My search for the perfect, most luscious and intense chocolate mousse brought me right back from France, to America, to Julia Child’s recipe. Although I have a few other chocolate mousse recipes in my repertoire, her recipe is a classic and has that perfect slightly sticky texture, that sticks to your tastebuds, then hits you with a wallop of pure dark chocolate flavor. This recipe requires a bit of whipping….
[UPDATE: La Maison du Chocolat may have stopped making this particular chocolate.] At a recent tasting at La Maison du Chocolat, I sampled at least eight chocolates—not to mention passion fruit ganache, chocolat chaud, plus two of their newest summer flavors: melon and star anise. It was a lot to get through, let me tell you. I normally avoid any hot chocolate that’s offered in…
We’re mid-week into our Paris Chocolate Tour here and we’re having a great time. Everyone’s enjoying the unusually fine weather, and of course, the chocolate. I wanted to post a few shots and notes in my spare seven minutes—it’s 5:34am so forgive any typos or missed links. I’ll catch ’em later…in my free time ; ) Cheerful, and the amazingly-talented, Jean-Charles Rochoux shows us a…
New chocolate-makers are springing up across America, in the most unlikeliest of places. Like Missouri. Who’d a thunk it? Using good ‘ol American ingenuity, a little over a year ago, Alan McClure started grinding up beans and molding them into lithe bars of very dark, and very sleek, bittersweet chocolate. His company, Patric chocolate, makes bars that are “micro-produced,” and he’s got two in his…
I’ve been a little lax in my duties around here reporting on chocolate. In my defense, I’ve been sidetracked by bacon, seaweed, and kimchi. But man cannot live by chocolate alone, even in Paris. Speaking of chocolate, when I was doing research for my chocolate book, it was challenging to find people to talk about what they do. I met with one representative from a…
Now that you’ve all seen everything I have in my kitchen, I thought I’d show you a place I just discovered this week not far from where all that pastry magic happens. (And I’m sure a few of you remember where all the magic that doesn’t happen around here ends up.) Someone chided me for having French Wine For Dummies on my bookshelf, but gave…
If I had to name my top three desserts, in that too-brief list would be Black & White Cookies. I can’t visit New York without having at least one per day, although it’s getting tougher and tougher to find a decent one there. On my last trip I found a lot of shrink-wrapped cookies, but there’s nothing like biting into a jumbo-sized fluffy disk of…
Seriously my friends, is there anything better than chocolate and toffee together? Especially when the toffee has a brown sugar-flavored buttery snap and luscious chocolate is smeared over the top so it hardens and melds with the crackly caramelized matzoh underneath. When a marriage is this good, a picture can only do partial justice to the love that exists between the happy couple. The Caramelized Matzoh…
For the holidays this year, I decided to take up a friend’s offer to visit their family in Méribel, a village way high up in the French alps. As you can see, it’s a spectacular place. And I’m not just talking ‘gorgeous sunsets’ or ‘charmingly quaint’ spectacular. I mean, Méribel was mind-blowingly, insanely hallucinante. Seriously, I wasn’t prepared for the awesome beauty of it all….
A
Get David's newsletter sent right to your Inbox!
Sign up for my newsletter and get my FREE guidebook to the best bakeries and pastry shops in Paris...
