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Guided by Carole Bloom’s so clear, so simple you’ll-kick-yourself-for-not-doing-this-sooner instructions, you’ll be on your way to making batches of some of the 90-plus treats found in TRUFFLES, CANDIES, AND CONFECTIONS in no time. Featuring Orange Chocolate Truffles, Vanilla Cream Caramels, Raspberry-Almond Squares, Espresso Hazelnut Fudge, and much more, this revised and expanded edition includes an updated introduction covering ingredients (buying and handling), equipment, techniques, ideas for packaging gifts, and the author’s special, trademarked tasting chart.
Yes, the author's name really is Candy Christmas; she is a popular gospel musician and Nashville-based recording artist. And the book is much like Christmas candy-brightly colored and excessively sweet. ("Is there anything more fun during the holidays than a Christmas party?" Christmas gushes.) This is primarily a guide to holiday entertaining, complete with recipes, some of which are first-rate.
Rich, smooth and complex, there are few foods that people feel as passionate about as chocolate. So it comes as no surprise that chocolate is the world's favorite baking ingredient.
Don't let the relatively diminutive size of Marcel Desaulniers's Celebrate with Chocolate fool you. In this age of coffee-table cookbooks, the 45 recipes and 16 pages of color photographs in this book might lull you into thinking that these desserts are simple. But look carefully at the cover and see the important subtitle, Totally Over-the-Top Recipes.
To the growing cadre of books about chocolate, add Tish Boyle and Tim Moriarty's Chocolate Passion. For it, the authors, both editors at Chocolatier and Pastry Arts and Design magazines, have collected more than 50 recipes celebrating chocolate--the world's favorite flavor, as they dub it. These include formulas for cakes, cookies, mousses, tarts, and candies. If most of the recipes involve multiple preparations, a sufficient number are simple enough to appeal to everyday cooks, and readers with any interest in the subject should enjoy the book's exploration of chocolate history and lore.
I was not happy when I started reading this book. The key to this book is the word "encyclopedia", and the absence of the word "cookbook" in the title. As a glossy coffee table book, it is barely adequate; as a cookbook full of chocolate recipes, it is worthless. Much of the material in this book has been recycled from an equally reprehensible book "Chocolate Ecstasy".
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