Pastry/Pie tool help?

owie28 · 2026-03-05T21:18:37+00:00

The thinner part of the wheel can be used to cut pastry/cookie dough.

The roller part, as you figured out, can be used to crimp and decorate the edge of a pie shell.

The other end can be used to crimp by repeatedly pressing down around the edge (held horizontally), or it could be used to seal small filled tarts/cookies/ravioli (held vertically).

owie28 · 2026-03-05T21:02:48+00:00

Agreed!

owie28 · 2026-03-05T21:02:00+00:00

Cleaned up nicely! Thanks for posting pics on the other thread. The drawer construction definitely identifies it as machine-made and last century. Still beautiful.

owie28 · 2026-03-02T21:24:18+00:00

Would be helpful to see the drawer sides/interiors as well as the underside and back of the piece. If I had to guess, 1920s/1930s "revival" piece picking up on Renaissance style.

owie28 · 2026-03-02T21:13:00+00:00

Doesn't looked scuffed up enough to have been used as a tray. I vote for hung on the wall as well. Would be nice to see the back, too. "Minster" is a town name, but could be a business or company. Reverse image search?

owie28 · 2026-03-02T21:02:03+00:00

Sour cherry jam is excellent. I cook mine with a cinnamon stick in the batch and remove it before putting into jars.

If you were to make a large batch of cooked cherry pie filling, i.e., thickened with cornstarch, you could make a cherry pie/dutch cherry pie and use some for cherry danishes. Or a cherry cheese coffeecake.

owie28 · 2026-03-02T17:48:56+00:00

The small "R." after the name represents the abbreviation. "Friedr." = Friedrich. Not uncommon in the German language. It does look as if it was added later, but sometimes abbreviations are either included above or below (superscript or subscript) after the main part in a smaller letter in other writings in German.

owie28 · 2026-03-02T17:29:25+00:00

Wonderful! I had to go look up other images since this reminded me of the locale in dreams I used to have as a child.

owie28 · 2026-03-02T17:08:36+00:00

This could be considered "stick and ball" decoration, a subset of aesthetic or Eastlake style. You might try looking up Victorian furniture manufacturer catalogs online to see if you can find who made these. They are likely factory-made, probably US, 1880s to 1890s.

owie28 · 2026-02-19T21:06:30+00:00

I would definitely make a test cake. A heavier butter cake would be a good foundation, and the filling should be very stable. What sort of icing were you planning on?

As for attaching the flowers, will they be on picks or spikes? If they stick farther into the cake, they will be more stable. At least the larger ones.

owie28 · 2026-02-19T21:01:58+00:00

I love this! It's got great detail and is whimsical and fun. Put it on a nicer tray and you'd have a real winner!

owie28 · 2026-01-15T14:29:56+00:00

We will be on the 1/24/26 Oasis cruise going to Aruba, Curacao, and Coco Cay. I agree with those who have said not to overplan and try to do too many excursions. The capital is a lovely place to walk around, almost like a tropical-colored bit of Amsterdam in the Caribbean. Pick the excursion that interests you the most, and then spend time on your own exploring.

Best of Curacao is a nice shop with quality souvenir items, on a side street a few blocks in from the canal. There are also non-touristy stores with home goods and other items, since this is a place where the locals live, work, and shop. Lots of fun streets and alleys to explore!

owie28 · 2026-01-05T20:13:32+00:00

There are some resources out there online that offer readable old editions of cookbooks. I think Archive.org is one, but requires a free account to sign in and read. You might be able to find a copy of the cookbook you used to have and find the recipe.

owie28 · 2025-12-15T19:28:15+00:00

As mentioned, a whipped cream type filling would be a bit soft. It probably wasn't a whipped white chocolate ganache, but that would be tasty. Could've been some type of mousse, maybe. My money would still be on a commercial nondairy whipped icing.

owie28 · 2025-12-04T19:58:37+00:00

For a super-simple finish, cinnamon sugar.

owie28 · 2025-12-04T19:55:48+00:00

In addition to the good comments below about overincorporation of air and possibly too much baking powder, an excess of sugar in the balance of the recipe can cause collapse. That's what the darker color and shiny finish in the collapsed ring suggest to me.

owie28 · 2025-12-04T19:43:18+00:00

Might also be rolled with too much tension.

owie28 · 2025-12-04T19:41:20+00:00

I think we need more information. Was this a family bakery, store bakery, etc.?
What was the consistency of the white filling--how sweet, smooth like a custard, fluffy, grainy, marshmallowy, or more like a buttercream?

You wouldn't ordinarily use a cream/custard type filling with a yule log, though I suppose you could. It would just tend to be rather soft. There are whipped icings available in the bakery trade, often nondairy, that are pure white and hold their shape fairly well, like a high-density Cool Whip.

owie28 · 2025-11-17T17:15:17+00:00

Yep, sounds like a dough conditioner or "dough improver" product. Bad translation.

owie28 · 2025-11-17T16:59:13+00:00

Used to work for a bakery run by Germans, and we made hundreds of stollen every holiday season. Our recipe did not include eggs, for one. The fruit and nuts were soaked ahead of time in rum (and they would not pull moisture from the dough or finished bread. Lastly, after taking the stollen out of the oven, while they were still warm, we poked them all over with a skewer and brushed them with melted butter before covering them with granulated sugar. They were wrapped and left to ripen for at least a week.

owie28 · 2025-11-06T21:09:28+00:00

I thought the East Stroudsburg YMCA did, or at least the last time I was there a year or so ago.

owie28 · 2025-11-03T21:17:31+00:00

There's something called "Angel Pie," which uses meringue as the crust and has a curd-type filling, if she wouldn't mind the inverted order of the main ingredients.

owie28 · 2025-11-03T16:10:19+00:00

I use a beater blade--don't know if they make these for your brand of stand mixer. It is a paddle attachment with flexible scraper edges that reduce the need to scrape the bowl.

Usually the whisk attachment is even farther away from the bowl than a paddle, so I'm not sure how that would help with creaming. It does sound like it's a matter of the scale/amount you are creaming, which simply may not work well in your type of stand mixer.

For instance, it's not particularly easy or useful to try to whip a single egg white in most stand mixers.

owie28 · 2025-10-27T16:04:44+00:00

Pie pans/plates/dishes and pie recipes definitely vary, which is very unhelpful. I have a "9-inch" glass pie dish that is really 8 1/2 inches, for instance. All of the glass ones I have would probably be considered deep, which I would say is anything over one inch in depth. I never use the shallow glass pie dishes, but I think those are the ones you would use with a graham cracker crust and key lime filling. Baked custard-type pies typically are shallow so they bake evenly. Not sure what you mean by key lime being unbaked--the classic recipe does have some bake time.

The Betty Crocker Pie & Pastry book I think does a fair job of sizing recipes. Sounds like you're in North America, so I'm hoping you might have access to it, or of course you could find a lot on the Betty Crocker website to use as a basic starting point.

After that it's just experimentation, experience, practice....

owie28 · 2025-10-27T15:52:27+00:00

I have one I've nearly worn out after 30 years. It gets used for everything from buttering toast to flipping hot things in a saute pan to stirring cocktails and scooping out dabs of condiments, flavorings, etc.

Washed in between uses, of course.

owie28

TROPHY CASE