"Chocolate Desserts" by Pierre Herme (Part 2)

[docsconz]

I did the Pave' and it came out great. interestingly, although the recipe said it would be enough for two cakes, I only managed to get one out of it. I'll try to post photos later. As  I mentioned earlier, my wife is the baker of the family, so this was the first cake I ever made from scratch. It took awhile, but wasn't particularly difficult.

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It has been awhile, but better late than never!

On a side note, I recently made Apricot packets from Desserts by PH using fresh Frog Hollow Apricots. It was an amazing dessert. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos.

[Patrick S]

Looks great, John!

[cjsadler]

On a side note, I recently made Apricot packets from Desserts by PH using fresh Frog Hollow Apricots. It was an amazing dessert. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos.

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I made these apricot packets last night. Very simple, but a really fantastic combination of flavors (the other ingredients include tea, black pepper, lemon, and orange blossom)

[FoodMan]

John- that looks very decadent. Great work!

I made the mint ice cream mix last night for the "Profiteroles with mint ice cream and chocolate sauce". I will churn it tonight and hopefully make the puffs as well. If not then it is the ice cream with chocolate sauce only.

Elie

[laniloa]

I served my first concorde to friends last night. It was surprisingly simple to make considering it is a 3 page recipe! I borrowed Patrick's decorating pattern and put meringue sticks around the border with just a few scattered on top. Next time, I think I'd make the meringue disks thicker to get more distinct layers and more height. Now I just have to decide what to make next.

[Patrick S]

I served my first concorde to friends last night.  It was surprisingly simple to make considering it is a 3 page recipe!  I borrowed Patrick's decorating pattern and put meringue sticks around the border with just a few scattered on top.  Next time, I think I'd make the meringue disks thicker to get more distinct layers and more height.

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I made two mini concordes monday, and I lightly coated the meringue discs with ganace before assembling them. This kept that layers more distinct, and added another texture, so that in every bite you get light-and-moussy, fudgy, and crunchy texture. I'm serving this for a coworkers birthday today.

[laniloa]

I made two mini concordes monday, and I lightly coated the meringue discs with ganace before assembling them. This kept that layers more distinct, and added another texture, so that in every bite you get light-and-moussy, fudgy, and crunchy texture.  I'm serving this for a coworkers birthday today.

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That sounds wonderful. Even though I knew that freezing would tenderize the meringue, I didn't expect it to the extent that it happened. Keeping more crunch would be interesting. Did you decorate with sticks at home or are you doing htat just before serving?

[Patrick S]

I made two mini concordes monday, and I lightly coated the meringue discs with ganace before assembling them. This kept that layers more distinct, and added another texture, so that in every bite you get light-and-moussy, fudgy, and crunchy texture.  I'm serving this for a coworkers birthday today.

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That sounds wonderful. Even though I knew that freezing would tenderize the meringue, I didn't expect it to the extent that it happened. Keeping more crunch would be interesting. Did you decorate with sticks at home or are you doing htat just before serving?

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I made the sticks with the leftover meringue, but I didn't put them on the cake. My plan was to garnish the cake just before seving with tiny chocolate macaroons, but lunch ran long so I ended up just giving her the bare cake and a little container of macaroons.

[Daniel]

I did the Pave' and it came out great. interestingly, although the recipe said it would be enough for two cakes, I only managed to get one out of it. I'll try to post photos later. As  I mentioned earlier, my wife is the baker of the family, so this was the first cake I ever made from scratch. It took awhile, but wasn't particularly difficult.

←

It has been awhile, but better late than never!

On a side note, I recently made Apricot packets from Desserts by PH using fresh Frog Hollow Apricots. It was an amazing dessert. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos.

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Cake looks great Doc.. I think its time for me to revisit that recipe myself.. Although I wonder its shelf life in a New York City kitchen in this weather..

[onehsancare]

PANIC!!

