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This past Saturday, we had an amazing 9 course tasting meal at the Breton restaurant La Porte in Montreal. It was the perfect way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. The dessert was a Kouigne-Amann, served with a salted caramel sauce and a buttermilk sorbet. I'd never heard of this dessert, much less tasted it, and it was divine. During dinner, we talked about what we wanted to do before our 20th anniversary. For one of my goals, my wife has set me the task of learning how to make a perfect Kouigne-Amann. Can anyone recommend some top quality Breton cookbooks? In English or French? (Preferably French?) Thanks in advance.

Fat substitution question for you all: pardon the generalising, but I find that a lot of cocoa-base bundts use oil & a lot of non-cocoa ones use butter. I'd like to adapt some of my favourite non-cocoa recipes to use oil, but am coming across some conflicting info: most sources suggest .75 oil, though not all. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, I know it is not quite 2013 here in New Jersey but after a long period without an ice cream maker I am back to making ice cream and would enjoy a discussion of recipes and technique. I am to the point where I can make a base which yields a satisfactory texture or a base which gives a satisfactory taste, but sadly not yet both at the same time. After recently getting a Cuisinart ICE-100, the first recipe I used was Rose Levy Beranbaum's Vanilla Ice Cream from The Cake Bible (p.285). Texture was great but the alcohol tasted a little funny. I tried reducing the cream while keeping the alcohol, but the mouthfeel suffered. I tried adding a bit of Karo but that didn't really help. Then I stopped using alcohol, went back to about 20% butterfat, but used a small amount of Lyle's Golden Syrup and xanthan gum to hopefully improve texture. Flavor was excellent but the texture was slightly icy, and the melting characteristic was more like commercial ice cream than homemade. Plus the ice cream was rock hard from the freezer. Next I added more Lyle's which improved the texture, but now the ice cream is far too sweet and has a pronounced molasses flavor. I prefer ice cream that is not very sweet. This precludes dumping in a lot of sugar to improve the texture and reduce the freezing point. I'm thinking dextrose and/or atomized glucose syrup might help reduce the freezing temperature and improve texture. But I don't have these ingredients. My best result was with Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe, but I'd like to replace the alcohol with something. Does anyone have ideas?

We'll be visiting the Ft Pierce area in February. Staying for a couple of weeks. We're looking for recommendations as to the best places to dine. We eat just about anything, but would be particularly interested in places that serve the best fish or steaks or Mexican or Cuban. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone! I was wondering if anybody have done salted caramel in the thermomix before. Sometimes I have to make it 4 times a day, and all the stirring is making me wonder if I can make it a little easier. That's my recipe: 278g Cream 167g Glucose 176g Sugar 167g Milk 139g Butter 7,6g Fleur de Sel 7g Vanilla paste So everything (except cream) goes to a pot, heat until 147C (stirring constantly!) and then I stir in the warm cream. Does anybody knows if that would work in a thermomix??? I'll appreciate any inputs Thanks guys!!!

On the subject of modern plated desserts: I have noticed a recent trend that has caught my attention - the flexible/pliable ganache (sometimes called the flexicurd). Now, I have made a few recipes for these types of desserts, which have turned out well (Specifically the Alinea Cookbook chocolate pliable ganache). Another recipe can be seen here on page 68. (ingredients listed below) 375 g chocolate 1 sheet gelatin 50 g water 100 g sorbitol 3 g agar 50 g glucose 900 g heavy cream 2 g salt Now, my question is this: does anyone know of a good way to modify this recipe (or of any others) to accommodate other flavors? I have seen some very interesting pliable ganaches, such as yogurt, beet, grapefruit, coconut, etc. However, there doesn't seem an obvious way to modify these recipes. For a lot of dessert components this is as simple as changing a fruit puree to another flavored liquid. I am not so confident in this due to the fact that the recipes contain a lot of chocolate, which contributes significant textural properties. To further complicate this, I know some hydrocolloids are sensitive to pH (pectin) or ion concentrations (LA gellan, carrageenan). Anyone have experience with this?

