Crisp Triple Chocolate Cake

Gold Topped Palet Dessert

Mandarin Marvels Recipe Below

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for Cooking with Chocolate click here.

This comprehensive, illustrated reference offers the essential building blocks and recipes for working with chocolate in the home kitchen. This cooking school in book form opens with 100 step-by-step techniques: chocolate basics (tempering, ganaches, pralines), candy fillings, decorations, doughs, creams and mousses, ice cream and sorbet, sauces, and baker’s secrets. Each method is explained in text and photographs; fourteen are further clarified on the ninety-minute DVD.

Organized into nine sections, 100 recipes are simplified for the home cook: classics (Sachertorte, pro-fiteroles, molten chocolate cake), tarts (chocolate-pear, nut-caramel), snacks (macaroons, waffles, brownies, choco-ginger churros), frozen desserts, special occasions (dark chocolate fondue, hazelnut-praline Yule log), and candy (truffles, lollipops, coconut bars. More...

An Excerpt from the Foreword by Frederic Bau, Executive Chef, Creative Director at the Ecole du Grand Chocolat Valrhona:

Dear Chocolate Lovers,

Before you dip into Cooking with Chocolate, I would like to share some thoughts with you.

When I founded the Ecole du Grand Chocolat over twenty years ago, my intention was that it should set a benchmark for food artisans the world over, a place where they could come for training and to extend their knowledge.

Since then, the school has also become a place where we share our values and our expertise. It is open to self-taught chocolate connoisseurs and to amateurs who can enroll in our "Gourmet" training courses.

We were honored when Flammarion entrusted this book to us. We hope it will become a key reference work and that we have lived up to the challenge--after all, there are already many books that do justice to Theobroma cacao, the "food of the gods," as Linneaus dubbed the plant. However, this book is fundamentally different from other books already published on the subject.

First of all, it is a concentration of knowledge built up from the professional training we provide at the Ecole du Grand Chocolat. We reveal the techniques for working chocolate in language that is easily comprehensible to nonprofessionals. These basic techniques comprise the first part of the book, and it is essential to master them to make the great classical recipes that incorporate confections, icings, ganaches*, and sponges. This book will also provide you with a symphony of plea¬sure for your palate, orchestrated by the chefs at our school and by some of the greatest names in the world of pastry, all centering on one magical ingredient: chocolate.

In the second section, we share over one hundred recipes, from the simplest and most basic to the most creative...

...Julie Haubourdin, my colleague in charge of the gourmet training courses, agreed to be the linchpin of the project. She used her considerable talent to "translate" our professional jargon into clear, precise language that everyone can understand. I hope that, as you turn the pages, enjoying Clay McLachlan's unique photos and Eve-Marie Zizza-Lalu's explicit instructions, you will be able tosense the associations of tastes and textures of each of our recipes, and our desire to share with you the culture of excellence that inspires us all.

On behalf of each and every member of the team, I wish you a tasty escapade into a world in which the inseparable duo of flavor and technique creates shared pleasures.

--Frederic Bau

How to work with chocolate

Klemanga

Truffled Ivory Macaroons

MANDARIN MARVELS

Makes 20-30 mini-tartlets
Preparation time: 2 hours
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Resting time: 40 minutes
Refrigeration time: 2 hours

INGREDIENTS:
Spiced dough
1 stick (4 1/2 oz./125 g) butter
2 3/8 cups (9 oz./250 g) cake flour
l/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup (4 1/2 oz. 125 g) light brown sugar
1/3 cup (2 2/3 oz./75 g) granulated sugar
l/2 beaten egg
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon (20 ml) whole milk

Bittersweet chocolate ganache*
3 1/2 oz. (100 g) bittersweet chocolate
60 percent cocoa
1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons (150 ml)
whipping cream
1 heaped tablespoon (1 oz./25 g) honey

Decoration
10 seedless mandarins
1 bar bittersweet chocolate, 60 percent cocoa

Equipment
1 flexible spatula
1 whisk (optional)
Plastic wrap
2 sheets of food-safe acetate
20-30 mini-tartlet molds
1 immersion blender
1 well-sharpened paring knife
1 vegetable peeler

Prepare the spiced dough.
Take the butter out of the refrigerator several hours before you begin baking and place it in a mixing bowl. Mix it energetically with a flexible spatula. Soften it further with the spatula or a whisk (the final texture is known as beurre pommade*).

Preheat the oven to 350°F (170°C). Sift the flour with the cinnamon and set aside. Add the brown sugar and white granulated sugar to the butter and mix in well. Incorporate the egg and sifted flour and cinnamon. Lastly, stir in the milk and mix until the dough is smooth. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and chill for about 1 hour. Roll the dough out, preferably between 2 sheets of acetate, to a thickness of just under Ms in. (2 mm) and cut it out to fit the molds. Bake for about 15 minutes and leave to cool.

Prepare the bittersweet chocolate ganache.
Chop the chocolate and melt it slowly in a bain-marie* or in the microwave oven (on "defrost" or at 500 W maximum, stirring from time to time). Bring the cream and honey to the boil in a saucepan. Gradually pour one-third of the boiling cream over the melted chocolate. Using a flexible spatula, ener-getically mix the cream into the chocolate, drawing small, quick circles in the center to create a shiny, elastic "kernel."

Incorporate the second third of the cream and mix in exactly the same way. Pour in the remaining third, using the same stirring technique. Process with an immersion blender until the mixture is smooth and perfectly emulsified*. Pour the ganache into the cooled tart shells.

Prepare the mandarin segments.
Using a well-sharpened paring knife, peel the mandarins, making sure you remove all the white pith. Extract the segments. Hold the mandarin in the hollow of your hand and slip the knife along the membrane that encloses the segment until you reach the center of the fruit. Repeat on the other side of the segment, all along the membrane to the center. The segment will come out on its own. Repeat with the remaining segments and reserve them on some sheets of paper towel.

Arrange 4 or 5 segments on each tartlet to reproduce the shape of a half-mandarin. Decorate with a few chocolate shavings: scrape them off from the bar of chocolate using the tip of a vegetable peeler. Reserve in the refrigerator until serving.

CHEF'S NOTE
For a final, elegant touch, top with a small piece of edible gold leaf.

Copyright © 2011 by Frederic Bau. Reprinted from Cooking with Chocolate with permission from Flammarion.

About the Editor

Frederic Bau--
is considered by his peers as one of the world's finest chocolatiers--he worked with Pierre Herme at Fauchon before becoming the founder, creative director, and executive chef of the Ecole du Grand Chocolat Valrhona. He and his wife own Umia, a French-Japanese restaurant in Tain l'Hermitage, France.

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