[Mike Nolan]

The best way to check for a 'ribbon' stage is to try to drop some of the mix from a spatula. If it forms a wide ribbon (think Christmas ribbon candy), you're there. Pate a choux paste is a recipe that calls for ribbon stage.

I'll have to see if I have that recipe, I have Susan Purdy 'Piece of Cake' book, but she changed the title when she updated it. In general I find her recipes pretty reliable and easy to follow. (I can't say that about some other authors.) I've only made genoise a few times, and I haven't settled on a recipe yet. It's always been a recipe where you fold in egg whites.

[Mike Nolan]

Rinsing them several times a day is supposed to prevent that. If you've done much rooting of plants, the smell isn't all that noticeable unless you really let something go too long without proper care.

[Mike Nolan]

I generally don't use rum, we don't care for the taste, but I've always thought rum extract is a poor substitute for it.

I use simple syrup instead, brushing it on fairly liberally.

[Mike Nolan]

I've tried dental floss a couple of times without much success, I think it takes practice. Having 4 hands might help, too. 🙂

I understand all too well about the 'good price' aspect, I'm a kitchen and tool junkie of the first order. Lately I've been threatening to be a photography junkie, too.

[Mike Nolan]

For folding in egg white, you probably want fairly stiff peaks (bird's beak) but not dry, because the loft you get from egg whites is minimal if the egg whites are too dry.

I always start out slow, to make sure the egg whites are 'loose', then move it up in several stages all the way up to the highest speed on my KA mixer.

[Mike Nolan]

Is that the adjustable diameter ring with all the grooves in it? I've wondered how well those work. I've seen one at Marshall's a couple of times, but I don't make cakes very often and even less often slice them.

The last time I sliced a cake, I used my cake decorating stand, which rotates, and set a metal bar along one edge to help keep the knife level and steady.

One of these days I want to make a dobosh torte, which requires that the cake be sliced many times, sometimes up to a dozen layers. A dobosh is generally a rectangular cake, though, so the round slicing guide probably wouldn't be much help.

[Mike Nolan]

Do you have a chopping board, cake decorating platform or something else you can set the cake on to raise it so that you can use the cake leveler? Of course it needs to be narrower than the cake leveler.

My Wilton cake leveler has notches at 1/4 inch increments, but sometimes that puts the slice where you don't want it, so I adjust the height in roughly 1/16 inch increments by taping pennies to the bottom of the chopping board, a penny is almost exactly 1/16 of an inch thick, so 2 pennies is 1/8 of an inch, etc.

I have a 14" long Dr. Oetker cake knife that I could probably use with a rotating cake decorating platform to hand slice cakes (I've seen a demo of that, probably on Youtube), but my hands aren't steady enough.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Mike Nolan.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Mike Nolan.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by htfoot.

[Mike Nolan]

A genoise is usually a fairly thin airy cake, whether this one had a loft issue may be hard to tell until you cut into it and see how open the crumb is. But you should be able to split that one that thick with a cake leveler, I've seen that done to produce slices less than 1/4 inch thick. You may need something on top of it to keep it even.

Some people like the fancy Wilton folding cake leveler, I've used both and I prefer the smaller one.

My semolina bread came out pretty good for taste, it's pretty close to the McGinnis Sisters bread, maybe not quite as sweet. I think I'd need a loaf of each to check for differences. It made a good complement to the steak and sauteed mushrooms I made for supper, to sop up the juices.

The lame caught in the dough when I was making one of the slashes, and as a result one end got a bit squished, so it's not the prettiest loaf I've ever made.

[Mike Nolan]

The pecan meal I have is a bit coarse, though it works OK in a pie crust, I usually think of a genoise as a fine-textured cake. You have to be careful when grinding nuts and nut meal not to turn it into nut butter.

[Mike Nolan]

Looks good Len. My wife says it sounds a lot like a quesadilla.

[Mike Nolan]

Strong spices and heavy sauces were often used to cover up spoiled or inferior quality foods.

Also, I think the garlic available years ago was more pungent than many current varieties.

[Mike Nolan]

Personally, I think sugar is sugar. There's not much evidence that I've seen that 'raw' sugars are better for you than 'refined' sugars, they're both sugars! The real problems are that so many things have sugars added to them unnecessarily and that we choose to eat sugary things. (Look at how much sugary candy is sold ahead of Easter.)

My wife has been buying the low-sugar form of Heinz Ketchup, which of course they only sell in tiny bottles at 4-5 times the per-ounce price. I can't tell much taste difference, makes me wonder why the 'regular' Heinz Ketchup has all that sugar in it.

[Mike Nolan]

Sorry to hear of your loss, Sarah.

[Mike Nolan]

Ooh, I need to buy a new jar anyway, I'll have to look at the label carefully. We've been buying Miracle Whip Lite lately, I wonder if it has changed as well?

[Mike Nolan]

I usually keep some bleached flour on hand for cakes and cookies, as well as some even softer cake flour, and most of the time I have some unbleached AP flour, like Gold Medal, on hand because KAF flour is just too strong for many cakes.

Glad to hear you got it to release from the pan well.

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