[Mike Nolan]

The only place I've seen anything labeled as 'caster sugar' in the USA was a specialty grocery store. C&H makes a 'Baker's super fine granulated sugar', it's what is I have used when a recipe called for caster sugar.

[Mike Nolan]

You might try superfine baker's granulated sugar to combat the grittiness, you can make it yourself in a food processor, but I usually keep a container of it on hand.

Our younger son was a pretty fussy eater, until he went to study in Germany for 7 1/2 months. When he came back, he'd eat just about anything we made and was much more willing to eat spicy foods (not that we do a lot of them, but he'd object to sweet peppers in vegetable soup.)

[Mike Nolan]

I made GF cinnamon rolls today, the KAF recipe (but without the butter flavoring), and I used a simple milk and powdered sugar icing. They didn't rise as much as I had hoped, but that's often the case with GF baking.

[Mike Nolan]

My understanding is that edible wafer paper is mostly sugar with some stabilizers to make it into sheets.

If there's a store than handles a good selection of Wilton products (eg, Michaels, Jo-Ann), they may carry them, a package isn't very expensive, probably under $4.

[Mike Nolan]

I've seen lots of recipes for biscuits that used cream as the fat. (In fact, I think the classic 'southern' biscuit is made with cream, because it was cheap back then.)

I made the Clonmel Double Crusty bread shaped as Vienna bread today.

My wife has asked me to make a batch of GF cinnamon rolls for a co-worker who is GF, so I'm busy comparing recipes this evening. I made a batch of them some years back, but I'm not sure what recipe I used, and there have been a lot more GF recipes posted since then, and several companies, including KAF and Bobs, have come out with GF flours since then, too. I've used 2 or 3 of them, they're all fairly similar in performance.

[Mike Nolan]

I made honey wheat bread today, to go with the beef soup I made a couple of days ago on a cool September evening.

[Mike Nolan]

I ordered a copy of that book.

[Mike Nolan]

I buy KAF's pastry flour, otherwise I'd probably use Gold Medal unbleached flour as well (I keep it in the freezer until I open the bag.) I've tried whole wheat pastry flour (the only pastry flour I can find in local stores) in a pie crust a few times, didn't care for it.

The black cocoa sounded interesting, that may be on my KAF wish list. I bought some lemon powder from them a while back, I used it in the frosting for the Eclipse cookies I made in August.

[Mike Nolan]

We did most of the catering work for our son's wedding, which was in our back yard (on a very hot 4th of July), but the cake came from someone who does wedding cakes professionally.

The 'Elegant White Cake' recipe in the KAF cookbook is pretty good, but making a tiered cake (and especially decorating it) is beyond our skills and patience. If you've never read the Susan Reid blog on making buttercream frosting, I highly recommend it. See Buttercream Frosting

I've considered taking the cakes course at SFBI, but what I really want to take is the weekend course on baguettes or the week-long bread course that includes baguettes. But I need to get in better shape, doing the Chocolate Academy course in Chicago a year ago was VERY tiring.

[Mike Nolan]

My eyes are old, weak and tired, I had to read your post at least twice before I saw that there was a link to Rosie's book. I may have to see if I can tweak the default template to make links easier to recognize. (That's one reason why I often write: See this link: XXXXX)

Having spent 20 years in the publishing industry, I'm well aware of intellectual property rights issues and try to respect them as best I can.

[Mike Nolan]

Can you post the recipe or a link to it?

[Mike Nolan]

I also took some of the boiled beef from making stock and it is soaking in barbecue sauce overnight. Since I can't get Heinz Sloppy Joe Sauce any more (Manwich has garlic in it), this may be what we eat instead of Sloppy Joes from this point on.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm making a big pot of vegetable beef soup.

[Mike Nolan]

Interesting article. However, the link to the Queen's favorite dessert doesn't seem to bring up the right recipe, here's another link to Chocolate Biscuit Cake.

[Mike Nolan]

I note that he rests his pasta dough anywhere from 2 hours to overnight.

I do agree with him in one respect about pasta machines, they can lead to overworking the dough. Pasta, like any wheat dough, develops gluten, and like a pie crust, overworking the dough leads to tough pasta.

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