Maida Heatter's book of great chocolate desserts PDF
Preview Maida Heatter's book of great chocolate desserts
Other books by Maida Heatter Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts Maida Heatter’s New Book of Great Desserts Maida Heatter’s Book of Great American Desserts Maida Heatter’s Greatest Dessert Book Ever Maida Heatter’s Brand-New Book of Great Cookies Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts copyright © 2006 by Maida Heatter. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106. E-ISBN: 978-0-74079935-8 Library of Congress Control Number: Jacket design by Tim Lynch Cover photos by Kathy Ketner www.andrewsmcmeel.com ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: Special Sales Department, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106. [email protected] To Craig Claiborne with my sincerest respect and admiration I would like to thank Nancy Nicholas, who edited all my books. She is a special person who made it all a pleasure. Contents Introduction Author’s Note The Chocolate Tree Ingredients Equipment Techniques CAKES COOKIES PASTRIES COLD AND HOT DESSERTS OTHER Introduction After my dessert book and cookie book were published, people who love chocolate soon realized that I was a member of the club. Actually, I am the Chairperson of the Board of the Chocolate Lovers Association of the World. (I started as a Brownie and worked my way up.) Chocolate-lovers could not wait to corner me or my husband (also a member in good standing) and confess to their chocolate addictions, chocolate splurges, chocolate dreams, fantasies, and uncontrollable cravings and hunger for the stuff. I understand it all. I have had all the same feelings. And I do, I do—I do love it! I come from a long line of chocolate-lovers. And I have spent a good part of my life cooking with chocolate. We understand each other, chocolate and I. My husband says that I can hear chocolate. People always ask what my favorite dessert is. My answer is “anything chocolate.” But it is like the line of a song from Finian’s Rainbow, a Broadway play many years ago, “When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near.” So my favorite dessert is whatever is chocolate and is near: mousse, Brownies, pots de crème, Bavarian. Today I made French Chocolate Ice Cream, so today that is my favorite dessert. I would like to be near it forever. Chocolate is a magnet to many of us. Word of a special chocolate cake at a certain restaurant draws people for hundreds of miles. People send from around the world when they hear of a chocolate dessert they can buy by mail. They rush to put dollars in envelopes to send for a chocolate mousse recipe they know nothing about. When a Swiss chocolatier opened a tiny little hole in the wall of a shop in New York City, I immediately heard about it from friends in California, Chicago, Maine, and neighbors in Miami Beach. It appears to me that when a magazine wants to increase its circulation, they simply have to use a cover photograph of a mouth-watering, three-layer chocolate cake. Some people (especially me) will stop at nothing to track down the recipe for a dessert they have tasted or heard about. Many, many years ago I bought a certain chocolate cake from a New York patisserie and fell madly in love with it. I simply had to have the recipe, but I could not get it. I tried to duplicate it at least thirty or forty times with no luck. Since I thought that the particular brand of chocolate used in the cake might have been a clue to its unusual flavor, I hung around on the street in front of the shop for many days hoping to see a chocolate delivery truck. I had the cake sent to all the good cooks and pastry chefs I knew around the country to see if they could help me analyze it. I wrote to all the publications that seem to be able to get recipes when no one else can. I even asked my husband to flirt with the lady who baked the cake to try to get the recipe. I told him, “Do anything necessary—just don’t come home without it.” When the lady realized his motive she immediately threw him out of her shop. P.S.—I still do not have the recipe but haven’t given up; I keep trying. The one question I am asked most often is “What do you do with all the desserts you make while writing a cookbook?” Frankly, we eat an awful lot of them. And we have friends and neighbors, and delivery men, garbage men, gardeners, mailmen, and the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker who hope I will never finish writing this chocolate book. But recently when a new recipe for Brownies resulted in a dry, tasteless thing, I did not want to pass them on to anyone. We live on Biscayne Bay, where the sky is usually alive with seagulls. For many years we have fed them stale bread and crackers. I didn’t know what else to do with the Brownie boo-boo. I decided to try it on the gulls. I have never seen them so excited—they were frantic; they have never come as close, nor grabbed the food as hungrily; they fought with each other over every crumb. Then they sat out in the bay for hours waiting for more. Now I not only have a new and appreciative audience, but a hitherto unknown fact about chocolate: Seagulls love it! In a way, chocolate is like wine—or coffee. It is difficult to say which
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