the same time theres a big fish listening to this, waiting for your attention. Your being judged at all times. Find someone that frees you to do what your best at. They'll become worth every raise they demand. Trust me, I speak from experience on this.

OH good questions FWED. I use all purpose in this cake. I think that the hot water added in the end breaks down the gluten. Lets stick with hot h20......that should keep the taste consistant with testers. I typical use h20, NOT coffee. Dutched or not.........o.k. I have to admit I never pay attention to this.....cause I'm not ordering it. I'm pretty certain I've used both successfully. Ladybug (and others) please join and bake when you get a chance. The more testers and experience in our group the more likely we will find the ulimate recipes.

I wish I could help, I really love churros also! Any chance you'll keep us updated on which recipe is the ulimate and any tips you learn along the way......I'd be thrilled if I could make these for my Mexican freinds at work-I know they'd go crazy if I made them some. Please and Thank-you!

no soup.........your a gas! Will you become the pastry nazi?

o.k. first heres the chocolate cake recipe I use the most. I've tried sooooo many other chocolate cake recipes and find this to be the most consistant and the best tasting, best crumb, best keeper. It's from Scott Clark Woolley, a well known cake decorator. I don't have his book in front of me at this moment but if you want the name I'd be happy to post it later. Fudge Brownie Cake, yeild: 2, 9" rounds sift together: 3 c. flour 1 1/2 c. cocoa 1 1/2 tsp. soda 1 tsp. salt reserve. Cream: 3/4 c. butter with 2 c. sugar Then add: until creamy 3 eggs 1 c. buttermilk 2/3 c. veg. oil 2 tsp. vanilla Then mix in you dry ingredients from above. To this you add: 1 1/2 c, boiling water or hot coffee. Nuts are optional Dirrections: Now heres the wierd part, baking. The author reccomends 275-300F oven and NOT hotter. They are allowed to cool in the pans for ONLY/exactly 5 minutes and then you turn them out and wrap them in plastic wrap, sealing them. This step can't be omited, it does steam the cake and that does make the cake better then if you air cooled it (I've done both, wrapped is better). I've also baked it at 350 and that does work but a cooler oven is better. Be forwarned this cake does not rise high in the pan, it will be pretty close to the level of batter when finished. I've mulitpled this recipe as high as x6 which fills a 20qt mixing bowl, with no problems. This cake can be baked in any size pan with-out changes. Why this isn't totally perfect: the top domes and cracks. Perhaps it needs a slight adjustment in leavening-but I've never played with it. I hope you all will try this recipe and then tell us what your think. On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being horrible and 5 being perfect (as in the best you've ever made) rate it. Then if you have a chocolate cake recipe you think is better then this, please post it....and we will move on from there working as a group.

It would nice if we could rank our opinions on each item with a 1-5 scale or similar and break each down into just a few catagories, like: moisture, texture/density/crumb, shelf life-does it become dry after one day, etc... So we need to agree upon the judging cryteria, right? I've never setting something up like this. So anyone who knows how to organize this-please help? I like the idea of finding a good savarin too! What else is hard to find a perfect recipe for?.......or we can add more items as we progress. Chocolate cakes seems like a good place to start. Most everyone needs a good recipe for this. I've tried ALOT and should be able to find my notes on some of the more famous recipes. I'll start by offering up my favorite chocolate cake recipe to date (asap, it's too late tonight). How should we do this? Do you all bake it and then you should offer up your recipe if you believe it's better? I'd like to try to limited the totally number of cakes we have to test bake in every catagory-for lots of obvious reasons. So if someone starts each catagory with a known good recipe that should save us time, no? What do you think, am I going about this all wrong?

Several times now I've worked with others off site thru pm's exchanging recipes, in search of "the best of". I'd like to bring this topic up to everyone........would you participate and share you best recipes, test others recipes, compare and see if we can all benefit from this? I'd like to see other pro's get involved, will you too be interested and participate? The main recipes I'm interested in networking on are basics: the best chocolate cake, the best white sratch cake, best yellow, best sponge, etc....These seem like simple cakes, well they are, but to a certain respect their very difficult because most don't compare in texture to a mix. Unforunately I live in a world that judges cakes to mixes and usually the mix wins in taste tests, especially white cake. Yellow cake which I get requests for, recipes doesn't really seem to exist (theres only a handful out there labeled yellow). You have butter cakes, sponge cakes, etc....but nothing really seems to come close to what consumers see in the box yellow mises. I feel like I'm already using the best carrot and banana cake recipes. Cakes that get flavor from ingredients other then butter, flour and sugar are much easier to achieve good taste from. But the simple chocolate, white and yellow cakes are very ilusive. I also don't see the challenge in genoise or non-american cakes.........seeing that their rarely used on their own as is or in a wedding cake. So what do you think? Unlike the other thread were they're working from one book, "Baking With Julia", you can bring the best recipe you've ever found from any source.......as long as we link to the recipe and excerpt or we put the recipe and directions in our own words we won't plagiarize and we'll respect fair use. So who's in?

