Chocolate: From Simple Cookies to Extravagant Showstoppers

The author is famous and comes with quite a pedigree. In the introductory material, he festoons the reader with stories of working in Europe with the finest confectioners and chocolatiers; unfortunately, this experience does not seem to be reflected in the recipes of this rather ordinary book on chocolate. In the end, I suggest that you forget this book and instead pick up one of the many fine chocolate cookbooks put out by Hershey's.The first dozen or so pages cover equipment, chocolate, ingredients, tempering, etc. It is brief, declamatory, and useless. The instructions for Buche de Noel were extensive, imprecise, and confusing. Some of the cake assembly requires professional techniques, none of which is explained. I laughed when the author expects people to have an oven big enough to accommodate 4 cookie sheets at the same time (in the recipe for his recreation of LeNotre's Concorde Cake). Molded cakes are no easy matter, and the instructions in this book are woefully inadequate. For Rigotorte, the author casually tosses off the recipe for a chocolate pate sucree in 3 sentences; properly treated, this basic but not easy recipe should take 3 pages. The instructions for tempering chocolate are sufficient only for someone who has done it before. The last chapter has several worthwhile showpieces (suitable only for those with some experience), but it could use a few more pictures.The most basic recipe in the book, genoise, is the oddball version that uses a substantial amount of cornstarch; it does work, but is inferior to the standard version using all flour. A good genoise should also use butter which his does not, but he gets a pass; on the other hand, the recipe gives rather fuzzy directions for how long to beat the batter. The other basic cake, chocolate sponge, uses the separated egg sponge method, but also atypically has cornstarch. Inexplicably, the angel food cake uses self rising flour, which has baking powder; the main reason to make angel food cake is to avoid the use of chemical leaveners.The physical construction of the book is like a college textbook: heavy duty and durable with thick, glossy pages. The graphics and design are exemplary. The beginning of each chapter has a list of all recipes, a welcome convenience; strangely, the page numbers are not listed, so you still have to do some page flipping to find anything. It has: basics, cakes, cookies, custards, frozen, pies, candy, drinks, and decorations. The chapters on cakes, pies, and cookies were disappointing; the ones on frozen desserts and candy were very good. The chocolate decorations were very interesting, but the instructions were not sufficiently detailed for the novice.On the good side, the author is always careful to specify what type of cocoa powder to use, and all recipes have storage specifications. On the bad side, the flour amounts do not have weight equivalents, and the temperature of the eggs is never specified. Overall, I was more impressed with the quantity rather than the quality of the recipes.

I LOVE this book. I look for recipes which I can make from the ingredients and equipment that I already own or which require me to buy few new ingredients. I made the Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes on p. 128 and it turned out really well. My six year old said I make the best cupcakes! However, I did think it was a little firmer than I usually like cupcakes to be. So next time I make it I will use 1 1/3 c of flour instead of 1 1/2 c. It also could be that I kept them in the oven too long. Anyway, I didn't make the boiled icing that the cupcakes were topped with so I can't rate that. Page 41 has a recipe called Grand-Maman's Chocolate Cake. The ingredients are 3 eggs, 3/4 c sugar, 1 stick butter, 4 1/2 oz bittersweet chocolate, 3/4 c all purpose flour and icing sugar for finishing the cake. Apart from the last ingredient I have everything at home. So this will be my next project. The extravagent showstoppers really are out of my league and I know I will never attempt to make them, but the book is still wonderful.

I often buy this for bridal showers, asking notes on things I’ve made. This latest copy is actually missing pages 195 to 211. I plan to alert Harper Collins, but not confident they will do much. So this pride won’t have the chocolate pudding recipe . . .

I love this book. It is the best book on chocolate I have ever read. All the recipes I've tried have been absolutely fabulous! A lot of them are VERY rich, so a tiny bit goes a long way as far as serving sizes go. I only wish there was a photo of EVERY finished recipe, but there are still a lot of photos, especially of unusual or different things (I mean hey, we all know what a layer cake looks like, after all). Very clear instructions too.

I expected a more in depth book about working with chocolate, since Nick Malgieri is a teacher and pastry chef. This book only brieflydiscusses the hows and whys when working with this complex subject. I have not tried the recipes, yet, but am very disappointedI have to buy another book to answer questions, explain techniques, and the science behind baking with chocolate. Overall, thisbook is 95% recipes with a brief discussion of chocolate.

Wonderful recipes and easy to follow directions. I wish there were more pictures.

I have not had time to make much from this book, but I am a true Chocoholic so it will get plenty of good use.Wish that I had the time to make every recipe!

My second time buying this. This one for a gift.

Product is great, has very nice visuals and helps people who are really into chocolate be professionals and introduces new and innovative concepts.