A Chocolate Class

A pastry class anyone?

Oh yum. There's definitely something to being the resident food translator/orchestrator of cooking classes with my local artisans. Good meals, new techniques and yes delectable pastries.

Last week my week-long class included hikes, feasts, visits and a pastry class with my maître-pâtissier Guy LeBlanc. We kept the class to a reasonable two hours rather than the marathon four hours we might have done (hey, we'd hiked that morning). However, it was duly noted that we could program a week's intensive of afternoon pastry classes in the future during the months of May or October. Ahhhh future projects. But I get ahead of myself.

Thus we arrived, well-nourished, laundry dropped off at the local laundromat, a shoe repaired next door, ready to master a few tricks of the trade. With one client with a cast on her wrist, her husband took over at the helm.

We had two desserts before us: a relatively simple chocolate ganâche tart and a multi-step chocolate mousse cake filled with hazelnut caramel. Neither was truly difficult, both divine to eat, but the latter took more preparation by far.

Guy is one of those superbly prepared individuals. He'd done ahead of time what needed to rest overnight, measured out all the ingredients, etc., so we were able to clean our heads and get right to melting the sugar and making the caramel.

the ingredients for the caramel (to be prepared the night before):

- 205 grams sugar
- 68 grams glucose (optional, for the pros)
- 1.5 grams salt
- 360 grams whipped cream
- 200 grams hazelnut paste
- 32 grams gelatin powder diluted in 180 grams cold water.



He melted the sugar in the sauce pan, little by little to avoid lumps, added the glucose and salt, and stirred till it colored nicely, and got to that "petit fumé" state of just smoking. Then he took it off the burner and slowly added the whipped cream, the gelatin and the hazelnut paste. Let cool overnight before using.

This was to go into a gorgeous and rich chocolate mousse:

the ingredients for the mousse:

- 300 grams heavy cream
- 40 grams glucose (optional for the pros)
- 250 grams dark chocolate (60%)
- 40 grams milk chocolate
- 375 whipped cream, not too stiff


Very simply, the heavy cream was brought to a boil with the glucose, this was poured over the softened chopped chocolate and blended till smooth. This was allowed to cool to 35/40Celsius (95F) (Guy tabled it) before the whipped cream was added. This mixture is very smooth when first made and must set overnight before serving. We then dolloped a bit of this mixture into the silicon molds, smoothing it against the sides with the ladle. Into this a spoonful of the caramel was put, then covered with the mousse, then covered with a simple chocolate biscuit. They are then frozen, popped out and topped off with a chocolate glaze.

ingredients for the chocolate biscuit sacher (to be prepared ahead):

150 grams warmed almond paste (50%)
55 grams icing sugar
95 grams egg yolks
50 grams whole eggs
50 grams flour
50 grams cocoa powder
50 grams butter melted
140 grams egg whites whipped stiff
55 grams sugar (blended with the egg whites)


Mix the almond paste and the icing sugar together, slowly add the yolks and eggs. Mix together and add the sifted flour and cocoa, then the melted butter. Fold in the egg whites and sugar. Spread on a baking sheet (ideally on a silpat or baking paper) to 1 centimeter thickness. Bake at 180C (365F) in a convection oven for 12 minutes till just firm, but still very flexible.

We popped out the frozen mousses and put them upon a cake rack and poured our lovely chocolate glaze atop them. Oh how beautiful! Unfortunately, the glaze is the one recipe I wasn't able to obtain. Something about it being quite complicated, or simply his own? However, you might be able to come up with something a bit similar, or just melted dark chocolate, which would give you a crunchy exterior rather than this glimmering soft one. But hey, it would still taste heavenly! You might also sprinkle it with dark cocoa powder... the possibilities are many.

Hazelnut chocolate topped cake.

