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"Chocolate Desserts" by Pierre Herme (Part 1)


SethG

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Thanks, Dorie. This is one of the great things about eGullet. Not only can one get advice and input about various aspects of cooking and baking, one can often get it directly from the source! It is great having you here, Dorie!

The rice pudding is setting up now. It seems a little thin at this point. I trust that it will gel more overnight. We did use carnaroli rice instead of arborio, though :shock:

The caramelized rice krispies came out great and were easy to make. Gotta love that silpat.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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One minor discrepancy that came up a while back in this thread was with the cocoa cake (page 228). The amount of sugar in the recipe says "1 1/4 cups of sugar (150 grams)". I always use weight measurements when they are provided and noticed that the 150 gram amount seemed to be less than 1 1/4 cups. When I checked it out I found 1 1/4 cups of sugar weighs closer to 270 grams. I ended up using 270 grams of sugar and the cake came out great (both for the black forest cake and the pave). This recipe is now one of my staples!

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Panic is not quite set in yet, but the "pudding" remains rather thin after leaving it to set overnight. Any suggestions for salvaging it if it doesn't thicken?

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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Disaster! The rice was clumped with chocolate and raisins at the bottom and the "pudding" was liquid. In an attempt to salvage this we separated the raisins out and pureed the pudding and rice together. Will add the raisins back at the bottom of the bowl.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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The pudding was salvaged by pureeing the rice with the rest of the pudding (minus the raisins which were removed prior to the puree) and then reheated with corn starch and egg yolks. The raisins were placed at the bottom of the serving glasses and the pudding poured over them. The caramelized rice krispies were placed on top. It was actually quite tasty.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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So, my birthday party turned out to be pretty successful, and my guests enjoyed the stuff I baked. As promised, here's a bunch of pictures (I'm not as good as some of the previous posters at getting excellent pictures, but I'm working on it).

Oh, and BTW, I got one of these kitchen mini torches as a gift, so now I need to find good recipes that I can use that for.

Let's start off with the Korova cookies.

This is what they looked like just coming out of the oven:

gallery_29451_1049_2729.jpg

and here they are a little bit later:

gallery_29451_1049_29255.jpg

The next project was to make the Chocolate Dome from DBPH. After managing to unmold it, is looked like this:

gallery_29451_1049_4788.jpg

and glazed like this:

gallery_29451_1049_39818.jpg

I also made a Nutella tart:

gallery_29451_1049_66203.jpg

And a Melody cake:

gallery_29451_1049_30195.jpg

When it was all ready to be served it looked like this:

gallery_29451_1049_70659.jpg

In front of the cakes are (from left to right) pistachio macaroons (not a PH recipe), Passionately Chocolate tartlets from DBPH and the Korova cookies.

Some more pictures:

gallery_29451_1049_18251.jpg

gallery_29451_1049_37030.jpg

gallery_29451_1049_68772.jpg

The recipes all turned out really well. I would have to say that my favorite among these are the Chocolate Dome, and I'll definitely make that one again. The Nutella tart was good, and wasn't that hard to make. The Melody was also really good, but it's also quite labor intensive....

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Wow. Can I come to your next birthday party?

Obviously you've put a lot of work into baking that stuff, and everything looks like it turned out great. Great work, Thornado!

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced" - Vincent Van Gogh
 

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Thornado, did you say you were having a SMALL birthday party??? What a spread! How many people did you serve, and why wasn't I invited?

"I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast;

but we like hot butter on our breakfast toast!"

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i made the chocolate madelienes yesterday...two versions.

one with a vegan "butter" (same brand i usually use with acceptable results, but different product). added twice as much lemon zest (thinking of patrick's comment that he couldn't taste the lemon first time around).

one with regular butter.

neither with the valrhona, just a supermarket-brand dutch-process cocoa.

the instructions said to bake for 13-15 minutes (or until the madelienes sprung back at a light touch). this did not happen for me until around 16-18 minutes (i've forgotten the exact minutes, i just kept setting the timer for a minute, and redoing the "spring test." both batters rested/chilled in the fridge for an hour.

the vegan madelienes were moist, but the lemon flavor was too strong. no cocoa flavor detectable at all really (that was a surprise). before baking, the batter was moist, a little stiff, but "workable." the batter settled into the molds nicely, without really any airpockets.

the butter madelienes had no lemon flavor at all, and were a little dry. the batter was not as moist as the vegan batch, i had to push it off the spoon when i was placing it in the molds. much stiffer. also, during baking, it did not settle into the molds well, and there were many airpockets, and the bottoms (the non-shell part) did not smooth out well, and were misshappen. also, the bottoms sort of "cracked" in many places, instead of just "ballooning."

it may be useful to know that my butter was not at room temperature. i submerged it for a small bit in a bowl of warm water, but it did not mix thoroughly into the batter. it wasn't "lumpy," but there was a little bit of very small, dairy flotsam and jetsam-sized pieces. (i had a limited amount of time to make them, as we were bringing them over to a neighbor's for dinner).

i used nonstick pans that i got from william sonoma. i mention this because, although i suspect the molds are +fairly+ uniform in terms of size, they seemed slightly too small to accomodate the amount of batter. there was a bit of overspill.

cheers :)

hc

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'tho i do not have the butter version to sample in the day-after-test (as they were left with the neighbors), i sampled the vegan version today.

in less than 24 hours, the strong (too strong) lemon flavor has receded dramatically. there is now a pleasant, lemony flavor. i still do not detect much cocoa flavor, but (i think) a smidgen more than yesterday.

cheers :)

hc

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Thornado, did you say you were having a SMALL birthday party???  What a spread!  How many people did you serve, and why wasn't I invited?

