I’ve got a number of chocolate cakes in my repertoire, from a super-dense Chocolate Orbit Cake to soft, warm Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cakes, from My Paris Kitchen. And they all share one thing in common: a lot of chocolate. I’m not much for adding things that detract from the chocolate flavor, so I shy away from adding raspberries or other fruits and berries, or layering them…
Summer is a great time for ice cream. It’s cool, it’s creamy, and I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t like ice cream. It’s the absolute crowd-pleaser when the temperatures climb. Add toasted marshmallows, salted butter chocolate sauce, and Graham crackers? I’m in, all the way. Unlike others, I don’t have nostalgic memories that involved S’mores, so I’m making up for lost time. This S’more…
There’s no shortage of chocolate shops in Paris. Many of them are concentrated in areas like the Marais or Left Bank, which are swankier places set up shop, but offer easy access. So in what are called the “double-digit” arrondissements, you’ll find more quirky places, and you’ll never know what you might come across if you wander around them. Having dinner one night at Churrasqueira…
I love cookies. If there is a selection of cookies on a dessert menu, I always will order it. I’ve been to cookie shops from Beirut to Bushwick, nibbling my way through chewy chocolate chip cookies, macarons, buttery sablés, and snappy ginger cookies, whenever I can. Even Parisians get in on the act by dubbing chocolate chip cookies, les cookies, perhaps because they are the classic…
I snuck my way into the workshop of master Paris chocolatier Jean-Charles Rochoux. When asked which is the best chocolate shop in Paris, it’s hard to pick just one, but his boutique is at the top of my short list. Each chocolate is hand-crafted in the kitchen just below the shop, where a small team of chocolatiers and Monsieur Rochoux dip, sculpt, mold, and enrobe…
I’d been anxious to eat at Honey & Co. in London, which was at the top of my list of places to try there, but never made it. One of the underrepresented foods in Paris is Middle Eastern food. With a large population from that part of the world, most of the restaurants are snack bar-like stands. And even at the standard Middle Eastern restaurants,…
When I started baking professionally, whenever a recipe called for chocolate, we grabbed whatever chocolate we could get in bulk, lopped off a chunk, and used that. At the time, there wasn’t much consciousness about chocolate and all the differences that there are today. (I know, I sound like a dinosaur!) Often “European” chocolates were talked about as being of the best quality. But when I started at…
When people ask me “Why did you move to Paris?” I’ll usually stop, point to the nearest cheese shop or bakery, and let them figure it out for themselves. There are a lot of pastry shops in Paris, over a thousand of them. But the first was Stohrer, which opened in 1730 by pastry chef Nicolas Stohrer, the pastry chef for Louis XV of France and his…
Not long after I’d arrived in Paris, I met Jacques Genin. At the time, he was working out of a small workshop deep in the 15th arrondissement. Inside, he and his team of five or so worked in a very tight space: A large table where they worked sat in the center of the room, taking up probably 90% of the space, enrobing machines…
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