With friends coming over, and the prospect of an early birthday celebration, I got busy making the most scrumptious cake. The only problem is I'm not certain I'll be able to recreate it. As the French say, I often cook and bake in the haphazard fashion known as 'pif.' I've simply been baking since I could read and I've internalized basic proportions for nearly everything I make regularly from cookies, to muffins, to bread, to cakes, to soda bread, to biscuits, to cereal bars... You get the picture. However, this is a rather dangerous thing to do if and when you make a particularly scrumptious dish. How to recreate it faithfully?

To up my chances, I'll write down here what I can remember of it... There are no photos (it went too quickly) but I remember the moistness, the flavor...

I began with 2 cups flour and 1 cup hazelnut meal (I love nut meals, and my friend was someone who limits the gluten in her diet)
1 teaspoon baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups whey (I made fresh ricotta last week from turned milk and kept the liquid for just this kind of thing -- may be replaced with yogurt or turned milk). -- the lactic acid base with baking soda is something I've been doing ever since reading Nourishing Traditions (see my book list on the side). The idea that the wheat flour be somewhat broken down by the lactic acid, and the more nourishing aspect of baking soda to baking powder...

Mix together till a paste, then add:
1 egg

In the mixer I put 2/3 a stick of sweet butter and 1 1/2 cups of unbleached sugar. I blended till fully mixed, then added perhaps 1/4 cup cold pressed sunflower oil and 1/2 teaspoon ground vanilla bean. This whipped up nicely, and I added an egg, and perhaps a second egg (making a total of 4 for the recipe)

I then poured the flour/egg/whey mixture into the mixmaster with the butter/eggs/sugar. I mixed till blended, and then poured it all into a non-stick cake pan and into my pre-heated oven (170C/350F) and let it cook till set (perhaps 40-50 minutes? it was a convection, so it goes faster than other ovens).

Remove from the oven and let sit till cooled, transfer to a cake plate.

In a small sauce pan melt 150 grams of chocolate, (5oz) with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup sweet butter. Blend till smooth, add a touch of cream (or in my case soy cream, I had none of the real stuff on hand) and whisk. Let cool a bit and then pour over the cake, smoothing it up the sides. Let it all cool and set a couple of hours and then serve as a lovely snack for tea time, or as dessert. As you would expect, the left-overs disappear at breakfast.

A Lady Cake for Yvonne

Well, apparently yesterday was grandmother's day in France. Nicolas shared this news with us Friday (having learned it from his girlfriend) and so I got to work preparing the cake and vegetables for the family meal on Sunday at the winery.

And, for reasons unknown, a favorite cake from my childhood browsings of Joy of Cooking (1960 edition) came to mind. As we all know everything is findable on the internet, and so not having the book on hand, I was still able to find a good copy of the recipe:

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup milk
3 cups flour (I believe this is for pastry flour, as I had 65 grade meant for breads, I ended up using 2 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon baking powder
6 beaten egg whites
and I added a pinch of salt...

Without a proper electric beater (the winery is only minimally equipped for those who enjoy cooking and baking) I had to use a fork to mash the softened butter (I'd left it out on the counter, happily) into the sugar. I then added some of the milk, then some of the flour, etc., etc., till I got to a thick paste. I then mixed in a third of the egg whites, followed by the rest. Not having a spatula, I simply mixed gently, but no doubt lost some of the lightness and air the egg whites might have conveyed if treated more gently.

The cake baked up easily in the mini-oven -- though it took over an hour. A. because the oven is pretty dinky, and B. because the batter is quite heavy. A light sponge cake this is not.

While the cake baked, I made an orange syrup to pour over it with the juice of two oranges and a cup plus of sugar. I also prepared the ingredients for my ganache topping: 200 grams finely chopped dark baking chocolate, 100ml light cream and three pats of sweet butter.

Once the cake was out of the oven, flipped onto a plate and dowsed in syrup, I got to work heating my cream for the ganache. I poured the hot cream over the chopped chocolate, blended it together to "faire une mayonnaise" as they say here, and then added the butter till blended as well.


