Cahoot

I think using only flour makes for a denser pastry cream than only starch, so a combination is used for a texture that's somewhere in the middle. They aren't *entirely* substitutable though - cornstarch is a more powerful thickener than flour, so you don't need as much of it to get the same final thickness. Some people mention a more noticeable starchy taste with a flour-only pastry cream. Finally, starch-thickened pastry creams can't be frozen, as the starch will break down, but flour-only creams can be frozen.

I've seen the Jacques Torres recipe come up frequently in discussions about the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. Do you find they live up to the hype?

Some cakes I've made recently. Tres leches cakes (sponge cake, white chocolate Chantilly, strawberries) Strawberry cake (vanilla cake, strawberry filling, rosewater buttercream) Chocolate caramel cake (yellow cake, caramel filling, chocolate buttercream) Pistachio rosewater cake (vanilla cake, rosewater ganache, pistachio buttercream) Papa cake with baby cake (chocolate cake, white chocolate cream cheese filling, chocolate buttercream) And some other pastries too. Strawberry tart (almond-pistachio cream, pastry cream, strawberries) Passion fruit tart (passion fruit cream, vanilla whipped ganache) Walnut tart Choux au craquelin (vanilla pastry cream, vanilla whipped ganache) Maple eclairs and choux Assorted sablés diamant (vanilla, lemon, chocolate)

@shain "Nothing fancy"?? Those look so good! I wish I could get that variety over here.

@pastrygirl and @Kerry Beal makes sense, thanks for the explanations. And that was a very interesting thread to read, it's funny seeing everyone else from 10 years ago asking the same questions I'm asking today about that method!

A couple of general questions about the mixing process for the folks here. I know there's been discussion on the "Valrhona emulsion" method here, i.e., hot liquid is poured onto melted or partially-melted chocolate. What's the purpose of doing this instead of say, pouring boiling liquid onto unmelted chocolate? Is it just easier temperature control? I think I've seen it said that you want to keep the ganache between 35-40°C (95-104°F) while making it, so is the entire point just that it's easier when your ingredient starting temperatures are closer to that range? I know that Valrhona also recommend always finishing with a hand blender, but not sure if that's related to this point. Also, for whipped ganache recipes, there's always a portion of the cream that's left cold and added to the fully-emulsified ganache at the end. How do you decide how to divide the cream? I've seen some recipes where it's simply divided in half - half is heated, half is left cold. I've seen other chefs say that the weight of the cold cream should be equal to the weight of the initial ganache (hot cream + chocolate + any invert sugars used). Even other recipes don't seem to follow any specific ratios. Of course, it may depend on the total ratio of cream to chocolate used for the whipped ganache, but in general, does it really matter how the cream is divided?

Apple turnovers. Happy with my progress on inverse puff pastry; it's far from perfect, but good enough for me!

Paris-Brest, classic but never disappoints. Does use a boat load of hazelnuts though.

Don't know how helpful this is, but Milk Bar makes their cereal milk by infusing toasted cornflakes in milk for 20 minutes, then straining but taking care to not push it through the sieve. Though I'm sure a soak and blend with the cream then straining, like mentioned by @jimb0 would work perfectly fine too and I imagine would extract more flavour.

Still citrus season, so made a citrus cake. Didn't turn out quite how I pictured as I was hoping for more of a colour gradient from the candied citrus slices (used Navel, Cara Cara, and blood orange plus lemons), but their colours got quite dulled after candying. Oh well. With orange buttercream and lemon cream/curd.

@jimb0 and @Kerry Beal thank you both for your suggestions! I didn't think about looking at brewing shops, but that is indeed very cheap. I also looked through my local bakery supply stores and found another store that I didn't know about which also sells it for a good price. No more being constrained by lack of availability of this ingredient anymore

I was just looking for something in the 1-2 kg range to last a comfortable amount of time. The 8.5 oz tubs would actually be fine if I didn't have to pay shipping, but with that it ends up being not worth it unless there are other items I also need from the store. I did see that Bulk Barn has it, but none of the stores close to me have had it stocked; shame since it would've been very convenient otherwise.

I live in Ottawa. I'm surprised to hear you and @jimb0 mention that you can find it pretty easily. The only place that I can find it for a good price is McCall's which has it in 1kg, 5k, and 11kg, but I only order from there infrequently when I need a lot of items from there to minimize shipping costs. Everywhere else I've been able to find glucose online only sells it in the smaller 321ml containers which are much less cost efficient.

