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This is one of my all time favorite desserts. Have had several versions of this. What should a novice home cook know about this dessert? Is there a basic recipe that could be of help here? Where should one go for the best of its kind in the US? Where in the world could one get a sampling of some of the best panna cottas?

Is it possible to make a cake with no eggs and no dairy? My son is allergic to both (and peanuts) and his birthday is coming up.

Does anyone have a good recipe for Boston cream pie? I've never made one and figure it's just a yellow sponge cake with a custard filling and chocolate glaze. I've got a friend coming over tomorrow to bake and figured I'd just assemble the components based on recipes from the Cake Bible. Any pitfalls I should know about?

I'm off to WS for some Friday afternoon stress relief shopping. I need a bunch of new baking pans - cake, loaf etc. The question is, should I get non stick or stainless steel?

Mamster eats a lot of dessert. +++ Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.

I'm in the process of starting up a small wholesale dessert company in Long Island NY (i'm staying away from NYC) servicing caterers, restaurants, country clubs etc... I would like to know what everyone would like to see produced. I will be doing specialty cakes, a line of individual desserts, holiday specialties, etc.... The shop will be 95% wholesale, unless we decide to do a small retail counter (there is foot traffic so this maybe a good possibility). I will be doing specialty cakes by appointment only to the general public in the beginning. The name of teh company is Sweet Karma. I have 1 partner, its going to be me, him, his wife and my wife. We have divided the duties and attacked everybodys strong points so I see it going in a very positive direction. I am starting out with minimal equipment in the beginning. Full size convection, 20 qt Hobart mixer with all the attachments-plus 12 qt, 5 qt mixer, stand up refrigeration and freezer, tables, etc... Anybody have some tips, ideas, encouragement, etc....?

And Boston Cream Pie...see related thread. And Burnt Sugar Cake? And Orange Chiffon Cake? Tomato Soup Cake? Damn, it was good. Remember the recipe booklet that came with your mother's Sunbeam Mixmaster? I used it for The Jiffy Two Egg Cake; probably the first thing I ever baked. It wasn't very good, but it gave me the confidence to move on to the Good Stuff, like Devil's Food with Seven-Minute Frosting. Oh...and Queen ELizabeth Cake. Any others you would like to see on a dessert platter, as an alternative to something dusted in Green Tea?

I know that there is a buttermilk thread out there somewhere, but I wanted to see if the pastry chefs and bakers have come up with different ways to incorporate buttermilk into their dishes. I noticed that Karen Barker of Durham's Magnolia Grill makes a buttermilk cheesecake, and buttermilk pie is a Southern staple. The tang of good, full-fat buttermilk could be used much more frequently in desserts than what I currently see. Anyone have any great new ideas?

What Chinese sweet pastries, candy and desserts do you like? Are there any that you used to eat as a kid but can no longer find them? (Edited - Just ignore this part if it's not relevant to you. Was just wondering about this.) Do you prefer Western sweet pastries / candy / desserts to Chinese ones?

Hi there, does anyone have a recipe for the milk cake sweets i got addicted to during Diwali? it would be much appreciated! thanks~

Childhood Chic (Julia Moskin) (from today's DIGEST. You may have to scroll down for the appropriate link.) If you go to the NYTimes web site, you can hear a slide show of New York's best cupcakes and what various places are doing all over town. What are your favorite cupcakes, and where do you get them? Soba

