Results tagged chocolate from David Lebovitz

When I was in Australia, a couple of interesting things happened while I scooting around Sydney. One was that I went on the hunt for Lamingtons, and a number of people offered to send me recipes, but didn’t. And two, I got quite a few messages from people asking if I was coming to Melbourne. Then a food festival there rolled around and even though I woke up at all hours, checking my messages night and day, an invite to that city never landed in my Inbox.

But instead of being tough and bitter, I decided to dive into something tender and sweet, and was compelled to whip up my own recipe for Lamingtons. (And it’s hard to remain mad at anyone in Australia because, truly, everyone was exceptionally nice to me during my visit to Sydney.) I did call upon one of those nice folks, the master of the Lamington, Matt Rothman, when deciding whether to go with a cocoa powder icing or one made with chocolate. And he responded that he makes either, depending on whether he wanted the glaze to soak in to the cake a little (cocoa powder) or for it to be more of a thicker icing (chocolate).

Continue Reading Lamingtons…

It’s interesting reading some of the talk regarding if the internet is ready to replace cookbooks. Sure, there are people furiously clicking around wherever they can for a chocolate cake recipe. And there are hundreds of thousands of chocolate cake recipes that you can find using a search engine. But to me, that’s not enough. When I want to spend my precious time and funds making something to eat, I don’t want to merely find a recipe. There’s nothing compelling about a downloadable list of ingredients. It just leaves me cold. I want the author or writer to tell me about the recipe, what inspired them to create it, or how it came about.

I want to know why someone chose that recipe, what twists they gave it, what made the cake or casserole they were making so special to them that they wanted to share it. Was it an unusual ingredient? Did they like the description they read of it elsewhere? Were they inquisitive about how a root vegetable from their garden could make its way into a chocolate cake?

Continue Reading Moist Chocolate-Beet Cake…

At long last, I’d like to introduce you to the Paris Pastry app. It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a while, doing lots of delicious research around Paris, scoping out the best bakeries, chocolate shops, and confectioners in the sweetest city in the world!

In the app, you’ll find hundreds of the best addresses in Paris where to find the most buttery madeleines and financiers, how far you’ll have to go to get the dreamiest salted butter caramels from wherever you’re standing, where is the best cup of rich hot chocolate, and how soon you can get your hands on a scoopendous ice cream shop.

Continue Reading Paris Pastry App…

I’m very fortunate to have a gelato guide in Milan, because it’s a rather spread out city. And like many Italian cities, I’ve found some of the best gelaterias are located farther away from the city center. (Younger, less-established gelato makers can’t often afford to be in the expensive areas.) Unlike other Italian cities, Milan isn’t really a place that caters to tourists – which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that unless you have someone taking you around, sharing the best addresses, you won’t likely stumble upon great places like Il Gelato Centogusti.

Continue Reading Il Gelato Centogusti…

People are often fascinated by what, and how, I eat. They think that if you’re a baker, you spend all your time eating pastries. Which is like thinking that bartenders spend all their time drinking.

My not-so-secret strategy is that whenever I eat something, I want it to be the best of its genre. I don’t want or need a ton of cream or whatever; when I want a chocolate chip cookie, I want a really, really good chocolate chip cookie. If I eat a scoop of chocolate ice cream, it shouldn’t taste vaguely of chocolate. I want it to be full-on chocolate.

Continue Reading Chocolate Tart Recipe…

My search for the perfect Lamington ended this morning. If you don’t know what a Lamington is, you’re not alone. Yes, even I hadn’t heard of one, until a posted a picture of the Chocolate-Coconut Marshmallows from The Sweet Life in Paris on my Flickr page and they were mistaken for Lamingtons.

Continue Reading The Lamington at Single-Origin Roasters…

I haven’t visited Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Ohio, but I’ve heard Jeni Bauer’s ice cream was sensational. Because I can’t get everywhere – no matter how hard I try – her ice cream came to me in the form of her book, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

When Jeni’s book was released, we had a nice interchange via e-mail about ice cream making, including her technique for skipping the eggs and using other ingredients to get a specific consistency. She’s a stickler for getting rid of ice crystals so milk and cream get boiled to remove water, and corn starch is added to absorb any additional water that might be lingering in your mixture, to help keep the ice cream as smooth as possible.

Continue Reading Chocolate Ice Cream…

If you skip over the fact that I made three trips in the past thirty days, and have two more coming up in the next two weeks, I don’t really travel all that much. (And it’s funny because some people like to try to point out inconsistencies about things I write about, which is amusing because I take even greater pains to point them out myself.) Before I moved to Europe, I was always quite surprised when I thought Europeans spent all their free time and weekends heading to other countries, visiting new cities, and immersing themselves in foreign cultures, when quite a few of them stay at home in lieu of hitting the road.

Continue Reading The Best Brownie in London…