Jacques Torres' Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have the recipe for Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookies in three or four cookbooks (and, according to Chef Jacques himself, it is readily available online). I've been wanting to make these for quite a while, but in the end I always settle on something more exotic than a chocolate chip cookie--which is pretty much everything. Well today I finally decided to make them and boy was that a good idea! They are wonderfully sweet and absurdly chocolaty. The texture is almost perfect (although I think mine came out a bit cakier than they should have done, but never mind). The one problem is that the recipe makes an obscene amount of cookies if you make them on the small side. Not that there is anything wrong with having obscene amounts of cookies, but I think I'll be halving the recipe in the future.

BLT

Who doesn't love a BLT?

This isn't dessert, nor is it the most impressive thing I've ever made, but it's a perfect Sunday afternoon lunch or even a weeknight dinner. It's a pretty traditional BLT made with, you guessed it, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I used New York rye bread, because that's what I had at home. It's very good with rye, but a nice brioche would be good too. I spread mayo on one slice of bread and blue cheese on the other. Then stack on the boston butter lettuce (I used shredded lettuces that was left over from making tacos last night, but you could use whole leaf), thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes, and crispy slices of uncured chipotle bacon. That's it! Simple and delicious.

A note on the bacon: I typically get uncured, natural applewood or maple bacon, but I saw the chipotle and thought that sounded too good not to try. It really is excellent and I recommend it if you can find it.

Nutella Scones

Sorry the photo isn't great. I was far too eager to eat the scones
to take a good picture!

These were really, really good. You can find the recipe in the breakfast section of one of the Baked cookbooks. Now I like dessert for breakfast as much as the next guy, but this may be a bit much. These are not a traditional, semi-savory scone; these are Nutella in a more portable form. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just stating a fact.

I made these late at night and, oops, messed up the recipe a bit. I was supposed to add a portion of the Nutella to the dough and reserve a portion to make a glaze. I didn't reserve any. It made the dough really sticky and difficult to deal with, but I have to admit, the final product was great! Since I used extra Nutella in the scones, I didn't bother doing the glaze. I think I'll have to try making these the proper way, so that I can let y'all know how the actual recipe is. I'm only doing it for you--I wouldn't want to have to eat more Nutella scones, no matter how delicious they are! The things I do for my readers...wink!

Fudgy Brownies

These incredibly fudgy brownies are from the Desserts Le Champignon Sauvage's dessert cookbook. They are meant to be the base for a whole chocolate brownie bar, so they are quite thin and don't really hold together well. That's okay though, they are delicious. The texture is deliciously fudgy and the flavor is pungently chocolaty with just a hint of sea salt. I had a little left over mocha buttercream in the fridge so I put a little bit on it, topped with some raspberries and voila, a delicious plated dessert.

Tempering Chocolate

Tempering chocolate is an intimidating procedure, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't bad at all. I spent the entire first chocolate unit and half of the second unit struggling to temper chocolate--it was stressful and difficult. Happily, at some point it just clicked and by the time we got to the last plated dessert unit I actually volunteered to make decorations that used tempered chocolate.

Basically, tempering chocolate is a process of heating, cooling, and agitating chocolate over a period of time. The reason to do this is to encourage the cocoa butter to crystalize in a certain way. When a liquid solidifies it crystalizes (think of water forming ice crystals); cocoa butter is no different. Certain types of cocoa butter crystals (beta crystals) are more stable than others. If you have a more stable crystal the chocolate will have a nicer appearance and texture. By melting the chocolate fully--by heating it to a maximum of 122*F for dark chocolate--you melt out all types of crystals. Then by lowering the temperature (to the holding range of 86-90*F for dark chocolate) in a controlled manner you encourage the formation of beta crystals. There are three main methods of lowering the temperature--tabling, seeding, and using an ice bath. Each method has its supporters. I prefer seeding, but in a pinch I'll use an ice bath. Tabling is too messy in my opinion and is seldom used, however it is the classic method for tempering so it bears mentioning. I will discuss each of these three methods in subsequent posts. Here, I will discuss some basics you will need to know for all three.

First, you must always remember that water is the enemy of chocolate! It will cause chocolate to seize and become too thick to work with. It will also cause unsightly sugar bloom. If your chocolate has sugar bloom you cannot temper it. The best thing you can do with chocolate that has been exposed to water is make brownies or hot chocolate or otherwise use it in a baked good.

Second, it is useful to know about the two types of bloom and how to identify them. They are fat bloom and the aforementioned sugar bloom. Fat bloom comes from improperly tempered chocolate. When the chocolate is not properly mixed and agitated, streaks of cocoa butter can (in essence) separate from the cocoa solids forming swirls and streaks of pale cocoa butter in your hardened chocolate. That's okay, it just means you have to re-temper the chocolate and try again. Sugar bloom, as I mentioned, is a sign of water damage and means you can't re-temper the chocolate. It is easily distinguished from fat bloom; rather than looking like streaks they look like white patches and often appear to be tiny rings (most likely left behind by evaporated water droplets). When in doubt, just use the chocolate for baking and not tempering. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to temper a batch of chocolate only to realize that it just won't go no matter how hard you work at it.

Third, the most important thing you can have when you learn to temper chocolate is a well-calibrated infrared thermometer. A no-contact thermometer is key to checking the temperature because you don't have to worry about contaminating the chocolate or having the chocolate harden on the probe making the readings come out wrong. It is important that it's well-calibrated since the holding range is only a small range of four degrees Fahrenheit.