Hi. This is my first post here. I saw a bunch of posts about the Cheesecake Factory - specifically in Hackensack, NJ- and saw things like the food comes frozen and wanted to point a few things out and shed some light on some of the myths and urban legends of the super-hyped disneyland of a restaurant that is the CF. I consider that job to be one of the most horrible places to work of all the jobs I've had in my waitressing career, so what I say I consider to be unbiased. 1. The food is extremely fresh and every single thing is made when you order it. Very little is pre-prepped. Nothing is frozen or microwaved. In fact, they will not even press down on a steak with weight like they do in any other chain restaurant to speed the cooking time, that is a fireable offense. So, if you order well, you are going to wait. They don't want the steak losing any of its juices -which happens when you weight down a steak. This is one of the reasons why your dining experience will be the longest in your life and you will sit an average of 2 hours or more at your table after waiting 1 to 2 to 3 hours. This also is what causes the 3 hour waits. When you order chicken madeira, for example, the chef reduces veal stock (the real thing, not instand bouillion or anything like that) and makes the madeira sauce ingredient by ingredient to order. When you order chicken fingers for your children thinking it will be fast, they do not flour them until they are ordered and your children will not eat for at least 15 minutes if not 20. If you order pizza, they roll out the dough then and there. It is the ONLY chain restaurant I have worked in where the cooks really cook and do not just mix together a bunchy of pre-prepped or frozen stuff. There are like 7 cooking stations, saute, broil, pizza, salad, fry, and I am sure something else I forget. Food will not go out unless the plate looks perfect to specification. Many times, they will make the cook remake something because something is not perfect. The cooks really cook everything just like a real restaurant. That is a reason for the "open kitchen" so that you can see them cooking everything and also so you know how clean and wonderful the kitchen is. 2. The waits are almost deliberate. That is why no reservations, no call-ahead. And, if in every CF there are 2 to 3 hour waits virtually every night of the week, why don't they build the place bigger when they open a new one? Because they want you to wait 3 hours, it is part of the hype. Before we opened the restaurant, we had many meetings with silly music (they actually played the music that they call basketball players to the court with and said while all of the management and training staff ran down the aisle: Meet your new kitchen manager.. meet your new server manager. They had motivational speakers. It was dorky and I felt like I was in a freaky cult). Anyway, they shoved it in our heads many times that "people wait over 3 hours!!! to get into "our" restaurant. They want people to come in and think the place must be so fabulous if there is such a crowd waiting and dying to get in. Makes it almost exclusive-like, sort of. Why don't they try to figure out how to get food out faster and get people out faster? Because they don't want to! Too much actual cooking many, many different dishes for a restaurant that size takes a lot of time. Ticket times sometimes reach 45 minutes for appetizers. The most disorganized organization is what I called that place. They had exact procedures for everything, expeditors and at least 5 food runners per shift, managers walking around with head sets, yet food goes to the wrong table constantly, cooks make things wrong and somehow special orders (lite sauce, no mushrooms, etc) are not heard or not communicated, things aren't ready for the same table at the same time so they send out 2 entrees leaving 1 person without food for 15 minutes on a table.... All this adds up to longer times that people sit at tables and why it takes so long for you to get a table. 3. The beepers work until Sharper Image in the mall. When I worked there, the customers were told that when they got their beeper; customers went to Houstons and got a beeper, and to CF and got a beeper, whichever went off first was the place they went. Then, they left beepers all over the mall. They cost A LOT of money to keep replacing. So, now they tell you you can't leave the restaurant. It's a lie. 4. The cheesecake is made in a factory in Texas and is frozen and shipped. It is then thawed. That is why sometimes they run out, sometimes they do run out, other times, the bakery waits till they are out of something and *then* tells a manager and then the manager gets it from the freezer and it has to be thawed to be served. I don't think it's a big deal, it tastes good anyway. Imagine though, you are a waiter/waitress, someone asks for a recommendation for cheesecake.. You sell them on the Oreo cheesecake. You put it in the computer. You go to the bakery to the area where you would pick up your cheesecake for said table. There are several pieces of cheesecake, none are yours. "Run desserts, people. Don't just stand there." is shouted at you. So you run a few, come back and check and still no dessert for your table. The bakery staff is working on the line of people going out the door and no one is working on the desserts for tables. So, you go do something else for another table. "Run food. Let's go, food in the window! Let's get