[Mike Nolan]

The best pie apples are small cell, large cell apples tend to be good eating apples, the kind you take a bite out of and the juice dribbles down your chin.

This was a strange year for apples, that might have affected the Honeycrisp you bought.

[Mike Nolan]

Last week I was on a forum where they were talking about artichokes. I tried growing them from seed several years ago, I did get 2 or 3 tiny artichokes in October just before the frost hit. With the grow lights we have now, I might be able to get them a bit further along before transplanting them outdoors.

They're kind of an interesting looking plant, though I wouldn't call them pretty, they are thistles, after all. (But the other site, a photography forum, had some nice pictures of artichokes in full bloom, BIG purple flowers.)

There was a vendor at the Sunday farmer's market a couple of years ago that was trying to grow enough artichokes to sell them. They had a small basket of them toward the end of market season. They were hoping to mulch them to keep them from dying off when it froze, but they didn't have any artichokes the next year so I'm guessing that didn't work, and that they weren't productive enough to be profitable.

Some people grow them in a large planter, which could be brought in when cold weather arrives, but the plant gets pretty big and I'm not sure where I'd keep them over the winter.

I looked at the possibility of growing them hydroponically, but they need 2-3 weeks of sub-50 but not freezing temperatures to vernalize or they won't produce fruit the next season, and a plant is only good for 5-6 seasons. (And they're so big they'd be a challenge to grow hydroponically at home.)

[Mike Nolan]

The veal Marsala was excellent, the cooked roux in the brown sauce adds a distinctly nutty flavor to the sauce. We had it on wide noodles, with a side of steamed broccoli, followed by a slice of chocolate cream pie with a little caramel sauce drizzled on it.

[Mike Nolan]

My pea pods have started blooming, this happened literally overnight!

Now we'll see if they set fruit. Pea pods are supposed to be self-pollinating, one source says sometimes they pollinate themselves even before they're fully open.

Part of the fun of gardening is just seeing the plants develop.

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[Mike Nolan]

Honeycrisp is a medium-sweet pie, I don't personally think it makes a good cooking apple, it is a large-cell fruit and I think it gets a bit mushy when baked.

[Mike Nolan]

Are there people who actually eat the gingerbread house? I've always thought that kind of gingerbread, almost a dead dough, was nearly inedible.

[Mike Nolan]

The chocolate cream pie is one of the pies we made at SFBI pastry school. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate, I tried 25% milk chocolate this time, and may try 50% next time.

I'm getting more comfortable with using the hand-cranked laminator, I made 700 grams of dough this time, that was enough that I was able to get in 3 letter-fold turns which gives me 55 layers. I split it in half for final roll-out.

It looks like for planning purposes 700 grams of dough will make about 16 chocolatines, as I think they shouldn't be too big. Croissants come in a wider range of sizes, though we prefer small or medium ones rather than the 90-120 gram big ones that are common at bakeries. I need to see if there's a way to reduce the butter leakage, though.

I want to try making a kringle. I might try the O&H recipe that's on the food network site (https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kringle-recipe0-1941189), it uses egg and lemon extract in the dough. The raw dough has a pronounced lemon odor but by the time it is baked it is much more subtle. I may need to play around with scaling it down. The butterscotch filling that is part of that recipe is great, I've used it to fill Danish.

[Mike Nolan]

We'll be cutting into the pie shortly, the chocolatines went over great at the party, several people took a few home so all we have left here is the two mis-shapen ones, and that's fine, we've got the pie.

[Mike Nolan]

We went to a Christmas party this afternoon and there was so much food we don't feel we need a big supper, so the veal marsala will be for tomorrow. I did put the meringue on the pie, I'll probably have a salad as well.

[Mike Nolan]

Here are the chocolatines before baking:

And here they are after baking. They should probably have come out a minute earlier, they're not burnt but they're darker than I think they should be.

There was enough butter leakage that the bottoms are almost like they were fried in butter. I'll have to work on that.

A couple of them popped open, I need to work on that, I need to make sure the end of the roll is tucked fully tucked under. The one that was made from scrap pieces fell apart, but that wasn't surprising.

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[Mike Nolan]

Here's the chocolate cream pie:

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[Mike Nolan]

I only got 19 chocolatines from this batch of dough, and one of them is made up of trim scraps so it might not even stay together.

I made a double batch of the chocolate pie filling, using 75% dark chocolate and 25% milk chocolate. A single batch wasn't filling a 9" pie shell up to the top.

I'll post pictures of the chocolatines and the pie later today.

[Mike Nolan]

Oh, I'm terribly sorry to hear that, I hope it doesn't totally ruin the holidays.

[Mike Nolan]

I got in 3 letter fold turns on my croissant dough tonight, so that gives me 55 layers. I think I rushed the turns a bit and the butter was still too cold, so some of the butter I could see under the surface shattered, but I don't know if that happened all the way through.

I think this picture after turn 2 shows what happened:

Even if the butter did shatter in the inner layers, I think the croissants should be OK, though probably not quite as flaky as if the butter layers were more intact.

Next time I'll allow more time in between turns.

I made about 700 grams of croissant dough, I'm not sure how many chocolatines that'll produce, I'm planning to roll them out to 4mm and cut them into 7x11 cm rectangles. I'm hoping to get at least 24, I think I might be able to get up to about 30.

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[Mike Nolan]

I used the bones from the veal to make something close to brown sauce, so the veal marsala should be really good, because I normally just use beef stock.

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