Product Description

Chocolatier magazine editors share their passion for chocolate, with recipes and techniques for creating spectacular chocolate desserts.

Blending passion with expertise, this book will become a chocolate lover's instant favorite. Fifty-four luscious new recipes developed and tested by editors at Chocolatier magazine celebrate chocolate at its best, including the whimsical Tahitian Vanilla Swirls, the elegant Milk Chocolate Mousse Roulade, and the smooth, sophisticated Black Satin Chocolate Raspberry Cake. With separate sections on white, milk, and dark chocolate, and gorgeous full-color photographs of techniques and finished desserts, Chocolate Passion makes it easy to learn and master the secrets of working with every type of chocolate.

Tish Boyle (New York, NY) is Food Editor and Timothy Moriarty (New York, NY) is Features Editor of Chocolatier and Pastry Art and Design magazines. They are the authors of Grand Finales: The Art of the Plated Dessert and A Modernist View of Plated Desserts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #206871 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780471293170
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:

Customer Reviews

Very, very good
I have recently received this book and I find it an excellent book. It is not only beautiful (it has lots of spectacular photos) but also its recipes are wery good, and also its explanations of ingredients and techniques. It is true that it is elegant and you can find that many of the recipes are only for special ocasions (however you can adapt them!), but not too sophisticated (as it is Torres' book, which I find extremely sophisticated). I find this book beautiful and useful.

A Mixed Bag
One of the authors is the head recipe tester for Chocolatier Magazine, and the recipes in this cookbook are similar to the ones you will find therein; it has the same advantages and drawbacks. Specifically, it is a productive resource for the professional or the veteran amateur pastry chef. The recipes are probably too ambitious and the instructions too vague for the average home cook.

The introductory chapter is a mixed bag. The essays on types of chocolate, tempering, and tools are exemplary. On the other hand, the sections on non-chocolate ingredients and various techniques and procedures (such as whipping egg whites or proper batter folding technique) are virtually absent. It also has the obligatory and disposable information on chocolate history and manufacturing.

Interestingly, the book has three main sections, one each for milk, dark, and white chocolates. Here, you will find recipes mainly for cakes, cookies, and confections. In a rare moment of honesty, the authors admit that milk chocolate has such a weak chocolate flavor that it is easily overwhelmed in a recipe. There are slightly more than 50 recipes, and they are all listed and cross referenced in the table of contents.

The recipes themselves are problematic. The main error here is the listing of ingredients in volume (e.g. cups) with no equivalents given in weight. This is a major problem for professionals who will try to multiply the recipes, and also for any recipe that has flour. They all list prep times, but never the cooling or baking times. Many of the recipes are complicated affairs that have several components. The result is a recipe that takes up several pages, but even so the instructions are quite scant; they are sufficient for professionals, but not detailed enough for the inexperienced. There is no advice on how to coordinate the execution of a complex recipe with several different sub-recipes. Each recipe has a picture, which is a good thing, but the presentation and decorating instructions in the recipes sometimes do not match the food styling in the photos. These problems will not be a hindrance for the experienced, but will be major trouble for the average home cook.

The most interesting feature of this book is the variety of truffle recipes. Each one has detailed instructions from A to Z for using the fancy, plastic truffle molds that can be bought on the internet in a bewildering array of different types and shapes. There is also a recipe for using chocolate transfer sheets.

What else needs to be said except for Chocolatier magazine?
This cookbook is to die for. I have been a subscriber to chocolatier magazine for years and every time I make something from the magazine, people think I've had it catered. The recipes are not as difficult as people might imagine and the photos make your mouth water to the point that you can barely contain yourself until you try every single recipe!