In the past I've used lemon juice/orange juice and powdered sugar to make a simple glaze for this cake with very good results.

The ganache went on smoothely, and the cake awaited the next day partly in the fridge, and partly on the dining table. Yum!

Oh yes, just to keep things amusing, I made a crême anglaise to accompany the cake: 2 cups milk, 5 egg yolks and a 1/3 cup sugar. Heat the first, blend the sugar into the egg yolks, add some of the heated milk to the egg yolks, whisking, then pour the egg yolks into the milk in the sauce pan (heavy bottomed, stainless recommended). Whisk and whisk and whisk, -- as the milk is already quite hot, this goes very very quickly. In a couple of minutes the milk had thickened. I removed the cream from the stove, poured it into a cooler and shallower recipient, whisked some more, and let it cool. Perfect to dollop atop the cake the next day.

chocolate delights

Okay, so, it's vacation, I'm hanging out in the house (fearful of the strong winds outside), writing, editing, working on the computer, but also hosting 8 year old Jonas and his best friend. After feeding them a simple lunch of pasta and sauce and some grated carrots like a good mom, I became (as often is the case) tempted by the idea of a snack for them.

But, I've not gone shopping for a bit, and it was a classic situation of what can I make with the ingredients I have in the house?

Two eggs
no butter, but a 1/3 cup of palm oil (in its natural bar form, solid at room temperature)
sugar
1/2 a cooked sweet potato
chocolate (a staple, right?) in this case 3/4 of a bar of 200g

So, I can't make classic brownies - not enough eggs
nor am I making a buttery concoction
and it would be nice to use up this sweet potato...

So, the following was produced, and you know, the kids are in heaven! I'm documenting this as quickly as possible, while the approx. quantities are still in my memory.

Included with the above were the basics below:

1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

I melted my 60% chocolate bar with the palm oil in a pan on the wood stove
Meantime I mashed the sweet potato (about 1/3 cup all told) with the two eggs, adding in the 1/2 cup of sugar. It wasn't completely pureed, but the lumps were small enough to be lost in the batter.
I then let the chocolate mixture cool a bit before adding it to the eggs, along with the vanilla and salt. I then whisked in the flour and baking powder.

The kids requested muffins. So, I poured the batter into my molds, and Jonas was then inspired to top them all off with mini-chocolate chips.

Not even 10 minutes later, in my 175C/385F oven (convection) the delights were puffed up. I turned off the oven and waited a moment before removing them. They are fragile, but moist and yummy.

Yield - 14 muffins. Enough for two little boys and their mommy.

Cheesecake.... How I love it still

Here I am, living in France, surrounded by superb pastries, butter creams, éclairs, religieuses, ganâches to die for, tartes aux abricots... and yet, I yearn for a good old fashioned cheesecake.

Over the years, I've made attempts in this direction. At one point I purchased tubs of fromage blanc, dumped them into a (very clean and not soapy perfumed) dish cloth and squeezed as much liquid as possible out of these lovely textured dairies to render them if not as solid as Philadelphia Cream Cheese, then at least less fluid than they had been.

Then I pretty much gave up on the traditional New York style cheesecake (excepting when someone snuck me some cream cheese in from the States), and opted for ricotta (here known as brousse or broccio) cheesecakes. These have a grainier texture, which can be somewhat smoothed out in a mixer, and over the years became a standard dessert during the cooking courses. But though I was able to make them interesting (honey and spices, orange zest, grand marnier...) they lacked that certain acidic bite of a traditional cheesecake. Something was missing.

Out of the blue, I was inspired these past two weeks to make more cheesecake. It simply came upon me. Though then again, I had two dinner parties to orchestrate, so somewhere the inspiration for dessert was necessary, and rather than settle for a fruit tart, or a chocolate mousse, or a fruit salad and cookies... I felt like experimenting.