I am hoping an experienced baker-gifter may have an answer for me. I would be very interested to know the shelf life of various cookies like shortbread/sable, chocolate chip, crinkle cookies, biscotti and the like. Friends and family have asked me to make these for teachers' and other gifts (for co-workers, the vet, etc). I know full well that some of the recipients won't eat them as soon as they get them, so I want to label them with small "enjoy by..." notes. I know amaretti cookies last for ages, and many other cookies seem to sit for months on grocery store shelves. The recipes I have are with butter, and regular household ingredients (so no invert sugar to prolong freshness, and no shortening to replace the butter etc). So what shelf life can I expect these cookies to have?

this week, at a little restaurant in Venice, Italy, I had a creme brulee (crema catalana on their menu) that arrived at the table in flames, the flames being used to brulee the sugar. after the meal i asked the waiter what liquid had been used for the flambe, and he showed me a little plastic spray bottle, the only word on which i could read was Caramel. he said that the sugar was just sprinkled over the creme, some of the liquid added, and lit. the sugar crystals when it arrived at the table looked more the size of normal granulated sugar than castor sugar, but by the time the flame had gone out some 40 seconds later, there was a lovely thin film of caramel on top of the creme brulee. Does anyone know what this liquid was, and where I may get my hands on some (preferably a UK source), but to be honest, just knowing what it was will help me find it. Many hours of googling my fingers raw has got me nowhere at all.

Has anyone seen this book? I've sort of been eyeballing it the last few weeks, and just saw today that its apparently not on pre-order anymore, but available to ship from Amazon. Looks like a nice CIA text on dessert, heres the table of contents: Ch1 The Basic Elements 1 Ch2 Pre-Desserts 105 Ch3 Plated Desserts 163 Ch4 Dessert Buffets 261 Ch5 Passed-Around Desserts 331 Ch6 Cakes (Entremets) 381 Ch7 Petits Fours (Mignardises) 449 Anyone have thoughts on this one? I'm tempted, but dont really know much about it. LINK

Hi everyone!!! Does anyone have a good neutral glaze recipe that doesn't use pectin but still uses some thermo reversible gels? Even recipes with gelatin leaves are already a big help! In my country is rather common to do mirror glaze (or sort of) using cornflour, but as you can imagine, it doesn't look or taste the same as the professional glazes do. Because it's only for a small amount of fruit tarts and pastries I would like to be able to do my own glaze instead of buying those 5kg buckets. Thanks guys!!!

I attempted to make genoise, the Italian sponge cake, back in the late 1990s. After several turns, I gave up. A few days ago, I decided to try again. The end result was better, but I still had tiny balls of flour in the mix. Any suggestions? Here's what I did - I used half cake flour and half all-purpose flour, mixing the flours with salt and 2 tablespoons of the sugar; heated all of the eggs and the sugar to 90 degrees Fahrenheit over hot water then beat on high for 2 minutes followed by 12 minutes at medium speed of a stand mixer; sifted the flour and sugar mixture over the batter then gently folded the flour in; it took five intervals of folding; folded the vanilla extract and a bit of heavy cream with 1 cup of the batter then added the new mixture to the batter. I used a sheet pan. Well, the batter did deflate some and I still ended up with balls of flour. It tasted great though was less than an inch (less than 2.54 cm) thick. What is the secret to folding in flour without getting bits of it in the baked product? I have made a similar recipe using room temperature eggs and adding the flour while the mixer was turned on. No flour balls, but the baked cake does shrink quite a bit; I used a sheet pan and cupcake pans. Thanks for your help!

Hi there. I was hoping someone could give me some ideas on desserts to make using dijon mustard. Nothing comes to mind, and there's not much I can find online either. Thanks in advance!!

Hi guys! I got excited to post something as this is my first one. So, the top 3 desserts I like to eat when I was still in Philippines were Halu-halo (literally means mix-mix in english), brazo de mercedes and chocolate crinkles. 1. HALU-HALO is one of the popular food during summer. This is basically: shaved ice with evaporated milk, sugar, and the following: - nata de coco (coconut cream based on a google search, these are cube-like jellies), - sweetened red beans, - sweetened bananas, - cooked sago or tapioca, - ube or purple yam, - leche flan (this is also one of the best desserts to eat), - macapuno (made of coconut), - sweetend jackfruit, - sweetened kamote (this is similar to sweet potato but caramelized), - sweetened kaong (sugar palm fruit) - and topped with a scoop of ice cream. These fruits are usually bought in jars (found mostly in Asian grocery stores). You basically put the fruits at the bottom, add sugar (if you want because almost all the fruits are sweetened so it's already sweet), then you fill the cup/bowl with shaved ice and add milk. And most importantly, mix it well before you eat because you don't want to eat shaved ice with milk only and then eat the really sweet fruits last. 2. BRAZO DE MERCEDES Yah, I think the name is Spanish? I tried making this but I just failed. It's kinda hard to do and takes a lot of patience but it's really worth it. This is my favourite cake! In Philippines, most bakeries sell this but my favourite is from Goldiluck's which is located in shopping malls. Brazo de Mercedes recipe 3. CHOCOLATE CRINKLES These are my favourite chocolate cookies! I think this one isn't really from Philippines but they are really popular. I was kinda shocked when I came here in Canada, because they don't sell these cookies in the bakeries I've been to so I tried baking these on my own. Since my post is getting long, I'll put the recipe as a link at the bottom. http://sweb2.dmit.na...rinkles-recipe/ I hope you enjoyed my post! Happy eating and baking everyone!

