FWED

I am thinking of taking a series of classes this summer from French chef Stephane Glacier and Swiss chef Stephan Itan. The series is for professionals and is built around a Chocolate Buffet. Is anyone here familiar with these chefs and their work. The series is not inexpensive and I want to make sure that its what I want before I commit to it. The classes are a total of five days and are sponsored by the World Pastry Forum. Thanks.

Thanks Dorie. And now the taste results. Everyone at the birthday dinner loved the look and especially the taste of the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise. In fact I have been instructed to save the recipe and do it again for a birthday this summer. The "birthday boy" labeled it as "A Keeper". Thanks again Dorie.

The senior "birthday boy' requested the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise for his birthday dessert. Well the location of the birthday dinner being away from home it was decided to do the dessert in an individual serving size and transport it to the dinner site. So I followed the recipe as it was written but instead of making the dacquoise in sheet I made it into rounds following the same technique as for the rectangles. I did roast the pineapple in rounds instead of quarters but everything else was done as written in the recipe. It is composed of layers of roasted pineapple, whipped white chocolate ganache, and a coconut and almond decquoise. Below is a photo of the dessert.

I have had a request for the "Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise" as the cake of choice, by a Birthday Boy, to be served at his birthday dinner. In looking over the recipe I noticed that I was going to have a number of egg yolks left over. Well says I then it's time to do something with them like a lemon tart. So last night I did the French Lemon Cream Tart and since it is going to work where they are celebrating Mardi Gras it is decorated appropriately. I used a cake stensil and colored sugars. The purple, green, and yellow are the colors of Mardi Gras. I'll let you know how the Dacquoise turns out.

Your original Callabeut recipe is interesting because it calls for sugar. The original recipe from the Cocoa Barry Mycryo brochure that I have calls specifically for powdered sugar. In this country powder sugar is different from plain sugar because it has about 3% cornstarch add to it. Ah the mystery deepens.

Made some molded chocolates for Valentines day this year and even had enough to take to a gathering of egullet foodies. The white chocolate Kugelhophs are filled with a white chocolate, butter, and champagne ganache. The dark chocolate ovals are filled with a Kona Coffee milk chocolate ganache. The white chocolate rounds are filled with a white chocolate ganache flavored with black tea and peppermint. The colored dark chocolate hearts are filled with fleur de sel caramel sauce. I must say the the salt/caramel sauce has been a bigger hit than I had anticipated. I don't know how others do it but I spray my molds with a light coat of cocoa butter and let that cool then apply the lustre dusts with a brush (i used 2 colors on the hearts) and fill with chocolate. The Kugelhoph were sprayed with a light dusting of brown colored cocoa butter. Sometimes I use the chef rubber colored cocoa butters and some times I color my own cocoa butter by adding oil based pastry and candy colors ( these I have found at a local confectionery supply).

Thanks John I had forgotten about that thread.

The original recipe that I have from Cacao Barry calls for heating a third of the puree with powdered sugar and then adding the mycryo and mixing well. Then add the remaining puree at 3 degrees C. Perhaps the problem is adding the cold puree to the original and having the mycryo crystallize thus causing the strange texture. My notes do stress to mix well. I might suggest mixing the second part of the puree into the first part with an immersion blender. Another thought, did you use plain sugar or powdered sugar? I have only used this recipe once and don't remember if I had the problem or not. Hope this helps.

Well I have never tasted Michael's confections first hand but I have made molded chocolates and used his recipes for the fillings and I must say they are wonderful. Now, how can I manage a trip to California to taste them first hand? LOL

For me the decision to refrigerate molded chocolates depends upon the temperature in my storage area and the ingredients in the ganach. I don't make molded chocolates commercially. I make small batches just for family, friends, neighbors, egullet get- togethers, and such. During the winter there is a cool are in the house that stays between 55 and 60 degrees F and I keep them there. During the summer the temp climes to 75 or so degrees so I keep them in air tight containers in the refer. If the ganache contains alcohol, glucose, inverte sugar, and/or butter I am more likely to leave them out of the refer as these are natural preservatives.

Hi Skwerl. You might try Amoretti for apple flavorings. Their web site is www.amoretti.com and they do have a toll free number. When I'm looking for flavorings I have called them and they have responsive and have even sent samples for me to try. Tell them you have gone to the World Pastry Forum. I use their champagne compound for sorbet and ganache recipes. The products are not inexpensive so I recommend getting samples and try them out on a sample batch before buying the larger tubs. Although it doesn't say so I have used their compounds for ganaches.

Sorry to hear about the situation. Is there any chance of giving the boss an ultimatum. That the baking kitchen isn't big enough for the boss's wife and the head baker. And so either the wife stays out of the kitchen and doesn't mess with the product or the head baker walks. Don't know if that would work but its worth thinking about. maybe some time off will bring him to his senses when business begins to suffer.

Kids love pizza. So try a dessert pizza. It starts out with a very large sugar cookie. This could be made from scratch or from prepackaged dough baked in a 1/2 or full sheet pan. The cookie is then frosted with a mixture of 2 parts cream cheese to one part of kool whip (for example 2 pounds of cream cheese to one part of kool whip). Then arrange a variety of fresh fruits in a pattern across the top. Seasonal fruits could be used. Canned could be used in a pinch especially if color is needed. Be creative with the design. You can also glaze the fruit for a very eye catching look. I have used this very easy dessert for large groups on several occasions and it always seems to disappear quickly. Enjoy, Fred

In the not to distant past there was another thread here on egullet on why cheesecakes crack when baked. You might want to go back and try and find that thread as it has several things that might apply to your problem. In the other thread one of the points that is made is that the eggs should be added at the last minute and beaten as little as possible. Bkeith says " What causes a cheesecake to firm up (and crack if over baked) is the egg proteins. And the more you work those proteins, the more readily they're going to want to shrink if over baked". Also in that thread it is pointed out by more than one contributer that the cheesecake is finished cooking when the outer edge is slightly raised and the center is still jiggly. If your entire cake is puffed and firm to the touch it may be acting more like a soufflé than a cheesecake which would explain the shrinkage as it cools. Hope this helps.

Well about every two weeks we get together with close friends for dinner. When it is at their house I am asked to provide an appetizer and a dessert and when I am the host they are asked to do the same. This time I was asked to do an apple pie but to do something different. So here it went. Below is the photo of the "different apple pie and ice cream". It consists of a pie pastry shell filled with apple slices sautéed in butter, sugar, and lemon zest topped with a caramel sauce. The ice cream is a cinnamon/apple spice vanilla. The sauce is more of the caramel. The pic shells were made of pie dough rolled out and cut into circles with a large circular cookie cutter. These were then baked on a flexy pan turned upside down ( you could also use a muffin tin turned upside down). The pie dough drapes naturally to the contours of the pan.

As one who grew up eating this very cake during the 40's and 50's I would like to add my thoughts. As I remember it the maraschino cherries were there mainly for the color and at least in our house the cake was always served with whipped cream and the beverage of choice was strong black coffee. The taste of the cherries was minimal. Looking back on it now the things that I remember most were the caramelized sauce, the pineapple, and the cake. I might suggest that it be served as a tall slice(say about 1 1/4 inch thick) of a yellow cake jelly role filled with pineapple mint mouse. The slice of cake would be topped with a brown sugar caramelized pineapple slice and a maraschino cherry in the center. A light caramelized sauce could be drizzled over the pineapple and cake. The cake could be accompanied by a scoop of rich vanilla ice cream and of course strong black coffee and wonderful conversation with good friends.

