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I just bought two big bottles of McCormick Vanilla at Sams. BTW, the bottles are clearly labeled 'NO CORN SYRUP, NO GMO'.
September 22, 2016 at 10:18 pm in reply to: Where are Cass (Kid Pizza) and Some Other Members? #4834I don't mind getting the emails from KAF, though I haven't ordered from them since last fall. When I run out of pastry flour, I'll order it from them, the only pastry flour I can find locally is whole wheat pastry flour.
BTW, for those who haven't seen the news, KAF has opened a second location for baking classes in Washington state. Still too far to be a viable option for me.
If I'm going that far for cooking classes, I'll go back to SFBI, since they're only a few miles from where my son lives in San Bruno CA. I am, however, going to Chicago next month for Chocolate Boot Camp at the Chocolate Academy, and I plan to write a series of blog posts about it. SFBI founder Michel Suas suggested I go there instead of to the once-a-year chocolate class at SFBI.
The New York Times had an article on this, as I recall.
I haven't been making either pretzels or bagels lately with my wife on a low-carb diet, but this is still on my list of things to try. I've got a digital pH meter now (for our hot tub) and I think I may try several solutions made with various equal weights of both in the same volume of water to see how much difference in pH it makes.
I did talk to a chemistry professor about this when we first talked about this several years ago, to confirm that putting the baked sodium carbonate in water wouldn't turn it back into sodium bicarbonate. He wasn't sure how much difference it would make in pH, but he did think the sodium carbonate would be a stronger alkaline solution.
I think she has her good days and her bad days. (Don't we all?) But it sounds like she's got someone lined up to help her this year.
Although it's 91 here today, we've had several cool spells this summer and I made that eye of round during one of them. Last week we had a day where the high was in the 50's. It's supposed to be in the 70's next week. The crew putting a new roof on our house next week will appreciate that. Now it just needs to NOT rain!
I've got the ingredients for vegetable beef soup ready to go, just waiting for a cooler day.
Chocolate chips and raisins always seem to sink to the bottom for me, too.
Coating them with flour is supposed to help, I haven't tried it enough to say whether it does or not. (Not sure how you would coat chocolate chips with flour, anyway.)
I think it's a common mistake to assume that 'Madagascar Bourbon' refers to the type of alcohol used to create vanilla extract. In fact, Bourbon is a reference to the former name of the island nation of Reunion and generally refers to vanilla grown in that part of the world, as opposed to Tahitian or Mexican vanilla.
The ideal approach for someone making their own vanilla would probably be to use pure grain alcohol, which has no flavor profile whatsoever. Most vodkas have some flavor profile, or at least I think they do. This could then be diluted with distilled water to the appropriate strength.
I find it interesting that according to the food renegade site some bottles of McCormick Vanilla Extract say they contain corn syrup but others do not. I have not tried to confirm that report. However, of the 3 bottles of Vanilla Extract in my cupboard at the moment, the Schilling one lists sugar, the McCormick and Sonoma ones do not.
Looks like avoiding getting any corn syrup with vanilla extract is not easy to do, I wonder if the Mexican vanillas are the same?
For those with a corn allergy, that could be a serious problem. (Most of the people that I've read about with a corn allergy have so many other allergies that there probably aren't many things vanilla is used in that they can eat anyway.)
McCormick has no sugar in it if anyone is looking for that.
According to this site, that's not always the case, so check the label:
http://www.foodrenegade.com/decoding-labels-mccormick-pure-vanilla-extract/
My wife likes the Watkins vanilla, but I generally just buy the large bottle of McCormick Vanilla Extract at Sams Club.
I made an 11x17 Texas Sheet Cake Thursday night to send in to my wife's office to celebrate our anniversary (we had the leftovers today), and I made Vienna bread today.
September 17, 2016 at 9:20 pm in reply to: Did You Cook Anything Interesting the Week of September 11, 2016? #4770Today is our 44th wedding anniversary, we had beef stroganoff on rice.
I've been making beef stock since yesterday morning, the main batch (10 quarts) is cooling in the downstairs refrigerator, the remouillage is still on the stove.
I've been making my own pasta for years, but I stick to simple things like spaghetti, linguini, egg noodles and lasagna. I have the KitchenAid basic pasta set, but I don't have an extruder for making things like mostaccioli or elbow macaroni, though I do have a spaetzle cutter.
I've also not tried making 'flavored' pasta, like spinach or chocolate pasta, much less something like squid ink pasta. (Finding squid ink in Nebraska would be something of a challenge, I suspect.)
My personal opinion, as long as it still tastes like pie, it's pie, regardless of the shape.
However, at some point a pie made in a casserole dish tends to be a crumble, buckle or cobbler, not because of the shape but because of the type of and placement of crust, and that affects the taste. Now, I'm all up for a good peach cobbler, apple crumble or blueberry buckle, but the taste and mouth feel is different.
Not really a goof, some very experienced chefs (but not pastry chefs, I think) refer to the French meringue ones as 'macaroons'.
But anything that gets us talking is good. 🙂
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