Apologies if this was brought up before in case I missed it earlier in the thread. I know that invert liquid sugars are used to increase shelf life of ganache in bonbons by lowering the AW and also increase the smoothness too. However, I've also seen many ganache recipes not for bonbons (e.g. ganache montée, Namelaka cream) but for cakes and pastries that also use invert sugars, and it's often times an equal amount of glucose and Trimoline (e.g. 20g glucose + 20g Trimoline). In these applications increased shelf life from using invert sugars wouldn't matter, so what's their purpose? Is it just for a slightly smoother mouthfeel, or do they also affect the consistency or structure in other aspects? An example is this recipe. To add on to that, why do these recipes usually call for an equal amount of glucose and Trimoline? As far as I understand they'd both be fulfilling basically the same purpose (though I know they're not identical products, e.g. different water contents for one), so I wonder why those recipes can't be slightly reformulated to be simpler and just use one invert sugar. And as someone in Canada where it's hard to get glucose syrup as a home baker and basically impossible to get Trimoline, I'm also interested in how important they actually are to the recipe and what the effects would be if they were omitted or substituted - I've seen people substitute honey for Trimoline and corn syrup for glucose. And maybe the same answer to my first question will apply to this, but similarly many recipes for caramel also call for invert sugars too, added after the caramel is formed. To clarify, I don't mean invert sugars heated with the sugar to prevent it from crystallizing, but rather they're heated with the cream used for deglazing the caramel. An example is this recipe.

Orange flavour was great - didn't have orange concentrate so I just boiled down a crap ton of orange juice instead for the pastry cream. Thanks for the inspiration!

I was gonna make réligieuses anyway, but planned to do something like mocha. However, I liked the look of @trisme11's réligieuses so much that I decided to do that instead. Some of mine are a bit loopy though and I'm still practicing trying to get completely clean, straight edges for the fondant. Orange pastry cream, orange marmalade, orange Chantilly.

Lemon meringue tart. I originally planned in just doing a plain lemon tart with a neutral glaze brushed on and a white chocolate drizzle, but since I don't have any neutral glaze nor pectin NH to make it I thought I could substitute with strained apricot preserves. However as soon as I dabbed on the (very orange) preserves I realized it was NOT a good idea 😂. So I decided lemon meringue it is.

I agree with what Pete said. The lock-in is a bit trickier than with classic puff, but I actually find the rest of the lamination easier. The butter block is less temperamental and more pliable because of all the flour that's been mixed into it.

Pastéis de nata, one of my favourite ways to use up puff pastry scraps.

What is the actual ratio of sugar:water for 30° Baumé syrup? The textbook Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas says: "Like simple syrup, 30 baumé syrup is an essential ingredient for the pastry chef. The difference between simple syrup and 30 baumé syrup is in the ratio between sugar and water. 30 baumé syrup calls for 137 percent sugar to 100 percent water." When I google for 30° Baumé recipes, they all show 135% sugar to water, so very similar to the Suas formula. However, in the Suas Baumé:Brix conversion table, it shows 30° Baumé = 54° Brix. As Brix is essentially the density of sugar, this would actually mean 117.4% sugar to water (which the very same table also shows). Bo Friberg's The Advanced Pastry Chef 's Baumé:Brix conversion table shows 30° Baumé = 55.2° Brix, which implies 123% sugar to water. Paula Figoni's How Baking Works has a formula for an approximate conversion between the two: Brix = Baumé/0.55. Using this gives 30° Baumé = 54.54° Brix, which implies 120% sugar to water. So my question is, why is there such an inconsistency between the actual recipes for 30° Baumé syrup that you find, and what you'd think the ratio should be from using Baumé to Brix conversions?

Made galette des rois again after asking for advice on it here, and after decreasing the amount of filling and adjusting the baking time it turned out better (though I think I still used too much filling - testing what's the upper amount that won't interfere with cooking). However I noticed that it fell in the center where I poked a hole and where all the scoring lines met. Next time I'll try not making that hole and making sure to give it some space when doing the scoring so it doesn't create such an unsightly collapse in the middle.

Ah that's a great idea. I was using just pure orange juice, but the problem is that the flavour is fairly weak. Reducing it makes perfect sense, especially since I've seen people do that for making orange curd too. Did you reduce the orange juice yourself or use store-bought orange concentrate?

I absolutely love its look, so clean! Do you mind sharing your recipe for the orange pastry cream? I've struggled to get a strong orange flavour in pastry cream in the past; do you just have to use a ton of zest?

Chocolate tart using Philippe Conticini's recipe. Bonus tartlet.

I don't think there is, short of using another recipe for the filling. I use Stella Park's method for blueberry/cherry/strawberry-rhubarb and other fruits like those, which is basically 25% sugar to the weight of the (prepared) fruit and 6% tapioca starch (she uses 5.5% but I like a tiny bit more), and it's cooked to 213°F/101°C in the center. Bringing it all the way to a boil in the center means that juices inevitably bubble out and make a mess, so the only way to avoid that is to use another recipe that doesn't require cooking to that high of a temperature. This method admittedly doesn't make the prettiest pies post-bake, but the tradeoff is that you get consistently perfectly-set fillings and I prefer the texture from using tapioca starch over other starches.