Not really sure how many people were there, but there was a lot of people in my apartment. Probably somewhere around 25 people in total....

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I had never heard of him before, but thanks to this thread I just bought a copy of Desserts by Pierre Herme and... holy schmoly! This guy is a genius! I can't wait to try making some of these - I feel so intimidated (i.e. I am clearly a culinary moron compared to this guy) but inspired (i.e. won't I look cool if I can manage to pull one of these recipes off)

I love egullet for turning me on to these things that I might not have otherwise heard of.

...wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile. --Alexander Pope

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Richard, that cake looks fantastic. Like the biggest, fudgiest brownie ever.

Welcome to the Herme fan club, viva. I think there is a higher proportion of complicated creations in the Desserts book, as opposed to the Chocolate Desserts book. It is the more intimidating book at first glance. But there's also plenty of easy stuff with which to get going.

I'm hoping Dorie will give us some insight into what went wrong with Doc's pudding. I'd like to try it myself, but I want to be sure I'm using the recipe properly corrected!

"I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast;

but we like hot butter on our breakfast toast!"

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First -- congratulations Thornado -- what a spread! I bet all your guests are begging for an invitation to your next party.

Doc -- I'm sorry. I'm not sure what went wrong and I haven't had time since your disaster to make the pudding and figure it out. Unfortunately I'm off to California at the crack of dawn tomorrow and won't be near my own kitchen for a couple of weeks. As soon as I can -- I'll make the pudding and post a good recipe. Why should something this simple (and delicious) be so hard? That's a question to me, not to you. The normal proportions for rice pudding are usually something like 1 part rice to 4 parts milk. And, with the chocolate, which firms when cooled, that should work. AARRGH. I really am sorry. I know how frustrated I am when I put time -- and money -- into a recipe and it doesn't work. That this happened to you makes me feel bad; that it was my recipe makes me feel really, really, really bad. Again, apologies.

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Wait...........don't feel too bad........cause you've written some of my very favorite recipes! One blooper in a sea of auesome recipes is one hell of a track record!!!!

In my trials (and I go thru tons of recipes) so far your neck and neck with P. Herrme for perfect home runs on every recipe. I made two of your Far Breton cakes last Sat. at work. Our staff devoured one cake behind my back and two people were begging me to make them their own cake to take home.

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Dorie, your presence here is such an amazing boon to all of us... please do not ever feel you have let any of us down. If not for your books, I'd have no experience in sweets! And because your books are so good, I've had practically no need for any others.

Edit: and by the way, I've got another batch of chocolate ice cream whipping up right now.

Edited by SethG (log)

"I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast;

but we like hot butter on our breakfast toast!"

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Since Richard wouldn't share his cake with me the other night (well ok, he did offer to ship some to Canada), I'm off to buy this book tomorrow. There is no way my results will be as good as yours, certainly my pictures won't be, but heck, I'm game to try!

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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Dorie, please don't feel too bad. The problem was probably something simple that we did or didn't do when making it. I would be curious, though to find out if others have the same problem. The flavor was great, by the way and it was salvaged.

Richard, that cake looks great. I think I will ask my wife to make it for my next birthday!

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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Patrick, I love the pictures you post -- thank you for taking the time to do this.  The Korovas look perfect.  Looks like you used chocolate chips -- did you?  I always hate to choose a favorite anything, but I think these just might be my favorite cookies.  I think the texture, the play of cocoa and chocolate, and the flavor of salt are an exceptional combination.  I'm so glad you and kthull are now converts.

I made the Korova cookies tonight for a potluck lunch at work tomorrow. Of course I had to sample them first to make sure they would survive the scrutiny of a bunch of chocolatiers. I think they are by far my favourite cookies. For the bittersweet chocolate I used a mixture of dark chocolate, dried organic blueberries and chopped hazelnuts. My only regret with these cookies is that I didn't have any fleur de sel (next time!). I didn't take any pictures - Patrick S's pictures say it all.....

Support your local farmer

Currently reading:

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

Just finished reading:

The 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Smith & J. B. MacKinnon

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Richard- That does look like a big fudgy rich cake. With how simple it is, I really need to try it.

I love a challenge and I think I have all the pudding ingredients at home. So I might also give it a try soon and report back.

Elie

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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