Welcome, Diana!!!

Adding smileys is easy.  When you’re typing a message, look just to the left of the area you type in. Under the bold word Message is the word Smileys in red.  Click there and make your smiley selection!  It will look like typed things, but when you submit your post, it will turn into a smiley.

Looking forward to hearing all about your baking!

—ak

greetings from Plattsmouth Nebraska..

And greetings back at you!!!
Welcome!

I am not sure exactly where I just saw the discussion about ovens but I joined so I could post a comment and get some information.  I am a terrible cook but like to bake and am moving to the Coast of Ecuador. No one bakes much there so I tried to make banana bread using the ovens of friends and they were terrible.  We are packing a container of things and I plan to buy an oven and am open to suggestions.  We will have to adapt it to the tanks of gas that they use there which generate higher temperatures than the natural gas we use here as well.  Nevertheless I am on a mission to make my mother’s old banana bread recipe and other wonderful things.  What type of oven should I buy?
I will be buying a range oven, not one that is in the wall.  One of the women liked her Kitchen Aid oven.  Would that be a good idea?  What should I look for?
Springtime

I haven’t been very happy with my oven, from a baking standpoint.  It is a GE Monogram wall oven, and it has marked hotspots and coolspots with or without the convection function on, and it also has not been very durable- has broken down a number of times in the first five years that I’ve owned it. 

I’d be interested to hear from those who like their ovens for baking, at some point I’ll be able to justify a new one

Good luck with your adventures in Ecuador!  I don’t know what flours will be available there, but you might want to search over on the blog for the “Power of Flour” entries, as well as for “Kate flour”, so you’ll be well versed in dealing with non-American flours and ways to adapt them for US recipes.

You may also want to store sugar and flour in the fridge or freezer, airtight, to keep them from absorbing too much moisture.

Dear Smileys

Thank you for the suggestions. I have been looking at Oven ranges all afternoon. The good one that several people rave about is the Kitchen Aide probably the dual oven one.  But, it costs nearly $2000 so that is out.  It is beautiful though I must say.  Also, there haven’t been a lot of reply’s and I am wondering if this discussion should be posted elsewhere, perhaps not on a forum. Anyway, I may end up getting a Kenmore that automatically calculates the difference in a recipe for using the convection feature of the oven.  Several different brands are made by the same manufacturer - it is all too confusing really. I still welcome input as we are going to wait until July 4th weekend to purchase it.
I will check on the different flours that are available.
Thanks again.
Springtime

I have a Whirlpool. It is 7 years old and a separate thermometer assures me the oven’s temperature is very accurate.  However, if I were to get a new oven, I would consider the Kenmore. I have always had good performance from whatever Kenmore product I owned. Just check to see which company manufactured the Kenmore.  I had to buy a washer recently. I wanted the Kenmore but learned it was manufactured by LG and Samsung. I didn’t want a washer made by those manufacturers so I purchased another Whirlpool.

Julie - 21 June 2011 07:51 AM

I haven’t been very happy with my oven, from a baking standpoint.  It is a GE Monogram wall oven, and it has marked hotspots and coolspots with or without the convection function on, and it also has not been very durable- has broken down a number of times in the first five years that I’ve owned it. 

I’d be interested to hear from those who like their ovens for baking, at some point I’ll be able to justify a new one

Good luck with your adventures in Ecuador!  I don’t know what flours will be available there, but you might want to search over on the blog for the “Power of Flour” entries, as well as for “Kate flour”, so you’ll be well versed in dealing with non-American flours and ways to adapt them for US recipes.

You may also want to store sugar and flour in the fridge or freezer, airtight, to keep them from absorbing too much moisture.

The appliance specialist told me GE is trying to get out of manufacturing appliances. I was sorry to hear that because GE has always been a good product. I have had many GE refrigerators and loved them. The GE Monogram was on my list to check into when my oven goes.

Hi

I live in Singapore and love to bake.  I enjoy decorating cakes as well but I feel that what’s most important in a cake is flavor and texture.  That said, I am trying to learn to decorate well as my son wants his birthday cakes to look like trucks!!!!  I love Rose’s books and I love this forum.  It’s nice to be here.

Hello, like everyone else that came aboard, I’m looking forward to be trolling through.  Glad to have met you.

Welcome, Singbaker and Freesia!

Thank you for the nice warm welcome, Julie.  Looking forward to navigating around.

Hi fellow cake bakers! I’m new to this forum and would love some help with a neoclassic buttercream problem. I adore Rose’s recipes and particularly appreciate the degree of specificity. Despite this I still had a problem yesterday. I got the sugar to a rolling boil, had already thoroughly beaten the eggs, turned off the beaters and added the first slurp of boiling syrup. Even though I immediately beat it on high speed the syrup ran to the bottom of the bowl and set like toffee. Exasperating! I fished the lump out, washed the egg yolk off it, remelted the toffee and kept going. Eventually it worked out fine but I had to repeat this messy procedure a few times. There were a few toffee bits on the side of the bowl too from drips but I ignored them. What was I doing wrong and how can I avoid the toffee lump syndrome in future?

Many thanks and apologies of this problem has already been addressed.

Hi, Sam C, and welcome!

I am not going to be a big help here, but I’m sure someone else will.  I can only say that I use a hand electric mixer with the ‘continuous thin-stream drizzle’ method, and so I don’t experience your problem.  I’m sure you probably want to continue to use your stand mixer—I think most folks here have one—so likely someone else will chime in.  If you don’t get an answer fairly quickly (and I think you probably will), try copying your post to the Cakes or General Q&A categories.

Looking forward to hearing more about your baking!

—ak

Thanks AK, good tip. You can see I don’t know my way around the forum yet! I will repost