THE WEISS CHRONICLES

Making Chocolate Lava CakeMore Chocolaty

The caterer that I work with is doing an event for the White House. At some previous event there, they evidently had chocolate lava cake that someone very important to the social events there (take a good guess who) said weren't sufficiently chocolaty.

So the pastry chef has modified some of the ingredient amounts and I got a look at the list today.

The recipe called for five pounds of flour, sixteen pounds of sugar, about 20 pounds of eggs (some whole egg and some pure yolk), sixteen pounds of chocolate and what looked like 10-15 pounds of margarine. There are some other small amount ingredients also (a chocolate covered espresso bean will garnish the top of the volcano).

The reduced flour is apparently the key to making it more chocolaty (yes chocolaty is a word recognized by my spell checker). To keep the lava cake together, more egg yolk is used.

The exact ratio of yolk to white and the amount of margarine are classified.

It will make a lot of lava cakes - but the exact number is also classified as is the date of the event.

An earlier version of this post mistakenly thought the issue was about truffles due to a problem translating the word 'truffies' which is what a lava cake is in Spanish (at least in Guatemala, the birthplace of the pastry chef).

posted by Martin Weiss # 3:18 PM

Friday, November 13, 2015

The Red Cross Rapid Card and a page from Talmud Babli

Today, I gave blood platelets and plasma and before I left home I went through the Red Cross 'Rapid Pass' process. This meant on-line answering of a lot of the questions that would otherwise be answered on site (it saves a few minutes).

Many of the Red Cross questions have to do with whether you've had sexual contact with male prostitutes, HIV infected and hepatitis infected individuals, etc.

The Red Cross requires the on line input to be done the day of the blood donation. They also check up on you. They do this by asking: whether you personally entered the data on line, whether you had taken an aspirin between the on line work and the on site visit and whether you had a sexual contact with, say, a hepatitis infected person.

I got a chuckle out of that last question because, there wasn't much time between my on line input and my on site visit.

Then I remembered something from the Babylonian Talmud. On folio page 57, is the following:

"...On one occasion forty bushels [of coin] were selling for a denar, and the number went down one, and they investigated and found that a man and his son had had intercourse with a betrothed maiden on the Day of Atonement, so they brought them to the Beth din and they stoned them and the original price was restored..."

Once I was studying this section with a group and asked how, on Yom Kippur, they were able to get the witnesses to warn the man and son and then witnesses of the act because without that, they would not have been able to carry out the stoning. I found out that some medival scholar had asked that question of himself and determined that all the 'action' happened between Musaf Yom Kippur and Mincha Yom Kippur and that the trial and punishment were in the few days between Yom Kippur and Succos.

So I guess quick action must be possible in the Red Cross things also.

.

posted by Martin Weiss # 2:31 PM

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Chocolate x Chocolate x Chocolate Cookies

Had a fresh out of the oven chocolate*3 cookie from the pastry department just now.

Only about 30% of the dough mass was flour. The chef used dark sugar and chocolate powder to make the dough dark and extra eggs to make up for the relatively low fat content of the chocolate powder (the extra fat kind isn't available in the kosher variety in the Ambrosia catalog).

The inside of the cookie had dark chocolate chunks and the center top had some melted chocolate.

Yes, it was good - very good.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:27 PM

First Snow Dream of the Year

For much of my life I've had "it snowed last night" dreams. This is where I dream that I wake up and look out the window and there is snow.

When I was in primary school, this was perhaps because I was hoping for a day off from school. As time went on and snow became a problem or even a hazard, I still had these kinds of dreams but with different emotion.

Last night I dreamt that I woke up, looked out the window and found a mountain in back of my neighbor across the street. This may be because I had been watching the webcams from Squaw Valley, California which picked up their first snow of the season yesterday (image is from the Squaw Valley Resort website).

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:59 AM

Ann Rides for Free

Ann went to Bethesda via the 47 route Ride-on bus on Nov 2. She did one way after morning peak period and the other way before the evening peak period.

The rules for the Ride On fare are that seniors ride free between the two peak periods and on weekends (but not evening after peak period).

So, at least for Ann, there was a free ride (actually two of them).

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:48 AM