Whilst on holiday in Skiathos this Summer we visited a pattiserrie in the town a couple of times to take away a box of his absolutely amazing cakes. They were'nt anything like the dense oily phyllo pastry type cakes we've seen and eaten before but wonderfully custardy confections with a very light almost 'brick' type pastry. Of course these could just have been the bakers own creations but I'd love to try replicating something similar. There seems to be a real scarcity of recipes for greek pastries though. Can anyone reccommend any books or websites that might get me started?

Just two days ago I received my order for Christophe Felder book ' patisserie'. I was so excited walking out from the post office only to come home to find out that it is written in French! So I went online and hunt around to see of this awesome book actually comes in English version, it does and it will be published on february next year! I pre ordered the English version, but right now I am just picture browsing on the French one. Tee hee I would highly recommend this book for dessert lovers because of its step by step photos and the amazing stuff and ideas in it. It's pink too!

Hi everyone, I'd like to make some eclairs to take to an event with lots of people bringing food - because there'll be a variety of (tasty) stuff I'd like to make my eclairs really small so they're not too filling and people can try them (also I think they'll look cute). Is there any reason I couldn't pipe out very skinny choux lines and hopefully end up with dainty little puffs? Ideally the final baked size would be about 8 - 10cm long and less than an inch wide... but i'm wondering if they may not expand properly or have a solid shell or something... anyone know? Cheers, Stuart

Is it possible? I've always done mine in small batches (meaning 14 or 28 at a time) in a regular oven; I am going to be getting requests for 150+ and I would really like to use the convection oven (low fan). I'll have time to try it out mid-Sept when things calm down, but thought I'd see if anyone is making it like that now; or has in the past and can either reassure me it's possible or save me from wasting the ingredients Basically, it's an egg foam (whole eggs beaten with sugar), with melted chocolate and butter that has a hot sugar syrup added to it, then that is added to the eggs and it's baked in a bain marie. I always get a crust on mine, it breaks up when the cake is compressed down after coming out of the oven (I always push down on the whole ones with the bottom of a tart pan, or for my individuals, a smaller round pan that fits inside the 3" round pan. This way, there is little chance the cake will be "sunken" on the sides - but if that were to happen, we'd just fill it out with some semi-firm ganache.

this is my recipe that i use for chocolate pudding--when made in very small batches, it always comes out nice and creamy and i can freeze it too! but when i try making it in larger numbers, obviously i need a larger pot and inevitably it ends up getting grainy the majority of the time and it always gets burnt bits in the bottom of the pot since theres so much surface area 1g milk 8# sugar 7c corn starch 52oz egg yolks 44c semisweet chocolate 12oz vanilla 24oz butter i know i've got the weights i use for corn starch and chocolate laying around in one of my notebooks, but thats the jist of it i dissolve the corn starch in some milk, heat up the milk, sugar, and egg yolks. once thats nice & hot, i add the corn starch slurry and bring that to a boil. normally in smaller quantities i would add the chocolate directly to this mixture to melt it, but in the larger quantities i'll melt the chocolate separately and once the corn starch mixture has come to a boil, i'll add the melted chocolate and bring it all together. finally once its cooled down a bit i'll add the butter to finish it. my question is, in order to keep this recipe, is there any...."shortcut" (and i say that in quotations because i don't mean shortcut for time, more like a tip that would help me cook such a large quantity with a greatly reduced chance to make it go grainy) i tried adding the pudding over the chocolate and let the residual heat melt it, but that just ended up leaving me huge chunks of chocolate---which i brought the cooked pudding back up on the heat and melted the chocolate pieces, and strangely enough, it came out creamy i just love how tricky it can be multiplying a small recipe x 100 haha well, any assistance with this topic i would really appreciate it thanks!