it out" is shouted at you. You are now in the weeds... You are sat 2 tables and they are looking around for a waitress. But, you dutifully run food. Go to 2 new tables. Both are not happy, one asks for kid's menus. We don't have any. Not happy. One table has no idea what to get, as they peruse the menu while you stand there fidgeting thinking about the other table's cheesecake. You make several suggestions thoroughly describing each dish (because most people do not know what something like Thai Chicken Pasta entails and everything has to be described and I must say whether or not I like this dish). This table decides they need more time. Phew, on to the bakery to get my dessert. I see the table waiting and try not to make eye contact, but I know they are looking around very anxious and almost annoyed, wondering what in the world could take so long to get a dessert. Go back to bakery. Bakery staff person tells you, sorry we are out of Oreo cheesecake, we just put it into the computer. Great, I am so glad they put it in now as opposed to when they really ran out so when I ordered it 15 minutes ago, the computer would have told me! So, now, after all that time, I have to go back to my table and tell them that sorry the wonderful Oreo cheesecake I talked you into is out of stock. There goes my tip and this leads to #5.... 5. I can not say how many times I heard: "you must make SOOO much money here" when I waited tables at CF. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that, I wouldn't have to wait tables... Sometimes, yes the money can be good, but not that much better than some other restaurants. In fact, I work somewhere now where the food is so cheap, the customers are cheap and miserable and I make much better money more consistently than I did at the CF even though the food is pretty expensive (a check for 2 people can be $75 EASY) and the clientelle supposedly a bit higher class. A. They made us tip out a minimum of 27 and a half percent of our tips, but more like a third plus some. So, on a Saturday night, if you have $150 in your pocket, you hand about $50 out to the busboy, foodrunner (even though you are constantly yelled at to run food no matter how busy you are and how long your tables are sitting there before you can get to them), and bar. B. People who wait 3 hours for a table are miserable and crabby and miserable, crabby people are usually miserable tippers. And, trust me I gave GREAT service and rarely scewed up. In addition, all the screw ups that happen due to the size of the place as I mentioned previously, cause mistakes to happen to your customer's food and then you get screwed on tips. C. Since every table has appetizers which can take 1/2 hour to 45 mins sometimes, and then the dinners take forever, and EVERYONE has dessert, you have no turnover. You can get 25% tips from all your tables, but you make more money if you can turn your tables faster. It is definitely quantity of tables versus quality of tips except in rare cases that makes a waitress money. D. If you work in smoking in the bar, the middle high-top tables are first come, first serve... people waiting for tables park themselves there and order drinks from the bar and take up your table while you make no money from them at all and there is nothing you can or are allowed to do about it. All of those factors add up to sometimes you make good money, sometimes not - when you bust your ass on very long shifts and deal with a lot of hostile, not so happy people and sometimes a very stressful work environment- it was all not worth it! The most I ever made was on a 14 hour straight through double with a 5 minute break while I shoveled food in my mouth sitting in a corner on a milk crate with someone yelling at me that I should hurry as it is unfair to the person watching my station; I felt like I was in a war zone by the end of the night- beat up and disheveled. I've made more at my job in a 'dive' now in a 7 hour dinner shift than that double. 6. They make the wait staff wear all white because the owner is superstitious and thinks white causes people to be hungry. That in addtion to they think it is very neat and clean looking and makes peole think everything is neat and clean. All white would be ok if you didn't have to touch any food, but when you are sometimes almost elbow deep scraping out a dressing container or you stack plates with sauces on your arms and go the other side of the Earth with them trying to not get bumped into as you weave through crowds, white sucks. I burned holes in my clothes from all the bleach! I don't know any recipes, everything is top secret. We had to know the key ingredients (like what is in tex mex eggrolls) and everything on the menu thoroughly, but we never saw recipes. We even had to sign a confidentiality contract. The only way I know of to get a table faster: sometimes when I was in smoking, people would bribe me to give them tables. Yep! I did it! By the time the hostess passed the table to check if it was "open" like they do, someone was sitting and they didn't know it was someone not from their list; no one was the wiser and I was $10 or $20 richer. Nope, no guilt for it either. If you are desperate, I would try that. I eat there myself nowadays, but not so often because I want appetizers, salad, entree and dessert and I end up with a huge check. But, I don't wait more than 45 minutes so I go later in the night after prime dinner time. Tip 20%. www.tip20.com