I'm making dessert for 16 for tonight. Yesterday, I did the apricots and the cocoa cake for the Faubourg Pavé. Very disappointed by the cake, so my DH got a chunk of one loaf for dessert. I thought that I hadn't folded enough (crust looked a little marbled, although interior did not), that I hadn't been able to incorporate all of the cocoa, and that there seemed to be a collapsing problem. They ended up about 2.5 inches high and 2.75 inches high.

So, today, I tried again. I mixed more than the tablespoon of yolk/cocoa mix into the butter, which seemed to help incorporating all the ingredients. I concentrated on folding, being gentle, but thorough. I was hopeful, since both of these loaves had baked higher than the sides of the pans.

They've both collapsed. One is 1.5 inches thick, one is 1.25 inches. They look a lot more like paving stones than cake.

I think I have to give up on this project for tonight, unless someone can diagnose my problem and cure it soonish! Please!

URGENCY GONE. I'm taking raspberry ice cream I made Wednesday, "serious" vanilla ice cream I'm making as I write, and a raspberry tart. Not as showy as I'd hoped, but reliable.

(Edited to remove code red.)

Edited July 15, 2005 by onehsancare (log)

[tejon]

Question - if you only had one of these two books, Chocolate Desserts by PH or Desserts by PH, which would you buy? This thread has been an inspiration, but I can only afford one right now.

[docsconz]

Question - if you only had one of these two books, Chocolate Desserts by PH or Desserts by PH, which would you buy? This thread has been an inspiration, but I can only afford one right now.

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Do you prefer chocolate or non-chocolate desserts? Go with your preference. Both are great.

[kthull]

Doc took the words right out of my mouth. A bonus to the Desserts book is there are several chocolate recipes in there.

[docsconz]

Cake looks great Doc.. I think its time for me to revisit that recipe myself.. Although I wonder its shelf life in a New  York City kitchen in this weather..

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Thanks, Daniel. Do you have AC? If so, shouldn't be a problem. If not.....

[docsconz]

PANIC!!   

I'm making dessert for 16 for tonight.  Yesterday, I did the apricots and the cocoa cake for the Faubourg Pavé.  Very disappointed by the cake, so my DH got a chunk of one loaf for dessert.  I thought that I hadn't folded enough (crust looked a little marbled, although interior did not), that I hadn't been able to incorporate all of the cocoa, and that there seemed to be a collapsing problem.  They ended up about 2.5 inches high and 2.75 inches high.

So, today, I tried again.  I mixed more than the tablespoon of yolk/cocoa mix into the butter, which seemed to help incorporating all the ingredients.  I concentrated on folding, being gentle, but thorough.  I was hopeful, since both of these loaves had baked higher than the sides of the pans.

They've both collapsed.  One is 1.5 inches thick, one is 1.25 inches.  They look a lot more like paving stones than cake.

I think I have to give up on this project for tonight, unless someone can diagnose my problem and cure it soonish!  Please! 

URGENCY GONE.  I'm taking raspberry ice cream I made Wednesday, "serious" vanilla ice cream I'm making as I write, and a raspberry tart.  Not as showy as I'd hoped, but reliable.

(Edited to remove code red.)

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I wish I could help you, but I am not an experienced enough baker to diagnose a problem here. When I did mine, I followed the recipe pretty religiously. Mine came out dense with only one cake rather than the two suggested by the recipe.

[tejon]

I love all desserts . Guess I'll start with Desserts and move on to C.D. a bit later. Thanks!

Question - if you only had one of these two books, Chocolate Desserts by PH or Desserts by PH, which would you buy? This thread has been an inspiration, but I can only afford one right now.

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Do you prefer chocolate or non-chocolate desserts? Go with your preference. Both are great.

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[onehsancare]

Mine came out dense with only one cake rather than the two suggested by the recipe.

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What made you decide to put the batter in only one pan? How full was it before baking? What was the loaf's finished height (before torting and filling)?

I've been thinking that I could make a really solid version of the Pavé by using each of my three paving stone loaves as a layer, but I'll play with what to do with them later. (All four are in the freezer, so I can wait until I'm feeling experimental.)

BTW--Alton Brown's "Serious" Vanilla Ice Cream (here) received rave reviews.