My first cheesecake was traditionally inspired, flavored only by lemon zest (of two lemons) and the juice of half a lemon. Delicate and creamy, all deemed it a success. I used the brown sugar cookies known as Gascognes crushed into crumbs by my blender, and melted butter with a pinch of salt as my crust. Graham crackers they were not, but they did have a lovely caramel flavor that well complemented the cheese and lemon.

My later creation (here photographed) was more flamboyant and considering that all my guests were French, rather on the unusual side for this side of the Atlantic. Fresh and candied ginger with dark chocolate swirl. I didn't have a packet of cookies on hand, but I did have hazelnut meal, cocoa, sugar and butter, so these made my rather haphazard, but appreciated and remarked upon crust.

And so, how did I succeed at long last where for years I'd simply stumbled or wiggled around the ingredients? Well, I picked up a faisselle. This is a fresh cheese with neither salt nor sugar, in a plastic tub in a tub. The inner tub is a sieve, keeping the curd intact and apart yet leaving it in contact with the whey.

To make this particular ingredient work for me I purchased it a day (or two, a bit more time wouldn't hurt) ahead of time. I removed it from its whey (which I put aside in a jar for future muffin or pancake making) and put it inside a strainer over a bowl and back into the fridge. In this way, I returned it to its cheese origins, and put it into a situation where it would slowly release its liquid and firm up. Thus, my kilo of faisselle became 850 gr of fresh cheese (approx 2 lbs).

To this I added 3 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of sugar (about 300g) -- note, these are the same proportions I used for the lemon cheesecake--, 2 heaping tablespoons of fresh grated ginger (which I now store in the freezer, something friends in Boston do, and how brilliant!) and 2 tablespoons chopped candied ginger. I blended this all together and tasted it to see if I wanted more ginger or not (I love ginger... can you tell? I also love tasting cheesecake batter...).

Once I was content, I poured the batter onto my rather creative crust (it was interesting, but not as yet a recipe I would share as a finished, or even preferred option...) and then prepped my chocolate.

In a heavy bottomed stainless saucepan I melted 150g (5 1/2 oz) of dark chocolate on the surface of my wood stove (t'is winter after all). I scooped up and blended some of my cheesecake batter with the chocolate in the saucepan till somewhat smooth and then poured this extended chocolate batter over the ginger batter and swirled it around with a knife till it looked relatively lovely, or at least like a meeting of the worlds of light and dark, with perhaps dark winning.

I opted for baking the cake at a low temperature (150C/300F), rather than in a water bath, for nearly an hour or till the cake looked done with barely a touch of browning on the top, and the center jiggled only slightly. It rose high as a soufflet, and them came down a good bit, but not unpleasantly so.

I made this cake two days before my party, so I simply let it cool and put it in the fridge till needed. The extra chilling time deepened and melded the flavors.

A Finished Christmas (Boxing Day?) Bûche

A Bûche begins

Une Bûche de Noël au Chocolat et Fruits Rouges
(a photo of the finished cake will need to wait till tomorrow's post... but the process is well detailed below).

I have been making a variation on this Yule Log cake since I lived in Seattle. The last year I was there, and my last Christmas on the West Coast, I found in Gourmet Magazine -- either that fall (1995) or one of the prior years -- a recipe for a Bûche with chocolate ganâche, raspberry jam and raspberry eau de vie as made by the pâtissier of La Maison de Chocolat in Paris.

Already at that time I was creative in my interpretation of the original recipe -- I didn't have any potato starch on hand (féculant de pomme de terre - far easier to find in a French grocery store than in Seattle in 1995) and so replaced it with normal wheat flour. Nor did I have raspberry eau de vie -- which at the tender age of 27 I didn't even recognize as referring to alcohol, a lapse which has since been corrected. So, at the time, I simply soaked my raspberries in the simple syrup I prepared to drench the cake. Not that the lack was felt by the many who indulged in the cake as I drove from friend to friend sharing what had turned out to be quite a generous cake -- a little dark chocolate goes a long way.

In the years since I've taken further liberties with the original recipe, and along the way I lost the page I'd taken from the magazine, well smudged with chocolate.