I'm taking my friend out for her 30th birthday. She's a major chocoholic. Any picks for the best chocolate dessert at restaurants in the city ?

I posted this on the NJ board but thinking locations are close to Philly as well, will try it here. Has anyone tried bobby chez for crabcakes or other seafood? Looks interesting.... Bobby Chez -- Click Here

Checked out Jim Dixon's web-site and totally agree with his on the point of desserts at Fife...absolutely wonderful! Totally fucking brilliant, in fact. Even the cheesecake with raspberry sauce was above average. I had the cardamom flan with sugared dates and tangelos I believe and going back and forth between sweet and tart.... it was a masterpiece in my humble opinion. Another I enjoy is the Chocolate Sheba at Alameda Brewhouse across the street. The best chocolate desset I have had in my life hands down. And In Good Taste has to be mentioned here as well. Anything I have had there has been wonderful. Hats of to Maya! So, my question is....what has everyone else had and enjoyed here in the Rose City?

Hello! This is my first post ever and I must start off by saying I LOVE IT HERE! I have learned so much from coming here just as a guest. I feel quite passionate about baking and cakes are my main specialty and it's great to be able to come here to be amongst you all. I hardly feel worthy but I guess it's all about learning and sharing, right? Anyway, my question is about the Chocolate Blackout cake recipe from Margaret Braun's Cakewalk book. Has anyone tried it? I've been using it for about a year now and everyone who tries it thinks it is fabulous. But, whenever I bake it, or at least 95 % of the time, the middle sinks down, a little at the end of baking and more so after it comes out of the oven. I've just accepted it as is and trimmed off the higher edges but it would be nice if it didn't sink in the first place. Is it something I'm doing or is it the recipe? Thanks!

...the clients told the maitre d' that their son likes the desserts at cheesecake factory, like the candy-bar themed cheesecakes. This dessert will be just for the kids at the party; the adults will be having a separate dessert. They want something "different", but something the guest of honor will like, of course. Ideas, please? i'll need to make a prototype this weekend.

Is there a perfect recipe for cheesecake? What should one do when preparing them for individual portions? What is best, light or dense? Which would work better for an individual portion? What should I know about making these?

The eGullet universe is probably not the place to find a representative sample, but I'll ask the question anyway: are desserts (and I'm talking about confections that require some cooking and preparation, not a bowl of ice cream) becoming a "reward" that people no longer have much at home, but reserve for special restaurant occasions? Are pies, cakes and other sweets moving into that special preserve of arcania that the average person has ceded to the professionals?

I usually mix a number of varieties of cooking apples for pies and have been pleased with the result. Recently, I used all Fujis and found them to be a bit too sweet -- I shoulda added lemon juice, I think. My eclectic approach hasn't been helpful in determining the various qualities of flavor, aroma, texture and juicyness that different varieties have. Which are your favorites, and why? Also, how do you season you apple pie? I favor equal, spare amounts of nutmeg and cinnamon, but I'd love to hear other ideas.

I am ( and have been for a while ) on a low carb diet. The upside is that I have lost 50lbs. The downside is that I can't keep up with my love of baking and desserts. I wondered if anyone could suggest some flourless cake recipes ( apart from the obvious chocolate one ) that I could try? Thanks in advance S

Amanda rediscovers the joy of plain old vanilla today at the hands of Bill Yosses. Get the recipe for his killer warm vanilla cake that I alluded to earlier in the New York/Citarella thread: click. What Amanda doesn't tell you--which I think is of value to amateur and pro alike--is that the batter can be held in the fridge for 3-4 days.

Okay, I admit it, I just can't convince myself to like Indian desserts. At least, not based on the ones I've tried. I recently ordered a bunch of stuff from Surati Farsan Mart in California (which is temporarily closed on account of a kitchen fire, details at http://www.suratifarsan.com ) and I found most of it to be painfully cloying and one-dimensional. These are supposed to be some of the best Indian sweets around, though I suppose there must be better ones in India. So, what's the deal? Have I just not been exposed to good Indian desserts? Will somebody educate me a bit here?

I love cake, yet it's extremely difficult to get a good cake anywhere -- you really have to make it yourself or pay a whole lot of money at a specialty bakery that does them right. But enough griping. What's your favorite cake? Me, I'm a seven layer cake man (yellow cake, chocolate frosting). My mother makes a superior specimen, albeit in four layers. You?

Here's the quandry... I saw on one of those Discovery Channel cooking shows, some pastry chef made ice cubes of one flavor and then pushed them into the batter of another flavor. When baked, the outer batter firmed up but the inner "ice cube" became molten. I have perused every cookbook and website to no avail. I HAVE found those recipes where the batter is slightly baked and the center is left liquid. Since I want a different flavor in the middle, this won't work. What I am envisioning is a White Chocolate exterior that will ooze Dark Chocolate when pierced.. Any help most graciously appreciated!