caitmcg

For the thyme, at least, you brush it with beaten egg white and roll it in sugar. For citrus peel, you usually remove all the pith (white part), simmer it in sugar syrup, dry, and optionally roll it in sugar. They could do the latter while infusing the drizzle.

My understanding from people I've known who've made TV appearances is that the most basic requirement is not wearing solid white or cream or black. Obviously, loud prints are A-OK in the tent. And whatever they choose, has to be comfortable enough to wear for two long shooting days.

If you've ever had Indian or other South Asian food, you've had cardamom.

I remember him saying that about American pies in general. I don't recall the negative remark about fruit pies overall, but in Series 3 (i.e. the first season shown in the US) they had "American pies" as one of the challenges, and Paul characterized American pies as disgustingly sweet. (That was an odd challenge, in that it stipulated a single-crust pie no matter the filling, which is, of course, not an American thing.)

I understood Paul's comment to mean that the style of the blueberry pie filling seemed to be very American (Prue referred to it as intense), and it certainly looked like a typical blueberry pie here. So I take it that a filling that's made just from blueberries, sugar and thickener to fill a whole pie is not common in British pies. Certainly, the comment came about as they tasted the pie, not as they discussed ingredients beforehand. Of course, bourbon is a type of whiskey (generic spelling rather than whisky as in Scotch), as is rye. I've always assumed the reason it's bourbon in particular called for in American recipes that add it is bourbon is produced, and pecans are grown, in close proximity in the American south.

We weren't shown every step; we saw them working on the base, the blackcurrant jelly, the caramelized white chocolate, and then put the cheesecake batter in, so we didn't see them mixing up the batter, which I'm sure had eggs and cheeae. Nicky also had a chocolate cake of some kind that was sitting on top of her mousse.

I think his point was that there wasn't much cake involved. Those comments have been made when there's a challenge that's meant to be cake-centric but there ends up being more mousse, whipped cream, filling, etc. than cake. So it's less like biting into cake and more like eating a non-cake dessert. Since white chocolate is basically cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids, you can cook it so that the sugar and milk solids caramelize. It transforms the flavor and makes it more butterscotch-y and complex. I don't care for plain white chocolate, which is too sweet and bland to me, but I do like caramelized white chocolate. Seems as if there's someone every season who announces that they've never made something basic before, more basic than cheesecake, even, like meringue, when it shows up in the technical, and I always wonder how they've never tried it when they're all conversant in Swiss meringue buttercream, pastry cream, etc. Anyone else watch this episode and flash back to Cake Week, when Prue said it would be challenging to taste twelve chocolate cakes in a row during the technical?

It was very convenient to the plot that the station seemingly hired her without an audition or prior discussion about the structure of the show. Then again, across all seasons, Jean has been portrayed as a competent therapist who's pretty incompetent at everything else.

Look for Collection 11, Episode 3 under the GBBS listing.

None of them were making changes on the fly, though (the exception being Dan after he screwed up by using all his bread dough before making all his shapes), they were executing the plans and recipes they had developed before entering the tent. So their overambition may have been part of what doomed them, but it was hardly spontaneous. If anything, Dan was probably thrown off his game by how badly the technical went (he was apparently saved by having done pretty well with his signature).

Dan got lucky, that's for sure. I guess one good bake and two really bad ones trumped three mediocre-to-bad ones, in the case of Abbi and Rowan. I certainly thought Dan was going, but if it came down to the other two, I might've thought Rowan over Abbi – at least they really liked all her flavors.

For a North American, it might depend on one's consumption of childhood literature; Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington, and the Hobbit all partake of elevenses. Then again, how many actually make custard creams from scratch?

That was my point in looking up the location after checking myself on my reaction to the price; that's far below what someone would pay here, in a large city, and it's less than someone should be paid anywhere for that type of work, but for where she is, that's probably the most she can charge to maintain business given the local economy. Yeah, I live somewhere very much the opposite of where she is (an urban area on the west coast with a high cost of living) and unadorned whole pies at my neighborhood bakery cafe start at around $30 these days. I can't imagine what such an ornate, labor-intensive pie made with good ingredients would command around here.