Hi everyone! I was wondering if someone can give me a good white chocolate brownie recipe, I've been changing a few brownie recipes and everything messes up when I change dark chocolate for white chocolate. Butter seems to split and consistency gets totally wrong. I'm just looking for a fudgy and dense white chocolate cake that resembles a brownie. Thanks in advance! Lia

This is normally one of the most reliable cake recipes I have; it's an amaretto-espresso cake that's so simple that I can make it in my sleep. Any ideas why it did this rather than caking up correctly as it normally does? The moulds were filled to 1/2 full, which should have left plenty of room for expansion. All is not lost - the cake is actually cooked properly and will become some version of Darienne's "cake doohickeys". But that's not what I was shooting for! (ps - at 10,000 feet, my barometric pressure doesn't vary more than about 50 millibars between sunny and cloudy days, and rapid weather changes don't happen here.)

Last week I ruined a wonderful chocolate cake...didn't hear the timer...and made cake balls/pops/truffles with the crumb, dipped in tempered 70% chocolate. An interesting first. They were delicious. Oh my. Gave them all away. Serious complaints were forthcoming from friends who are attending next weekend's Annual Dog Weekend. So, I found an old...not too old I hope...Angel Food Cake mix in the cupboard and will add some 52% chocolate to the resulting crumb and then dip the balls into tempered 70% chocolate again. Question: what would be the shelf life of the "Cake Doodads"? They'll be eaten Friday August 17 until they are gone. How early next week can I actually make them? (I need to make as much as I can ahead of time to accommodate my old and doddering bod.) Thanks.

Quick question, oh great and knowledgable bakers out there. I'd like to flavour an Italian Meringue Buttercream icing with Manjar / Dulce de Leche / Arequipe. I'm certain it's possible, but I'd like to know if anybody out there has done it, and at which point in the process you added the Manjar, and how much Manjar you think I can get away with (I'd like the flavour to be quite strong) without compromising the icing texture. This is for three tiered christening cakes; the cake inside is apple spice with walnuts and raisins, and under normal circumstances I'd just cover them with Manjar and that would be it, but the customer has requested gum-paste decorations and I know from prior disasters that Manjar is too moist for that work. (And yes, I'll post pictures of the cakes when they're done and decorated.)

I like making desserts. I just don't like to pay for them. The cost of concocting ice creams and bruless is wreaking havoc on my finances. Given that most people only put up with me due to my culinary skills, I'd like to add to my repertoire one of the great Southern classics: the chess pie. The combination of scotch efficiency and massive cardiac risk embodies everything I loved about Tennessee. However, given that I didn't much care for the other 98%, I don't live there anymore, and nobody in Wisconsin knows how to prepare them. Can anyone suggest a recipe? Bonus points if it has enough cholesterol to make it a viable method of assassination.

Ok, first of all, hi everyone! This is my first time posting here. I have been a long time lurker, but I am working my way further and futher up the chain at the bakery I work at (to the point where I get some creative control over product YAY!), and I was looking for a good place to use as a springboard for ideas and discussion. So here's where I am. I am trying to create some kind of Red Vines based dessert, because I have a mad, and wildly obsessive love affair with them, and to my knowledge, it is an avenue that I haven't seen taken. My first thought was a Red Vine cupcake. I have seen a recipie for a Red Vine filling that a competitor on Cupcake Wars has made (and won with!), however, I am looking for someting slightly more all encompassing than a filling. My idea is a Red Vine Italian Meringue Buttercream. Do you guys think this would even work?! I have yet to try it out, but I plan to soon. Basically I was going to melt the Red Vines down in to a sugar syrup, and use it like I would the sugar syrup in IMBC. My only reservations are about the texture that might result from doing this, and the overall flavor this would impart. Any ideas?!

I want to make mascarpone sorbet or sherbet (a la Thomas Keller and others) but cannot find mascarpone. Is there a reasonable substitute for this application? I've seen several variations, all including cream cheese, heavy cream and either sour cream, butter or creme fraiche. Pretty sure these would be acceptable in a savory dish but I'm not sure about a frozen dessert. Your experience is appreciated.