My current version of the recipe is enhanced/affected/adapted to include the pastry lore I've soaked up during my visits both professional and friendlyl at my local pastry shop -- my pâtissier's basic recipe for biscuit, the base of most of his cakes which he then elaborates with ganâche, fruit jellies, mousses, pralines and more. He uses only egg whites, almond meal and powdered sugar. Hmmmm, and advised me to bake it in a very hot oven for a very short time -- just seize the outside and leave the cake as flexible and soft as possible to allow for rolling/bending/ etc.,

And of course, my chocolatier shared with me his basic ganâche recipe. And I started making oodles of jams alongside Erick, adopting the technique of 2x fruit to 1x sugar and leaving the fruit to release its juices for at least a few hours before putting it over a flame.

It's come to the point where the original recipe is no longer necessary. I simply make my bûche. And, when I come across someone who is gluten intolerant, I've many a solution. However, in the spirit of the season, I kept careful track of my steps yesterday and today. And below are the precise measurements (where possible in both American volumes and metric, but without a scale at Ma's house...) that I used this time around... Enjoy!

Ingredients :

For the biscuit :

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup almond meal
1/4 cup powdered sugar
6 egg whites whipped stiff
4 egg yolks whipped till lemon yellow
scant 1/4 cup brown sugar

For the jam:

1 pound fresh or frozen raspberries or mixed berries
1/2 pound sugar

To drench: if you have it on hand:

1/2 cup of raspberry eau de vie
1 cup sugar
1 cup boiling water

Or, you can do as I did yesterday: remove a cup of the sugared berry juices from the jam pot, add a 1/2 cup of white rum.

For the ganâche filling :

For the Ganache:

300 grams (12 oz) superior quality dark chocolate (like Lindt 70%, Valrohna 64%)
225 grams (9 oz) tablespoons heavy cream

for the coating:

200 grams (8oz) superior quality dark chocolate (like Lindt 70%, Valrohna 64%)
150 grams (5 oz) tablespoons heavy cream

To make the biscuit : Preheat oven to 400F/200C

Sift your cocoa and lightly blend with the ground almonds and powdered sugar.


Whip the egg whites stiff.



In a separate mixing bowl, whip till lemon yellow the egg yolks and brown sugar.


Sprinkle in some of the dry ingredients, then fold together with the egg whites and the rest of the dry ingredients.

Spread thinly on a lined (with parchment paper) or non-stick baking sheet, or on a silpat atop a cookie sheet.

It is important to either bake the cake on a silpat and let cool, then remove onto parchment paper before drenching in syrup/alcohol, or to bake it directly onto parchment paper, remove onto another sheet of parchment paper when cool, and drench. I once made the rather total error of leaving it on the silpat and drenching it with the syrup/eau de vie mixture. It then stuck terribly and made a total visual catastrophe of a dessert. Lessons must be learned, right?


Bake for 5 minutes – till the surface is lightly browned, but the center still soft.

Remove from the oven promptly. And let cool. Reverse onto a large sheet of parchment paper and put aside.

Mix together the eau de vie and the simple syrup (or do as I did yesterday) and brush evenly and generously with a pastry brush over the biscuit and let soak in.

For the jam:




Put your fruit and sugar into a bowl (this can be done the night before) with a 1/2 cup of water (if not the night before) and set it to simmer. Once it is nicely blended and bubbling, ladel your berries into a vegetable mill and grind away. The grinding will release the pectin present in the raspberry/blackberry seeds and help thicken your jam. Not feeling the need to truly remove all those seeds, (in a mixed berry jam) which is far more necessary if you're only using raspberries/blackberries, I put the solids back into my jam pot and continued simmering till the mixture thickened sufficiently -- when it cooled a thick skin formed on the surface.

For the Ganache:

Chop the chocolate into very small pieces. You can use a large knife, a meza luna rocking chopper, or a food processor. Put your chocolate into a large mixing bowl.