It's basically cornstarch with added colorant and flavoring, to which you add sugar and milk and cook it to make a custard sauce, like a mock crème anglaise. Similar to old-fashioned cooked (vs. instant) pudding mix.

The filling was a French buttercream (hence pouring the hot sugar syrup into the egg yolks), so the texture was probably fine on its own. I assume the addition of custard powder was to impart that classic flavor, akin to the filling in Nanaimo bars, which is American buttercream flavored with custard powder.

That almost looks like it’s embroidered.

You're right, I reversed her and Dan's places.

Tasha was eighth in the technical. I think you meab Abbi, who was second after Dan. Handshakes are pretty unusual in the showstopper, haven't there only been a couple? I know when he gave one to Rahul, that was the first. Overall, I thought the showstopper was a good challenge. The illusion seems like it requires a bit more than, say, making a biscuit board game, but it's far less ridiculous than having them make self-supporting biscuit mobiles, where there's as much concern on the contestants' part for engineering as for baking. This was all about the bakes and the looks.

A good article about Kwame Onwuachi in the New Yorker, that goes deep into his background, career (I had no idea he'd briefly abandoned cooking for a try at acting after his well-known setbacks), and current very successful endeavors.

He said cherries, which I found puzzling. I also could've sworn broken-buttercream-guy literally said outloud the butter was too cold, so it's not that he didn't know what went wrong... The cosmo-inspired cake was the lobster showstopper, per wikipedia, and yes, he said cherries. Cranberries would've worked just as well paired with orange and lime, though. I think you're right about the cold butter comment, so I assumme it was a case of rushing to try and get things done (and probably nerves) on the first challenge.

That's the ticket. For a similar recipe online, this is the one from Rose Levy Beranbaum's classic Pie and Pastry Bible. Or for a tart, Alice Medrich's recipe (I love the her tart crust, so easy and with a wonderful texture). Those first two were never broadcast in the US. You can watch the Roku channel free online, as well as via a Roku device.

They've been a bit of a thing for several years. If you search for vertical roll cake online, you will see many recipes, including on a lot of American sites. I forgot to mention in my earlier post that, as an Oaklander, I was amused by Amos's green-and-yellow 'A' sweater, as it's an A's sweater, down to the font, just minus the 's.

The signature was a little more difficult than most cake week signatures have been, when they're the very first challenge of the competition. Often they've been standard things like drizzle cakes, fruit cakes, and regular Swiss rolls, and the vertical swirl cake is definitely a bit more technically challenging. I did like that while the technical was a cake that has the iconic look for the show, it's also a very common layer cake where they were being judged on their mastery of the components and there were no big losers. I've always assumed it's something like 25% each for the signature and technical, 50% for the showstopper, more or less. Doing great in one of the first two can help you, but there's no coming back from really tanking the showstopper. He did great in the technical, was sort of middling in the signature (he had issues with his chocolate drizzle and the whole thing was a kind of messy), and his showstopper was a disaster. You could really see how very dense and heavy his cake layers were. Sign languages have their own grammar and vocabularies, and there is a huge number used worldwide, even at the local dialect level.

Unfortunately, with regard to the ADA, the way it's structured means the only real mechanism for enforcing compliance is bringing suit. (This is also true regarding other kinds of discrimination in many instances in the US.) I guess I should have guessed they'd do an abuse/control storyline before the show ended, since they haven't made a point of addressing it in their teen relationships before. (It didn't seem the show regarded Adam and Eric's relationship as having that dynamic, even if many of the viewers did.) I do really love Jackson and Viv's friendship, though.

They've always been accepting and supportive of each other and of one another's interests, but Otis looked very uncomfortable when Eric brought up that they never discuss his Christianity or talk about race, and quickly changed the subject. It's entirely realistic that he would be uncomfortable given that he's young, white, and probably a nonbeliever (or at least someone non-religious) given his upbringing. But these are issues that have become more front-burner for Eric lately. and that he's able to address with his new friends, so it is understandable that he would want to be able to speak openly about them with his best friend, too.