Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts
Read Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts Online
Authors: Maida Heatter
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: 978-0-7407-9935-8
Library of Congress Control Number:
Jacket design by Tim Lynch
Cover photos by Kathy Ketner
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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
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 is the best. A connoisseur will be familiar with them all and will know the subtle differences. Everyone does not agree; it is a matter of taste. Just because they look like chocolate don’t expect them all to be alike, any more than wines or coffees are alike.
When this book was originally published in 1980, there were only a few different brands of chocolate available. Now—wow—there are so many I can’t name them all. If a recipe calls for a certain type, for instance unsweetened or semisweet, etc., please feel free to use any brand you like or any brand available. Taste as many as you can. Cook with as many as you can. See which you like best. Sometimes I prefer certain chocolates for certain recipes because I have made them before and I know the flavor I want. And at times I use different chocolates just to experiment, or simply because that is all that is available at the moment.
Since the price of all chocolate has soared sky-high, it is a truly extravagant luxury. In my years of experimenting with it I have thrown out potfuls and panfuls and bowlfuls. But I don’t want you to have any failures. I am always dumbfounded when someone tells me about a recipe that did not turn out right, and then they casually add “but that might be because I used fewer eggs and baked it in a larger pan at a lower temperature and I used salad oil instead of butter.”
Please follow the directions carefully.
When I wrote my other books I left out many chocolate recipes that I loved because I thought that not everyone felt the way I did about it. But now, no holds barred; this is it—a chocolate binge.
Miami Beach, Florida
Author’s Note
This book was originally published in 1980. It was my third book, and I have written several others since then—seven all together. They are all dessert books and are all loaded with chocolate recipes, because I love chocolate.
There is one recipe, from Maida Heatter’s
Brand-New Book of Great Cookies
(Random House, 1995), that many people have told me is their number-one favorite. It is for Chocolate Chip and Almond Biscotti. I would like to share the recipe with you.
I wish you all HAPPY CHOCOLATE.
M. H.
Chocolate Chip and Almond Biscotti
ABOUT 40
BISCOTTI
Irresistible. Awesome. With a huge, tremendous (there can’t be too much of a good thing) amount of chocolate chips. Chocolate chips never had it so good.
6 ounces (1¼ cups) whole blanched (skinned) almonds
2 cups sifted unbleached flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
12 ounces (2 cups) semisweet chocolate morsels
2 eggs graded “large”
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons whiskey or brandy
First toast the almonds in a single layer in a shallow pan in a 350-degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes, shaking the pan a few times, until the almonds are lightly colored and have a delicious smell of toasted almonds when you open the oven door. Set aside to cool.
Adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. If possible, use cookie sheets with two or three flat edges; otherwise use any sheets upside down. Line the sheets with baking parchment or aluminum foil, shiny side up, and set aside.
Sift together into a large bowl (preferably one with flared rather than straight sides) the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the sugar and stir to mix.
Place about ½ cup of these dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal chopping blade. Add about ½ cup of the toasted almonds and process for about half a minute until the nuts are fine and powdery.
Add the processed mixture to the sifted ingredients in the large bowl. Add the remaining toasted almonds and the chocolate morsels and stir to mix.
In a small bowl beat the eggs with the vanilla and whiskey or brandy just to mix.
Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until the dry ingredients are moistened (I stir with a large rubber spatula). Be patient.
Place a length of baking parchment or wax paper on the counter next to the sink. Turn the dough out onto the parchment or wax paper. Wet your hands with cold water—do not dry them—and press the dough into a round mound.
With a long, heavy, sharp knife cut the dough into equal quarters.
Continue to wet your hands as you form each piece of dough into a strip about 9 inches long, 2½ inches wide, and a generous 1 inch high (you will press the dough into shape, more than roll it). The ends of the strips should be rounded rather than squared.
Place two strips crosswise on each of the lined sheets.
Bake for 25 minutes, reversing the sheets top to bottom and front to back once during baking.
Remove the sheets from the oven and slide the parchment or foil off the sheets. With a wide metal spatula transfer the baked strips to a large cutting board and let them cool for 20 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 275 degrees.
With a serrated French bread knife, carefully cut on a sharp angle into slices about 1 inch wide. This is tricky; cut slowly with a sawing motion.
Place the slices, cut side down, on the two unlined sheets.
Bake the two sheets, turning the slices upside down and reversing the sheets top to bottom and front to back once during baking. Bake for about 25 minutes (depending on the thickness of the biscotti) until thoroughly dry.