In a saucepan, heat the heavy cream till just the boiling point. Remove the cream from the heat and pour it slowly over the chocolate – you can pour it on the whisk to limit splatter. Stir gently till the chocolate melts into the cream.


Pour your chocolate over your biscuit, and gently spread it out in an even layer. Let cool and set, this will take at least 2 hours.

Finishing touches :

Once the chocolate is cooled and set (you may want to speed up the process by putting it in the fridge a bit), spread your jam (somewhat cooled too) over the ganâche and let set for a couple of hours.


Having your cake on the parchment paper gives you a tool for rolling the cake. You can roll it either the short direction -- for more rolls, or the long direction -- for more slices. I tend to do the latter.

Once your cake is rolled up, put in the fridge covered to set. It is best to leave it over night.

The next day, slice off the ends of your bûche on an angle and position them as branch stumps. Then melt more chocolate with a bit of heavy cream to extend it, drizzle over your bûche (being cold, it will quickly set the chocolate). Then pull a fork over it to design your bark.

When you are ready to serve: Sprinkle of powdered sugar on top.

A fun touch is meringue mushrooms... boughs of holly or branches of pine, or perhaps even some snow drifts of whipped cream (not unwelcome with such a rich cake).

Slice carefully, and enjoy!

left-over jam never goes to waste.

Chocolate Mille Feuille (Napoleon)

I actually baked the other night. With all that's been going on, I've not been in the kitchen much. Basic nourishment for the boys, some rice for me... But, we had company and they are close friends of Jonas and it seemed right that we be festive. So, with a crowd pleasing lasagna for the main course, I prepared a mille feuille for dessert. Truly, a very simple pastry to prepare, and always a hit.

I tried it this time with chocolate, something I'd not done before, and yes, it worked quite nicely.

In France it is easy to find good quality puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) in the refrigerator section of any grocery store. When in the US I go to the freezer section and get the frozen sheets of puff pastry from Pepperidge Farm which need to be defrosted in a fridge overnight before using. Thus, when preparing this dessert, it is round in France, and square in the US.

Ingredients for 8-10 portions

3 sheets of puff pastry (this will be 2 boxes of Pepperidge Farm flaky pastry dough found in the freezer section, or 3 sheets from your favorite specialty bakery store)

For the cream:

1 liter/1 quart whole milk
4 egg yolks and 2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour or corn starch
100 grams/5 oz 60% dessert chocolate chopped in small pieces

Heat the milk in a heavy bottomed sauce pan with the chocolate, whisking gently for the chocolate to melt. While the milk heats, blend your egg yolks and egg, sugar and flour till light yellow in a mixing bowl. When your milk is hot, pour a third of it slowly into the egg mixture whisking all the while. Then pour the mixture back into the sauce pan and whisk steadily till it starts to bubble and thicken. The flour (or corn starch) prevents the eggs from curdling too quickly.

When thickened and just bubbling pour/scrape the cream out onto a lined cookie sheet and place in the refrigerator to chill. (trick from my pastry man)

Lay your flaky pastry sheets out on baking pans, poke holes with a fork throughout to prevent them from puffing in the oven and bake at 400F / 200C till nicely brown. (15-25 minutes). It is important to let them get really brown. Just take a look at any pastry shop's mille feuille, they aren't scared to cook the pastry. It gives more flavor and texture this way. Remove the sheets from the oven and let cool.


To put it together, place one pastry sheet on your cake plate, spread half the cream, then lay the next sheet, spread the rest of the cream, then the final sheet. You can finish off the mille feuille with powdered sugar or a glaze of powdered sugar and lemon juice and/or Grand Marnier, or sprinkle fresh berries, or chocolate drippings à la Jackson Pollock… as the mood takes you. Chill till ready to serve. This time I improvised a home-made chocolate glaze with a very concentrated simple syrup of water and sugar and melted chocolate. The measurements were completely hokey -- 1/2 cup water to start with, 5 oz of chocolate, and I believe 2 cups of sugar... then gently cooked till the texture looked right, cooled a bit and poured on top.

A delicious visit inspires

A delectable specialty of my favorite chocolatier is his caramels. Such a simple concoction: sugar, cream, and butter. And yet... all my gourmandise of my younger years comes to the fore when I am confronted with this beautiful, smooth warm-toned merveille.

Joël Durand's main shop is in St. Rémy de Provence: a hub of tempting smells, shelves of delights to the eye and the tongue, and a very friendly welcome. I come here for gifts for friends back home, for a little something to put by my computer while I work (a reward here and there encourages creativity, n'est-ce pas?). And of course, I bring my guests.

A whirlwind of movement and ambition, Joël comes up with new candies and confections every year. From an alphabet of flavored ganâche filled chocolates to cocoas to toasted almonds, crunchy caramel and chocolate to confitures and -- my favorite -- delicate chocolate cookies topped with flavored, oozing caramel (orange, lavender, liquorice, chocolate, salted butter, hazelnut...) and dipped in crisp, shiny dark chocolate. Yes... I do have an Achille's heel, I must admit.

I took my clients by yesterday, and obtained the rare permission to visit the laboratory (this used to be a bit easier to do, but it is now run like the proverbial ship and where once there were lovely bits of "waste" to nibble, there are no longer. An impressive change has taken place -- for the better -- but this may mean fewer visits... I'll see what the future brings).



We arrived shortly after lunch, and watched as the workers got into the swing of their afternoon recipes. One was making caramel (hmmmmm), while another simmered and infused fresh rosemary in a simple syrup, mixing it in a high-speed blender, and sieving it through a chinois for a rosemary-infused ganache chocolate and a rosemary-infused bar chocolate. In another room, a young woman was filling her bar molds with freshly tempered chocolate. All were cleaning impectably as they went along. The scene oozed focus, quietly and methodically applied.

I've been visiting behind the scenes for ten years now at Joël Durand's shop, and I must say, gorgeous creations have always been the order of the day, but rarely before was it such a serious workplace. I miss the friendly banter of yesteryear and some of the early employees trained on the job. But, if getting things ship shape, eliminating waste, perfecting the methods and improving production help keep the business thriving and the current employees employed, Chapeau!


As we continued to observe, the hive hummed busily along. Other recipes were begun, including one of my favorites -- the honey ganache. I noted that it is made with lots of cream and butter much like so many others, but the quantities? I'll have to guess, or look up another chocolatier's recipe, as here, they are tightly held secrets!



A Basic Caramel:

Looking around for proportions, Simply Recipes suggests the following for a basic caramel. I added chocolate to my successful attempt this evening; and yes, these are pretty much the proportions I used (I confess to eye-balling it, something a proper pastry chef would never do!):

* 1 cup of sugar
* 6 Tbsp butter
* 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
-- optional, a few squares of high quality dessert chocolate -- I put in 4.

After watching at the laboratory however, I would put the cream before the butter, as the pastry-worker I observed added his cream before the butter. And, if nothing else, I'm a quick study! It is a simple recipe, but one that requires having all ingredients on hand, quick responsiveness and a sharp eye and nose.


Melt the sugar in a heavy bottomed sauce pan (if making lots, a large copper jam pot works great). With a wooden spoon stir and press out the lumps. When it is fully melted and starts bubbling, watch carefully! Let it get darker -- this is where the flavor comes in -- till you see le petit fumé, the small smoke.


Then add the cream. It will foam up dramatically. Stir and stir till it is smoothe again. Let it color some more, then remove the pan from the heat and put in all the butter. Apparently, you don't need to stir immediately -- the butter will cool down the caramel a bit. Stir in the butter, and -- if you wish -- add your chocolate. Stir till it all comes together and then either pour it into a jar, or over ice cream, whichever suits you. -- a poached pear or some apple slices are a possibility as well.