Making the world a little sweeter one pastry tip at at time.
Baked goods such as chocolate cupcakes and apple pie bring to mind family favorites and sweet treats. Is it possible to bake desserts like these without refined sugar? That was Laura Martin’s goal when she set out asking her culinary friends for recipes of baked …read more
I do lots of reading for all my pastry writing and I recently found a little gem, Foods and Food Adulterants on Baking Powders, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It goes into detail on the “investigation into the character and composition of baking powders.” …read more
I’m a big fan of Indian food. I love the spicy sauces and rich vegetarian entrees. And having ordering from the dessert menu of many different Indian restaurants, I’m not sure which I enjoy more – eating them or seeing the paper-thin sheets of silver decorate them. Whenever I make kulfi (an Indian frozen dessert) or burfi (dessert confections), the kids go ga-ga when I decorate with tiny flecks of edible silver. Using edible grade silver and gold leaf makes a seemingly ordinary dessert seem spectacular.
Edible metals or vark – gold or silver – are considered safe to consume, but only if it contains the pure metal. It is important to purchase edible gold and silver sheets from reputable manufacturers, especially with silver which may contain a high percentage of aluminum or just the aluminum itself. The desired purity is just the metal itself with no alloys present, so find a resource that sells sheets as pure as possible and always see if the package states ‘edible’ or ‘inedible’. This will tell what the purity is if no other clues are present as to the purity. For example, in the 2010 Albert Uster catalog you can find 23K edible gold sheets, and inedible silver sheets (to be used for decoration only).
Using edible gold and silver leaf is a showstopper, but take the time to search for edible metals available from specialty purveyors who specialize in handling them. Craft store metallic sheets for gilding are not edible, and contain either a mixture of copper and zinc alloy to mimic gold, or pure aluminum to resemble pure silver.
Here are some resources for pure edible silver and gold:
No matter if it is pure silver or gold, have fun decorating your cakes and desserts with pure sparkle.
Luo Han Guo – Monk fruitSource: Wikimedia Commons through a creative commons license. Monk fruit, or ‘luo han guo’ is up to 100 to 300 times sweeter than sugar. It is well known and used in China, and has been used as a sugar substitute there …read more
Think flowers, think vegetables, think…bugs? On my Old School Pastry blog, I’ve found different recipes that were done by confectioner’s long before commercial food coloring was available to the masses. How to Make Yellow Food Coloring (Saffron) How to Make Green Food Coloring (Spinach) How …read more
In Old School Pastry, read about courmarin and tonka beans – they were once used in creating imitation vanilla flavor.
Use isomalt as you would sugar. Isomalt is a chemically-produced sugar substitute perfect for candy-making as it creates a more humidity- and moisture-resistant product. When it is being boiled, it doesn’t need any anti-crystallizing ingredients as it does a great job of resisting crystallization on …read more
Invert sugar is used to help prevent the crystallization from occurring, among other things. Read more about invert sugar from PastrySampler.com.
For those of you who have never used feuilles de brick or phyllo dough before, I found Marmiton.org’s comparison does a great job of explaining it.
http://www.marmiton.org/Magazine/Tendances-Gourmandes_brick-filo_1.aspx
The whole site is in French, and if you cannot read French, then use Google’s translate bar, it’ll give you a fairly good translation. It gives a basic description, where it originated from, what it’s made of, how to keep it and different ways on using it.
What is wheat dispearance? If anyone has read any food commidity report or opened up an industry news magazine, that term often pops up. Often mislabled and confused with other terminology, I found a great definition/explanation which comes from the book: Wheat Production, Properties and Quality by W. …read more