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I love my new gas range for cooking, but for baking, the oven is driving me crazy. I just threw a cake in the garbage after hours of work. Once again the center was underdone, even though I baked for the maximum amount of time called for in the recipe. I have calibrated this oven with a...

I have been making cakes for several years now. I keep practicing, refining my techniques, but I just feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. No matter how hard I try, I can never make a professional cake. Every cake I make has that "home made" look to it that I hate. Take the latest cake...

So I'm making a cake and I'm totally stumped as to how to finish it. Basically, it's a combination of a chocolate hazelnut sponge, walnut coffee buttercream, and caramel filling. It's all layered into a large bowl (like a charlotte) that's basically a hemisphere with a flat top (like a...

I have a hazelnut torte recipe I got from this book, I Love Chocolate! that I am going to use for Passover, because it's one of the few good looking cake recipes that doesn't have flour. It's pretty straightforward, but there's one part that worries me, the hazelnut cream filling. It's a...

I make fresh chicken stock on the weekend, and then freeze it in a ziplock bag, so I can use it for a risotto during the week. It's impossible to chop it up, so what I've been doing is putting the big block in a wide pot over low heat, and waiting for enough stock to melt off. Then I use the...

I just opened a fresh bag of Oak Manor hard unbleached flour, which I purchased at Whole Foods about a week ago. I noticed some very tiny brown / gold flakes, extremely small and fine, mixed evenly into the flour. They are visible in the finished dough. I have used the brand for years...

I just went into our local high-end grocery and picked up my first ever truffle. I had never even been in the same room with a fresh one until now, lol. It's a white truffle. Cost me $60 at $12 per gram (which means about $5,400 per pound!). I'm planning to chop half of it up, mix it into...

I am making Coq au vin this weekend for the first time, and the recipe calls for me to pour some brandy over the chicken in its dutch oven, and then to light it on fire. (flambe) I am not too worried about this, and am reasonably confident about being able to cover the pot quickly if the fire...

So I fried up some chicken last weekend. Filled a stock pot with corn oil, heated it to about 350, and fried away, using standard breading procedure (flour, egg wash, then bread crumbs). Here's the thing. The chicken came out moist and perfectly cooked, so as far as I'm concerned, the cooking...

Ok, so I have this very nice AllClad stainless steel roaster. Very expensive, weighs a ton, great stuff. It's really badly stained with grease. Pretty much all over. I have no idea how to clean it. The stains laugh at soap and hot water. In fact, nothing short of steal wool or one of those...

I want to make the absolute perfect demiglace, with no compromises. I don't care how long it takes or how expensive the ingredients are. 1. I have seen some cookbooks mention (in passing) that some chefs roast their flour before making the roux. But the books don't tell you how to go about...

Ok, so after much R & D, I have managed to produce my own demiglace. I've made several tests now, and I can make great bordelaise sauce with it. The next step though is to figure out the best way to use this sauce. I definitely want to use red meat, so a steak or a roast tenderloin is a...

I was wondering, what do people recommend in terms of seeds in tomatoes for salad? I find that if I leave the seeds in, the tomatoes leak into the salad bowl and create far too much liquid; I don't like it when I get to the bottom of the bowl and there is a lake of liquid. On the other hand, if...

I have been experimenting with using fresh buffalo mozzarella on my pizzas, as opposed to the usual vaccum packed stuff. My problem has been that there's just way too much moisture. Even after towel drying the cheese, it's so moist that when you finish baking it, it's almost like liquid, and...

My friend has a peanut allergy, so I am trying to make some stuff using safe ingredients. I am pretty sure that Valrhona's chocolate, at least the stuff sold in bars, is safe, as we have used this brand before, and I think we found out somehow that it was safe, at the time. Trouble is, I'd...

I have to make a birthday cake that will serve 30 people. I already have a good idea of what filling/frosting I will be using, what cake base recipe, as well as how to decorate it. The only open question is the size and shape of the cake base. My 10" round base seems inadequate for so many...

Does anyone have a reliable way of cutting cake layers evenly? I just had to throw out a genoise, because when I tried to cut it into three layers, I completely ruined it. I have tried those contraptions (I bought a professional quality cutter from pastry chef central) but it was completely...

I am making some puff pastry in a couple days. I was just wondering if someone could explain these instructions to me. I understand fully the mechanics of it, as I have made other puff pastry recipes several times. However, I do not understand shapes, and am absolutely awful at understanding...

I made another attempt at demiglaze last weekend. However, it failed again. First things first: my brown stock did not gelatinize after spending a night in the fridge; it was still liquid. Since everyone told me that it was a good thing that my stock turned to gelatin in the fridge the first...

I have these pastry brushes I got at Williams Sonoma made from boar hair. They seem to be really nice brushes, but I feel like I am ruining them almost as soon as I start using them. The bristles get stiff and course after only a few uses (I use them for egg wash, butter, olive oil/herb...

My cousin just got me a Franklin Chef Vertisserie, this big elaborate rotisserie contraption. Unfortunately, while I am somewhat into cooking (moreso into baking) I just haven't found myself inspired to do anything with it yet, and I haven't really even thought about how to use it. Any ideas...

I just made my first traditional brown stock yesterday. Everything seemed to go by the book. However, when I checked the stock this morning, it had completely gelatinized in the fridge. The stock had the constistency of gravy or jello. Is this supposed to happen? Did I simmer it too long? (The...

Is a fl oz a volume or mass measurement?

I bought this very expensive non stick petits four mold set, which I planned to use to make truffles. Unfortunately, non stick or no non stick, there is no way in hell I will ever be able to unmold the chocolate filling from these things. As I said, they were very expensive, and I feel like I've...

I want to make coffee in a coffee machine, but I have no idea how much ground coffee to use per cup. The manual says 1 "scoop" per cup of water, but what the hell is a "scoop"? Does anyone how many TBSP/Tsp ground coffee should go into a cup?