After seeing these delicious looking pastries, I had to give them a try – apparently they are a challenge to make.  To get started, I bought a canelé pan on Amazon – one of the non-stick carbon steel varieties, and a bag of what was advertised on the Amazon site as food grade DIY beeswax pellets.  Printed right on the bag, yet not mentioned on the site was a warning, clearly stating the product is not edible.  Not sure how anyone could say something that is not edible could possibly be food grade.  Oh well – back to Amazon it goes (keeping the pan though!).  As I discovered, it doesn’t really seem the beeswax is even necessary.

So, after watching a number of different YouTube videos, and the recipe recommended by my future son-in-law, I mixed up the batter.  I simmered the milk with couple dried up vanilla pods, along with some real extract for 10 minutes or so as per the Taste of Artisan instructions – from there I deviated, mixing the flour, eggs, butter, sugar and rum all together, and then adding 1/3 of the simmered milk (pouring through a fine strainer), and whipping until smooth.  I then added the rest and continued stirring until mixed thoroughly.

The next evening I heated up the oven to 475 F, took the batter out of the fridge and gave it a good stir – being careful not to incorporate any air.   I then just melted some butter, and brushed the butter into 8 of the 12 pan cups, then ladled batter into each of the buttered cups – filling them to about 3/4 full.

Into the oven for 15 minutes at 475 F, after which I lowered the temperature to 375F, for another 45 minutes.

Afterwards, I took the pan out of the oven, let it cool for 5 minutes, then flipped the pan over – dumping the delectable delights onto a wire cooling rack – they all popped out perfectly, and none of the dreaded “white butts” commonly referenced on Youtube and various other websites.

The next evening I cooked up the rest of the batter, making 12 more pastries (a little smaller than the first ones – but cups were still about 2/3’s full).  Again, these popped out of the pan with no issues and no “white butts” as well.  Just nice and crispy on the outside, and nice and custardy on the inside!

A few weeks ago, we decided to give Chef’s Plate a try.  As the primary cook for the household, I found it tiring trying to come up with ideas of what to make for dinner, and also the challenge of trying to get the appropriate groceries for the week.  As a result, we fell back on take out, and also found ourselves throwing out a lot of food gone bad.

After the initial trial period where you get a bunch of meals for really low prices, we get a two 4 serving meals a week.  Sometimes we just go with what they offer, other times we go into their website and pick our meals.

The quality of the ingredients has been great.  I find their meat quality to be better than anything I can get from our local grocery stores.

A couple times we ran into issues – one week they didn’t deliver until a couple days later, and another time they had omitted the primary ingredient (no salmon for a salmon chowder).  Both times their customer service was very responsive and resolved the issues to our satisfaction.

The box of 2 four serving meals costs around $70 – so each serving is around $9.  About half of what we would spend when ordering out.  The preparation times on the meal cards are reasonably accurate – and are usually around 30 minutes – so not far off from a typical wait time for a DoorDash order.

The meals come with a letter sized card that details what ingredients the meal includes (and qty), and step by step instructions for the preparation.  The cards are great – we save them (and save the repeats for family and friends).  I find them useful for meal ideas without a kit.  The one thing that can be a challenge is finding the appropriate spice blends they use in most of their meals.  These are often the ‘magic’ that makes their meals.  The do provide ingredient lists and recipes for many of their blends (but not all) over on their Facebook page.

The meals are packed in a medium sized  box with each meal individually packed in it’s own recyclable or biodegradable bag.  A third insulated bag contains a well sealed ice block along with any perishable ingredients from either of the meals.

I have a hard time throwing out the boxes – it doesn’t feel right.  Instead, we’ve been saving them.  Having a bunch of uniformly sized boxes is helpful to get things organized.