Fourth, you will also need a clean and dry rubber spatula, a double boiler (or a bowl over a pot of water), dry towels or a pot holder or two (to rest the bowl on in order to insulate it and slow the cooling once you are in the holding range or to keep it from over-heating if you have the next item), and, if you are lucky enough to have it, a warm surface (such as a griddle placed over a pilot light) to keep the chocolate warm and, therefore, in the holding range indefinitely.

Fifth, you may hear people say that you can only temper couverture chocolate. (In case you were wondering, couverture chocolate has extra cocoa butter which makes it more fluid when it is melted and, if tempered properly, harder when it's solid.) That is not true; you can temper any type of chocolate you want. You can temper a Hersey's bar if you have the desire. The reason you typically use couvature chocolate for tempering is that most of the times you use chocolate that is in temper you want to be using couvature chocolate. The reason is simple: because couverture chocolate is more fluid it is ideal for covering candies/truffles/etc and pouring for showpieces and these uses require tempered chocolate. For both uses the appearance of the chocolate is an important part of the final product, therefore you want the chocolate to be in temper (since, as discussed above, tempered chocolate is prettier than untempered chocolate). Also, it hardens harder so it gives candies a nicer snap and showpieces more strength.

I think that's about it. Stay tuned for how to do each of the three main tempering methods.

Fourth of July Dessert Plate

Any holiday is a good excuse for food. I feel that July Fourth is no exception, as you may have noticed from my little pastry battle. Well after my little war fought with food, there was enough dessert left over to feed a small army, so I gave away some plates of food. I think they came out very pretty, so I thought I mention them here. I didn't have left over brooklyn blackout cupcakes (I may have eaten a few too many) but I did have a little extra mocha buttercream so I piped it on the white cake cupcakes. I did whip up a small batch of royal icing for these fairy cakes but didn't anticipate that the foil cupcake wrappers would peel away from the cake, allowing the icing to drip down the sides of the cakes rather than pooling on top of them. They still tasted excellent (the royal icing actually improved on the cakes), even if they did look like a smurf threw up on them. The sour cream frosting for the guinness cakes was more spoonable than pipe-able, so I was afraid it'd end up all over everything on the plate so the guinness chocolate cupcakes remained unadorned and still absurdly delicious. I also left the shortcakes and scones plain so that they wouldn't get soggy. Trust me, they were very good plain. Who wouldn't like getting a plate with that assortment of delicious baked goods?!

If the Revolutionary War had been Fought by Pastry Chefs...

Fireworks!

I went a little crazy this Fourth of July. I decided to make a whole themed meal. I made everything in pairs: one British version of the dish and one American version of the dish. For example, scotch eggs and deviled eggs would have worked (I didn't make them, but that's not the point.) We all voted who one each skirmish but we couldn't decide who won the war--both sides had such delicious food!

And the battle commenced:

Pigs in a Blanket & Bangers and Mash

Well, it wasn't really mash. I decided that there would be no easy way to eat bangers and mash, so instead I baked up some slices of potato in the oven. It was more like bangers and baked potato, but it was still great! I made the pigs in blankets fresh, with hebrew national hot dogs and puff pastry. Actually, as much as I love pigs in a blanket I liked the bangers more.

Smoked Salmon, two ways

On the top we have the British smoked Scottish salmon with thinly sliced cucumber on buttered brown bread. Below, the American side put up bagels with gravalox and cream cheese. Well actually there wasn't cream cheese because even though I'd bought it on the 3rd it was blue--so the American dish ended up bagels, lox, and butter. I think the British dish won, but by a very small margin. It's not entirely fair to the American dish, because as much as I love bagels, good Scottish smoked salmon will beat lox every time.

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Scones

Now we have the first of the desserts: American strawberry shortcakes and British scones. The shortcakes were excellent plain, once you added the macerated strawberries and creme fraiche whipped cream they were just amazing! To make the strawberry scones, I used diced dried strawberries in place of the traditional dried currants. I filled them with strawberry jam and clotted cream--delicious! There was no decisive winner of this battle.

White Cake and Fairy Cakes

I had planned to ice these, royal icing on the British fairy cakes (in the foil wrappers) and vanilla buttercream on the American white cupcakes (in the paper wrappers). Unfortunately I ran out of powdered sugar and time (so I couldn't run to the store to get more sugar). Ah well, we didn't really need more sugar and they actually tasted delicious plain. I'm not sure which of these I liked more. The fairy cakes were slightly denser and dryer than the American white cupcakes (not that were dense or dry, just less light and moist than the others). On the other hand, they were slightly more flavorful. I think this battle too was a draw--though if you forced me to pick a winner I'd say the British fairy cakes.

On the left: British Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Sour Cream Frosting
On the right: American Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream

To round out the night, I had to have something chocolate, so I made guinness chocolate cupcakes (this is the same cake I used for my menu project) with a vanilla sour cream topping for the British side and Brooklyn blackout cupcakes (I found the recipe--for normal chocolate cake, technically, but it certainly seems like Brooklyn blackout cake--in an excellent ice cream cookbook I just bought) with mocha buttercream for the American side. As much as I love the guinness chocolate cake (as I always have), I have to declare this battle for the Americans. The rich, dark chocolate Brooklyn blackout cake was delicious on its own. Topped with a rich and creamy mocha buttercream it was amazing!

One more photo of the Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes;
I think they are so pretty!

Overall, the results tallied up to 2-2 with one tie. While there was no decisive winner of this food war, I think we can all agree that those of us who got to eat the food came out on top for the night!