[laniloa]

I love all desserts  . Guess I'll start with Desserts and move on to C.D. a bit later. Thanks!

Question - if you only had one of these two books, Chocolate Desserts by PH or Desserts by PH, which would you buy? This thread has been an inspiration, but I can only afford one right now.

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Do you prefer chocolate or non-chocolate desserts? Go with your preference. Both are great.

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Check and see if your library has them so you can give them a test drive to figure out which you want first.

[R Washburn]

BTW--Alton Brown's "Serious" Vanilla Ice Cream (here) received rave reviews.

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I prefer frozen custard.

If you are not happy with the cake part of the pave you could substitute another recipe. The really key elements of the pave, IMHO, are the ganache and apricots.

[docsconz]

Mine came out dense with only one cake rather than the two suggested by the recipe.

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What made you decide to put the batter in only one pan? How full was it before baking? What was the loaf's finished height (before torting and filling)?

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It fit! The cake was not risen above the pan. It was a dense cake.

[Alinka]

Hi everyone!

After finding this thread and reading a couple of pages, and especially seeing your wonderful pictures, I got very excited and ordered this book from the library. Yesterday I made the Grand Chocolate Tart. I am not much into chocolate desserts, but I made it for my chocoholic friend (a very picky one, too: she believes my desserts are too all-American and not sophisticated enough ). So, FINALLY, she loved it!

I have a question, though: the cake layer which I expected to be tenderly crunchy, a little like meringue, basically dissolved into the ganache. Did anybody else have this problem? It was probably discussed in this thread before, but I didn't get a chance to read the entire discussion (I will, though, after I take a couple of days off from work ).

I followed the recipe to the letter, complete with the nougatines (although I was not sure how exactly I was supposed to use them for decoration, so here's what my tart ended up looking like):

[Alinka]

Oh, and here's the "internal life" of the tart:

[halloweencat]

tejon

why don't you check out amazon.com's used books?

i frequently purchase cookbooks from the used booksellers, and most of them have been inexpensive, remaindered books. so, they're brand-new, except for perhaps a black magic marker mark across the sandwiched pages (i.e., the closed pages of the book -- does not interfere with reading, and does not detract).

in fact, my own copy of ph's chocolate book is a remaindered book.

good luck

cheers

hc

[Patrick S]

Hi everyone!

After finding this thread and reading a couple of pages, and especially seeing your wonderful pictures, I got very excited and ordered this book from the library. Yesterday I made the Grand Chocolate Tart. I am not much into chocolate desserts, but I made it for my chocoholic friend (a very picky one, too: she believes my desserts are too all-American and not sophisticated enough ). So, FINALLY, she loved it!

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Congrats, Alinka! Your tart looks delicious.

[Patrick S]

Last night I made a half-recipe of Herme's caramel chocolate truffles (p. 163). Chocolate-wise, I used 5ozs  Valrhona Caraibe bittersweet, and 3oz Callebaut milk chocolate. I dry caramelized the sugar as directed in the book, and let it get as dark and intense as possible. I waited til I was getting a faint trail of smoke from the sugar before I moved from the heat added the butter and cream.

I feel like gushing, but I won't. I'll just say that these caramelicious jewels are the best truffles I've ever had (well, I guess that is gushing. . . ).

I made the truffles yesterday, using Callebaut Java (which is quite 'caramelly') and Callebaut 70/30, and I must say, I find them to sweet for my taste. It may be being a 'continental' or maybe just a bit strange, but I find a lot af american or american adjusted recipes too sweet (of course, Herme is french, so there goes that line of argument....) - anyway....

For my next batch, I'll try without the milk chocolate, and with a very bitter chocolate (whatever I can get my hands on). Anybody tried making these with all dark choc and if so, which make and which result? Thanks

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Mette,

Just to follow up, I've since made the caramel ganache with all bittersweet, and it was still delicious, and still sweet enough for someone like me who prefers a sweeter chocolate taste. You could probably even increase the butter or cream a little, and swap in some unsweetened chocolate for the bittersweet.

Edited July 30, 2005 by Patrick S (log)