Yes, the bows are choc. plastic.

Ted, I'm soooo glad to see you....actually I had you pictured much differently in my head. I like the reality version best!!! P.S. could you make those photos any smaller-jeeze I need a magnifying glass? Joni- that item was a pain in the butt!!! I bought those darn production molds (I never use and now reconfirm why I don't) and forced myself to use them. It was a joconde sponge, coconut daqiose bottom, filled with a coconut and pineapple mousse. They look bigger then they were, the chicks were about the size of my thumb nail (o.k. I do have large hands cause I'm tall). I actually I wanted to write a thread on those darn production molds. I find using them so time consuming that I refuse to use them.....and they weren't cheap! Maybe I will......... Neil-just yesterday I was really hot for unions for our industry. My hubby has a construction job going where they worked all weekend.....and I went with to watch. The construction union in Chi town is amazing! It makes me sooooo jealous I can barely stand it, really! So here I'm watching a construction job site (and my hubby thinks this is hard work/they weren't even mulit-tasking or breaking a sweat) where theres a dozen people making double time on Sunday. According to Scott the cheapest person working was making $70.00 per-hour that day! Hell, I work on holdiays and don't get one cent more! I really don't understand why we don't have unions wide spread. They make for a pain for the employeer, but they've gotten well used to it and the benefits (not literally meant in this sentence) are HUGE for the workers! They've also greatly increased the safety in his industry. really, why don't we have unions across the whole country? oops........maybe this should be a seperate thread too..........I'll start one.

I was a bad girl yesterday and bought the CIA book. I was pretty supprised it was at my local book store............and well, typical me, I just had to have it. It's very different upon first glance in that there really aren't that many recipes compared to similar books. I was busy last night and didn't get a real chance to study it, but I didn't notice any note to make variations on the base recipe. I'd LOVE your reviews of any of the recipes?! They generally look very simple, very sparse in ingredients: this makes me a little nervous-plus wheres the photos? One recipe per page, written very cleanly broken into percentages too! That is a nice look. But the simplicity makes me very nervous....., they don't seem to do anything special, totally the basics, tell me it's alright-that the recipes are really good? I actually have had several sucesses with Gisslens book, more so then from any similar high volume teaching text. I'm wondering specificly what you didn't like lepatissier? Help me stear clear of those, please? I ditto your opinion of German bakers Brian! They're recipes are sometimes sort of heavier then the French but I really like them (maybe cause I'm German, I don't know, I've never been there, but I like really "rich" items) they don't take a back seat to the French in my opinion. It's different then French, but your right it does deserve more respect and comment. Can you detail what you like in the composition book? Is it the look of the finished work, the components-is anything unique, what makes it interesting?

Wonderful! Looks like you did a great job!! Seeeeee baking really isn't hard or scarie. I'm glad you did this, welcome to my passion, it's actually pretty enpowering to know you can make anything if you follow the instructions or steps.

I went to a demo where they used sponges wrapped in a baggie (they liked the thin type found in produce sections of grocery stores) and dipped in chocolate like you ask about. Refridgerate to set. The sponge allows for an easy release verses a solid object where you'd need to rap it to release. I didn't think they looked so perfect, it's hard to dip to the same level each time. Perhaps if you stripe your chocolate it would take the attention away from the exactness a plain chocolate box needs. I was asked to do chocolate gift boxes for valentines this year. I opted for walls that would fall away as the person ate it, just my opinion.....cause no one ever eats the solid choc. box. Heres a photo of what I did, hope it helps.

OH MY GOD-YOUR A CRUEL WOMEN! You don't need to sleep...........get back here I got to hear the rest! You tease................(man could you give me some lessons on that art?) oh, p.s. I quit my job two weeks before 9/11, and went the same route-but chickened out of my own place. I have to hear you succeed-knock everyones socks off girl!