Results tagged sugar from David Lebovitz

I had some friends over for dinner recently who were moving away, which is always sad, and they were in the full-on stress of moving; packing up boxes, dealing with logistics, selling most of their things, and taking care of the details of deménagement.

I had been leafing through Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts by chocolate expert (and comrade in chocolate) Alice Medrich, who I was introduced to in the 80s, not personally, but though her spectacular chocolate cakes and confections. Her chocolate shop in Berkeley was changing the way we thought about chocolate in America, and I’d like to think my (near-daily) allegiance to the store, called Cocolat, had something to do with it.

Alice had learned techniques for making French cakes and truffles, and was getting national acclaim for her extraordinary treats sold in the shop. I was such as fan that when I was baking just down the street, at Chez Panisse, I used to stop in on my way to work for a truffle or a slice of cake. And I finally had the chance to meet Alice, and she became one of my dessert heroes, coming out with some of the best books on baking you can get your hands on. And if you’re anything like me, before long, those hands are likely to be smeared with a little bit of chocolate.

Continue Reading Hot Chocolate Pudding…

Neither one of us is quite sure how we connected, but so be it. But somehow I kind of remembered Terresa Murphy from San Francisco. However she’s been living in Paris since the mid-80s, so my memory is either better than I thought, or my mind is playing tricks on me. (Which is a whole nother road that I’d prefer not walk down right now.)

Terresa leads market tours and teaches cooking classes in Paris which focus on vegetarian cuisine and sourcing fresh, local, organic ingredients, and reaches out to people via her website, La Cucina di Terresa. She takes folks to the markets and highlights the farmers and stands at the market, manned by the producteurs themselves and offers tastings of French natural wines. In fact, I often run into her at the market because we have similar taste in produce and we’re both always on the lookout for things like stewing greens and other unusual vegetables that are not so easily found.

Some time back I had her Baci di Dama cookies, which I’ve been dying to get the recipe for because they’re so good. And I’ve wanted to share them with you, because – as they say, sharing is caring.

Continue Reading Baci di Dama Cookies…

As I continue my foraging across the Île-de-France in search of free fruit, which so far has included wild plums and elderberries, I finally chanced upon medlars.

One of the goofiest fruits I’ve ever come across, they’re a member of the rose family and are prepared similar to rose hips, or backside-scratchers, which doesn’t make me want to eat them. And my trusty fruit-searching sidekick made a snide remark about their bilious taste.

Continue Reading Medlar Jelly…

Last summer when I was in New York, a French acquaintance sent out a missive, looking for an Angel Food Cake pan in Paris. I’ve been thinking about making one for a number of years. But there are a number of American baked goods that don’t quite translate, and this classic cake – made like a big, baked meringue – well…I was pretty certain this would be one of them.

For one thing, the French don’t normally do tall cakes (except for le Croquembouche, a tower of cream-filled pastry puffs, which is generally reserved for weddings), and the local palate would probably find Angel Food Cake a bit on the sweet side. And indeed, for years, I didn’t like Angel Food Cake either and tended to avoid it. Until one day, I was eating a slice, and decided that I did like it. In fact, I realized that I loved it. And now, for the rest of my life, I have to spend my nights staring at the ceiling over my bed, filled with regret for the years that I went without it.

Continue Reading Angel Food Cake…

A while back, there was a spate of books about how to ‘sneak’ ingredients that are ‘healthy’ into food for your kids, to trick them into eating better. (Raymond Sokolov wrote an excellent rebuttal to that.) And recently there have been a few books written about how kids in France eat, and behave, better than their counterparts elsewhere. I can’t really comment on them in-depth because I haven’t read the books, but I do know two things from my own observations.

Continue Reading Chocolate-Prune Cake…

Today is election day in France, and la République has the choice of re-electing the current President, or ushering in a new one. For people who usually have a lot of opinions, my French friends aren’t all that enthused about either one of the fellows. One is hoping to come into office, promising to represent Changement, and the other came into office five years ago, vowing changement, too. Sound familiar?

The polls opened at 8am and the only change I was feeling was in my pocket, as I roamed the streets looking for a baguette. However instead of the buttery, yeasty aromas wafting forth from my usual arsenal of boulangeries, none were open. It wasn’t because it was election day, it just happened that every one I hit had the shades down and the door shuttered closed for various reasons.

Continue Reading Kouign Amann at Le Grenier à Pain…

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…

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…