jimb0

I was thinking; you could also make an eggy cookie butter or eggy cookie ganache and use a two-ganache filling if you wanted to get some flavour in but not worry much about the texture.

Yes? It happens in a water bath, too. Honestly braising it in a pan in the oven can get you something just as good without all the fuss. Especially for something like this. The downside is whether heating up a house is an issue.

Keep in mind, too, that the cheeks will express water as they cook - so you can get away with a little bit less and not have to boil it off after the cook. I'm not against concentrates fwiw, it's how most mexicans cook mole too. But most of what gives most dark moles their flavour is dried chiles, which ship very well - if that's ever an interest. But yeah I think you can totally do a braise in these and they'll probably be solid choices, especially the red. Given that the black makes less mole, I'd save it for an accent - consider doing a coffee-rubbed skirt or flank steak and slicing it thin, then serving on a generous schmear of mole on the plate.

I tend to do mole from scratch but I've often braised beef or chicken in it and it's awesome. I'm assuming these are concentrates of a sort? You should be able to cut them with a little broth and do a slow braise in it.

I'm definitely becoming known in the neighbourhood for dropping off stuff, especially caramels, so god forbid you want to move to southwestern Ontario, you can get in on the action. Sometimes I worry about my neighbours getting too much stuff - I'm being a little hypocritical here, haha, because I don't want a bunch of food - but everyone seems to be enjoying it so far.

I doubt it, they have a lot of money invested in it and the IP, and these problems are fixable. Will they want to? Different story.

His brownface is one - terrible and worth being called out issue - even today, however, BA editors who are POC aren't being paid for the video appearances that their white coworkers are. They're being pigeon-holed when it comes to the food topics they're permitted to write about, while white writers are given free reign to write whatever they like. The culture there has a huge problem and while Rapoport may have been a big part of the problem, there needs to be further change.

One hopes! They seem nice and have friendly dogs. Someone dropped off a lovely potted daisy as a thank you for some caramels the other day.

New neighbours got a welcome package today: more sourdough jimbits (doughnuts), coffee and salted vanilla caramels, fresh-milled, whole rye, chocolate chip cookies, a jar of the jelly we made from the neighbour's crabapples, and some non-edibles: soap, some street and neighbourhood coasters.

I don’t buy that it makes much of a difference - the rxn of baking soda with an acidic component is pretty quick and tends to happen noticeably by the time I’m done stirring a batter and pouring it in. And if resting did much, baking powder would exhibit the same effect as the same thing is happening. but I’d be open to doing a side-by-side. in re single/double-acting baking powders - I tend to buy the latter but I’d argue the most popular / widely available one in Canada is still single-acting, so I’d guess this is location-dependent.

Brilliant work, dude.

Not to mention that a caramel will inevitably suck the water out of the doughnut despite your best efforts. I wonder if the best way to go might not be to make a crumb with a hard caramel ground up into bits, maybe with or without nuts. Glaze the doughnut then dip into the crumb - you'd still get the flavour and crunch of the caramel but in more manageable sizes.

I'd suggest that the way to go for something like this would be to plan the sort of thing you want to use the koji for, in terms of the products you'd like to make, and tailor it to that end - as it's a very versatile tool.

Unpopular opinion but I'm actually not a fan of Katz's writing. I did extremely like the Noma book and I'm enticed by the possibilities brought up in KA...still thinking about what kind of fermentation chamber to build to work with the koji examples. I'm not new to playing with microbes, but I am excited to work with moulds in depth for the first time.

sorry, I misunderstood your original post, I think; I thought the plan was for gianduja the whole time. the classic bourbon ball (which is usually just a dipped truffle) uses dry cake or cookies soaked in bourbon, and something similar would work well here, with a dried ladyfinger or eggy cake and some coffee, forked into a workable dough. I think that this plus your mascarpone ganache would work fine, tbh.

What about making a coffee buttercream ladyfinger cake ball sort of creation? You could roll it out and cut out discs to put in the chocolates, or small bits that you then pipe the gianduja around. That would give you a stable cakey texture but the flavours you're after without the excessive wetness of the coffee.

Have you thought about looking at how candied apples are made? You could caramelize the sugar, then stir it into the rest of the ingredients either wet or cooled and ground.

Honestly by the time they're soaked in coffee and covered in cream, I'm not convinced they add much beyond texture - but that said, what's your end goal for the chocolate? Like, what kind of texture would you prefer if you had all the flavours you want? Do you want there to be any kind of bite or crunch at all? I think the dark chocolate shell is the way to go; i'm not convinced the cocoa would be gritty, but I think it would be superfluous against the more elegant solution of the dark shell.

yeah, i've never had a problem with the flavour, it's just that i don't think the structural integrity is nearly as good. extra eggs might be a good way to go.

haha, sure, I use the term loosely because i also want a home deck oven

I cheat by getting my steel hot and close to the top, then turning on the broiler to finish the top.

also a good suggestion. I like the vitamix on low for a couple of seconds for use cases like this, but it really is just a couple of seconds else yeah, dust.

That’s a good idea but it still wouldn’t get eaten. I like to use cupcake tins because it’s easy to freeze individual muffins, which reheat really well. I generally eat very few carbs these days, so anything I bake that doesn’t get given away usually needs to be frozen. If I made dressing, I’d just end up having to freeze most of it, too, haha. I’ve been casually working on a good gluten-free cornbread recipe so that I can make cornbread when friends come over. I don’t like a lot of these versions (gluten or GF) that really minimize the corn; I prefer corn to be a notable majority of the dry ingredients. I think I just really love corn, haha.

Yeah I’ve never in my life rested cornbread. Sometimes I’ll do the buttered skillet method but mostly these days I bake it in a cupcake tin because there’s no way we’ll go through a whole batch before it’s stale.

I bought the breville because of the sealed jar, and I really like it. The cookie dough question makes me curious, though; while I don’t think it would work well, I kinda want to try it, now. I do like the adjustable slicing disc quite a bit, and think it works well. For me, the thing I never use is a dough blade.