[Sca-cooks] Favorite dessert?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 4, 2008, at 12:49 AM, chawkswrth at aol.com wrote:
> There are times, Adamantius, when I think you are a man after my own  
> heart.

Only sometimes???

> That is the way I bake, and when I had a catering business, that was  
> the way I baked.
> You want *GOOD*, you come to me. You want cheap, go elsewhere.

Unfortunately, if you want to do that for a living, you have to find a  
clientele willing to pay a somewhat larger percentage of their income  
for food (which much of the US is not; why pay even $20 for a cake  
when Duncan-Hines is -- what -- I have no idea what Duncan-Hines  
costs, but how much could it possibly be, rising grain costs  
notwithstanding) but who _also_ (and here's the catch) actually  
appreciate the value of good food, and not simply its cost/price. Not  
many people are/do. You could probably set up shop in someplace like  
Brooklyn, maybe Long Island City, Queens, and do fairly well. But yes,  
you probably have to sell something like this as "comfort food":  
plain, high-quality food at slightly premium prices.

Incidentally, what started all this was my lady wife's attempt to buy  
a decent, ordinary layer cake in Manhattan, and what she found was  
some kind of allegedly white chocolate thing that was six inches  
across, and I believe cost $38, and of all the things it was, the one  
thing it obviously was not, was _good_. I think people have lost all  
sense of the concept that when you want a good cake, it's the cake,  
not the frosting/icing (I grew up with icing, not frosting), nor the  
fillings (filling? What's that? Oh, you mean the thin layer of jam or  
icing in between, right?) that has to shine. You can't cover bad cake,  
or a ridiculously small cake, with eighteen pounds of spackel and have  
as your end result a good cake. I knew when we cut into this white  
chocolate extravaganza that we were in for trouble: it was three thin  
layers, with about 3/4 inch of some kind of gooey pastry cream in  
between the two bottom layers, and a lot of very thick, structurally  
supportive red stuff alleging to be jam, under the top layer. I  
further noted trouble when the bottom layer was larger than the  
others, so it could be built up with relative ease with "frosting" to  
a specific size and shape. Oh, and then there was white chocolate  
ganache on top (more or less), and some kind of floral decoration that  
I honestly couldn't tell between gum paste and marzipan, and stuff  
that looked at first like shredded coconut, but turned out to be  
[grated???] suspect white chocolate.

Of the flavor of good cake, there was virtually none; it was as if the  
cake was there as an excuse for all the lovely frosting and  
decoration. Now, if they had wanted to use some other grandma  
aesthetic than my own -- say, a genoise sponge moistened with brandy  
and a little apricot glaze or some other jam, then a thin layer of  
buttercream, I would not toss that out of the sack, as the saying  
goes. I suppose this is a good illustration of the difference between  
"fancy" and "tarted up".

The eight-inch version of the white-chocolate whatever was $20 more.

> I have never seen the sense in using junk and expecting cuisine.
> It is kind of like using cut glass to make jewelry and trying to  
> pass them off as diamonds.

"They're only putting in a nickel,
And they want a dollar song...
Da da da, da da da, da da da da..."

Yeah. I'm feeling kinda old these days.

> There is one dessert that I would like to make for my 102 year old  
> Grandfather, if I can find the secret. Egg Custard pie is one of his  
> favorites. I can do cream pies and banana pudding, but that is one  
> that escapes my skills. It comes out too bland and lumpy. It misses  
> that vanillaly creaminess that you find in others' custards....
> Help?

I'm sorry, I don't really speak American fluently, I'm from New  
York ;-). It's why I never really knew what "frosting" was until I was  
an adult... Is Egg Custard pie filled with something like vanilla  
pastry cream? I'm guessing it is, since you mention cream pies and  
banana pudding. So do you bake a pie shell blind and fill it with a  
cooked, stirred egg custard that has been somewhat stabilized with  
something like flour, when both are somewhat cooled, the way you might  
make, say, a chocolate cream pie?

Perhaps you have a recipe you could post, with comments on where,  
along the way, you think things are going wrong? Usually when I hear  
"bland and lumpy" in connection with stirred custards or pastry cream,  
it comes down to overcooking, seasoning to taste while hot something  
intended to be eaten cold, and improper cooling and storage. Or maybe  
simply something silly like not sifting flour, or using a spoon  
instead of a whip at the wrong time.  Those would be my first guesses.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter