Respected Chocolate Cookbook Website

Chef Peter Grewling shows why he is the master of chocolates with this book. It is a wonderful thing to have in your cooking library. Recipes are compatible with anyone, not just a graduate of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). The marshmellows are wonderful, but so many other recipes are too.

I just received my new copy of this fantastic book. As a somewhat experienced candy and confection maker, I was impressed at the number of new and interesting recipes, storage tips, easy to find ingredients and overall quality of the recipes in this book. This is well worth the money and given the level of experience the author has had in teaching the art of chocolate and confection making, this is like a course written for you step by step. I am already excited about making so many of the treats in this book which is chock full of ideas and new inspiration for both the novice and the more experienced candy maker. A friend already asked if they could borrow this book and there is no way I am parting with my copy…they will have to get their own LOL.

I had a student working on a report (actually it was his mother doing the inquiring, he was contemplating “other things”) VEGETABLES.
The last part of the project that was being worked-on was for a recipe. His topic was carrots. I hate to tell you what transpired during the
recipe search, but he did not like carrot cake. The mother insisted that he did not need make it. He did not care whether he had to make
it or not, he sure did not want her to include that recipe!
I wound-up ordering the attached list of books. They came into the library a week ago. What a great little series. Do take the time to
peruse Amazon. They are a real “repast!”

Elinor Klivans’s The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook is absolutely lovely, including a decent number of color photographs, a clean layout, and easy-to-read recipes. The pages are thick and somewhat glossy, comparatively easy to keep clean. You’ll find everything in here from cookies to bar cookies, muffins to pies, tarts and puddings to cakes, and of course, ice cream desserts. The table of contents names each and every recipe, while the index allows you to look up recipes by major ingredient. If you want to find that lovely banana cream pie with graham cracker crunch, you can look under ‘bananas’ in the index or the ‘pies’ chapter in the table of contents.

The first recipe we made was a cinnamon and chips chiffon cake. Unfortunately, the mini-chips sank straight through the batter during baking, stuck to the pan, and then largely stayed behind when the cake was removed, leaving the cake with holes and a thick layer of remaining chocolate chips at the top. We made banana-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies; every person who tried them agreed they would have been better with about half the chips in them.

The real kicker was the cookie dough cheesecake bars, however. In the photo, a full layer of cheesecake filling sits atop a graham-chocolate chip crust. Small blobs of crispy baked chocolate chip cookie dough obscure some of the filling, and lines of chocolate drizzle criss-cross the entire thing. In reality, the crust kept falling apart; the layer of cheesecake was minimal and difficult to taste amongst everything else; the ‘cookie dough’ was far too abundant and didn’t come together as a dough; and if we’d actually included the drizzled chocolate, the result would have tasted overwhelmingly of chocolate. Our guess is that there should have been about twice as much cheesecake filling; the crust perhaps needed a bit more butter; and the cookie dough needed more liquid (a little milk? an egg?) and should have been halved.

The flavors are good, if unbalanced (the chocolate overwhelmed the other flavors in the recipes). The book is beautiful. Unfortunately, not a single recipe we tried came out great, and they tended to have noticeable ‘issues.’ As much as I love Chronicle cookbooks on the whole, this is not one of their best.

I’ve made just a couple recipes so far and they have both turned out well (even the pie crusts made from scratch, which I have never done before!). The instructions are very clear.

After drooling over this book for a few weeks I finally caved in back at Valentine’s Day and bought it. I’m usually not a huge fan of cook books because I figure that I can find most recipes online. But I was bored with the sweets that I was finding to make and I love to bake, usually about three times a week.

I haven’t gotten to make every recipe in this collection yet, but I’m well on my way, repeating mine and my husbands favorites several times for all our friends! The variety of treats will definitely stave off boredom. And while these recipes are by no means low calorie they are loaded with deliciousness and are easy for a baker with even moderate skills to pull off.

I won’t spoil the fun and tell you all the recipes included in this book but I’ll highlight my favorites to give you an idea of what you can expect. Of course there’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, but there’s also a Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie you’ll cry for (and I’ve always hated oatmeal cookies! That was before these.), Chocolate-Dipped Lemon Cookies, a Classic Chocolate Brownie which is just perfect, Peppermint Brownies, a Blondie that incorporates the white chocolate into the batter itself, Dark Chocolate Cupcakes, Chocolate Chip Cheesecake, Double Chocolate Banana Bread which makes huge portions, an unforgettable White Chocolate Creme Brulee, gooey Chocolate Lava Cakes, and so many more recipes that I will be busy with this book for the next year! I just don’t think you can go wrong with this book.

Ghirardelli chocolate was originally founded by an Italian immigrant, Domingo Ghirardelli, in San Francisco in 1849. Since then, it’s been bought and sold several times, having survived the Gold Rush, Great Fire of 1851, and two world wars. The cookbook features an informative introduction into the company’s early years, including reproductions of vintage posters. A handy chocolate primer tells how to effectively store chocolate (think: cool, dry place, low humidity), how to garnish pastries with chocolate, candy making, and chocolate substitutions (using only Ghirardelli products, naturally). There’s even a snobby little guide on how to appreciate a good chocolate (much like wine tasting, minus the swishing). Looking to host a choc-tail party? That’s in here too.

Once you hit the cookbook section, recipes are arranged straightforwardly by type, beginning with cookies (chocolate chip, lemon, sugar, shortbread, peanut butter, macaroons, biscotti), chocolate brownies and bars (the peppermint brownies are worth the price of the book; I’ve made them four times, and they just keep getting better!), chocolate cakes, cupcakes, tortes, pies, tarts, candies and bonbons, and chocolate breads and breakfast.

The recipes are easy to follow, although the font is a little small, and the photos are beautiful. One of the problems I ran into was the fact that some recipes called for Ghirardelli products that were not readily available at the first few stores I tried (such as the ground chocolate and cocoa powder, although a substitution is listed in front).

I decided on the Ghirardelli cookbook after looking at several chocolate cookbooks from Scharffen Berger (Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate) and Marcel Desaulniers (Death by Chocolate: The Last Word on a Consuming Passion). The Ghirardelli Chocoalte Cookbook had the highest ratio of recipes that a) appealed to me and b) actually looked doable by an intermediate baker. I was right on both counts, and everything I bake is a smash hit.