Has anyone had problems with the highly decorated pans releasing the cake once it is baked? A couple of years ago I purchased (at great expense) and used a couple of different Nordic Wear non-stick mini bunt pans. They were highly detailed and are still available. Once the cakes were baked and I had waited the suggested 10 minutes for them to cool they would not release. It might have been the type of cake (it was a light wt chocolate cake out of Chocolatier magazine). With subsequent tries I found that I needed to coat the pans with Crisco or butter and flour even though the pans are listed as "non stick". I wrote to Nordic Wear but received no answer. I also found that Bakers Joy and Pam did not seem to work as well as butter or Crisco. I still have the pans but don't use them as much because of the hassle and have been hesitant about buying others.

Last night I made and eat a mini exotic orange cake. The recipe and more information on this cake can be read in the Exotic Orange Cake thread. Here are some photos. The gold cake disk is 4 inches so that gives you an idea of the size. And

I recently decided to try something different with the exotic orange cake by making it in an individual serving size. I recently bought an oval savarins mold made by Demarle. I used the original recipe but limited the cake to just one layer in the finished mini cake. I used the original amount of cream but increased the orange oil to one and one half teaspoons and added the zest of 4 oranges instead of 3 to intensify the orange flavor in the Bavaroise layer. The recipe made 20 of these mini cakes. It worked out very well and was a hit when I served to friends. Demarle has a web site at www.demarleusa.com. Here are some photos of the mini’s. The mini cakes are on 4 inch gold disks so that will give you an idea of the size of them.

Hi Desiderio. The reason I wrote the recipe as it is, with the gelee layer inserted later, is because the original cake that I made from the original World Pastry Forum class recipe called for the Bavarian cream layer to be sprayed with white chocolate. The cake is fabricated without the gelee layer and is frozen. It is then taken out of the freezer and sprayed with a mixture of 50% white chocolate and 50% cocoa butter. This gives the outside of the finished cake a velvet finish and provides a little bit of crunch when eating. The gelee is then poured into the reserved space. This makes a very neat, tailored presentation. I personally like the look of the sprayed white chocolate. If you are not going to spray the outside of the cake then you could make the gelee ahead of time and build the cake around it. Its all a matter of personal taste. I am presently working on a variation in the presentation of this cake and hope to have some photos of it soon. Fred

Congratulations on weighing as well as measuring. Many times this can solve a problem and not enough folks do it. I think if I were trouble shooting this at home I would increase the weight by 20% and then bake some of the cookies at 350 and some at 400 just to see what would happen. And yes according to Carol Walter in her book "Great Cookies" in the section on troubleshooting, increasing the oven temperature helps prevent cookies from spreading too much. Again good luck and keep trying.

The figure that we were given, for ice cream and sorbet stabilizers, (at the 3 day Ice Cream and Sorbet class presented at the World Pastry Forum by Sebastien Canonne of the French Pastry School) was .3% of the total weight of the mix. That would be 3gm in a 1Kg mix.

I have a question. Is the flour measured before or after sifting? According to Rose Levy Beranbaum (author of the cake bible and the cookie bible), if the flour is measured after the sifting it will most likely weigh 4 oz per cup. If the flour is measured before the sifting the weight will be 5 oz per cup. This is a 20% difference and could account for the spreading of the cookies. Before changing to shortening try measuring the flour before sifting and see what happens. Use the dip and sweep method of filling the measuring cup or for more accuracy weigh the flour. The weight of 2 and 1/2 half cups of AP flour is 12.5 oz according to Rose Levy Beranbaum. Hope this helps.

Well now we know what is going into the space vacated by Fork. Sue McCown, the” diva of desserts” has just announced that she will be leaving the W hotel and will open a dessert lounge in the old Fork space. The article appeared in the PI this morning. Check it out. Very Interesting.

Since this is the start of the berry season here in the Pacific Northwest I got an early start on it and made a Fraisier this weekend. The original recipe came form the book Dessert Circus by Jacques Torres. It is composed of: layers of biscuit cake sweetened with a sauce made of strawberry puree, simple syrup, and raspberry liquor; fresh raspberries and strawberries; and held together with a strawberry buttercream frosting. Needless to say a small slice goes a long way.