chockablock with chocolate

Aleksandra Crapanzano grew up partly in Paris, and even now she remembers the moments in her childhood where chocolate changed her forever. Now, as a food writer and cookbook author, she goes back to those memories to bring us over 100 recipes of chocolate desserts that came from the patisseries of Paris. Leaning heavily into the hearts and minds of some of the world’s greatest French chocolatiers, she has assembled a collection of chocolate desserts to delight and inspire, from longtime classics to contemporary interpretations.

After a fascinating history of chocolate as a sensual delight and bon to health through the centuries, she offers a cheat sheet on how to get the best results. Her thoughts: use the best chocolate you can afford (she tells her favorites) and reminds cooks that most of these recipes use very few other ingredients. You can experiment with flavors if you want (many recipes come with suggestions), but you can also just make the chocolate recipe without embellishments (besides a good Chantilly cream, of course) and savor the deep chocolate flavor.

Recipes include sables, Madeleines, and macarons. There are Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Alain Ducasse’s Brownies with Pecans, and Chocolate Meringue Cookies. There is a flourless Chocolate Olive Oil Cake as well as the Moist Chocolate Yogurt Cake that children are taught to bake in school. There are chocolate tarts, chocolate mousses, chocolate crepes, and chocolate flan. There is a traditional Chocolate Souffle and an inventive Speedy Charlotte Tiramisu.

There is an entire chapter on hot chocolates, which the French take very seriously, and another on the Buche de Noel, the rolled cake which is the traditional holiday dessert for many French families. There is a chapter on truffles and caramels, and a chapter on ganache and other sauces, glazes, drizzles, and dollops like raspberry coulis, caramel sauces, candied nuts, buttercream, whipped cream, and even homemade Nutella.

Crapanzano has a way with words and created images in my head of all these places in Europe and the gorgeous desserts. There are illustrations throughout the cookbook that show the desserts. But there are no photos. I would have loved to have seen all these desserts, like I had my face pressed up against a French patisserie or I was sitting in a Parisian restaurant craning my neck as servers bring out desserts and place them on nearby tables. But Crapanzano did such a beautiful job of describing the desserts that I was less upset about no photos than I would be with other cookbooks.

I love Chocolat. I love how many of the recipes use only a handful of ingredients, focusing on the flavor of the chocolate. I love how many of the recipes are traditional French desserts. And I can’t wait to try several of these out on friends and family. The cakes, the cookies, the mousses? I’m going to need a lot of chocolate, and that’s before we get hit with an especially cold winter, perfect for all those hot chocolate recipes. This is perfect for chocolate lovers, especially for those interested in the history and traditions of French chocolate and desserts. At least, it’s perfect for this chocolate lover.

Egalleys for Chocolat were provided by Scribner through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.