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Quote by Judith Fertig

“I didn't know until I licked the mocha buttercream from my third devil's food cupcake that this was the flavor of starting over- dark chocolate with that take-charge undercurrent of coffee. I could actually taste it, feel it. And now I craved it.”

Quote by Judith Fertig

Book:The Cake Therapist
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The Cake Therapist

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Judith Fertig

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“Avis puts aside the 'Saint-Honore' and decides to embark on a new pastry. She's assembling ingredients when the phone rings in the next room. She ignores it as she arranges her new mise en place. This recipe is constructed on a foundation of hazelnuts- roasted, then roughed in a towel to help remove skins. These are ground into a gianduja paste with shaved chocolate, which she would normally prepare in her food processor, but today she would rather smash it together by hand, using a meat tenderizer on a chopping block. She pounds away and only stops when she hears something that turns out to be Nina's voice on the answering machine: "Ven, Avis, you ignoring me? Contesta el telefono! I know you're there. Ay, you know what- you're totally impossible to work for..." Avis starts pounding again. Her assistants never last more than a year or two before something like this happens. They go stale, she thinks: everything needs to be turned over. Composted. She feels invigorated, punitive and steely as she moves through the steps of the recipe. It was from one of her mother's relatives, perhaps even Avis's grandmother- black bittersweets- a kind of cookie requiring slow melting in a double boiler, then baking, layering, and torching, hours of work simply to result in nine dark squares of chocolate and gianduja tucked within pieces of 'pate sucree.' The chocolate is a hard, intense flavor against the rich hazelnut and the wisps of sweet crust- a startling cookie. Geraldine theorized that the cookie must have been invented to give to enemies: something exquisitely delicious with a tiny yield. The irony, from Avis's professional perspective was that while one might torment enemies with too little, it also exacted an enormous labor for such a small revenge.”

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Book:Birds of Paradise
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“You've got braised short ribs in the big oven, and that potato, leek, and prune gratin that Brad loves in the warming drawer underneath. There is asparagus prepped in the steamer- Ian can just turn it on and set it for eight minutes." When I helped redesign their kitchen, the Gaggenau rep convinced me to put in two warming drawers, since I'm usually leaving them food that is fully prepared but won't be consumed immediately, and an in-counter steamer, which has been a total game changer when it comes to getting a simple green vegetable on their plates every night, not to mention making the weekly pasta night a cinch. "The perfect thing for a chilly fall night like tonight." "That is what I figured. And there is a chocolate ginger sticky toffee pudding on the counter for dessert. The coffee caramel sauce is in the other warming drawer." "That sounds interesting, a new one?" One of the recipes I've been working on this week, sort of an update of the English classic. I'm loving how the dark chocolate and sweet heat of the ginger take the cake out of the cloying realm, and the bitterness of the coffee in the caramel sauce sets it all off beautifully. "Something I've been playing with.”

VegetablesDessertPuddingDark ChocolateCatering Food
Book:How to Change a Life
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“If I couldn't escape the guilt, there was nothing left to do but lean into it. And leaning into it is what led me to grabbing the forty dollars my mom leaves out in the front to order food if I ever need it, schlepping miserably down to the bodega, and collecting everything I needed to make Paige's infamous So Sorry Blondies from the summer before she left for college. I pull them out of the oven now, the smell wafting through the kitchen---the brown sugar and butter and toffee against the richness of the dark chocolate chips and toffee against the pockets of dark chocolate caramel sauce. A little bitter and a little sweet.”

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Book:Tweet Cute
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“What are you planning for your mille-feuille?" "I was looking into popular flavors of the Victorian era," Claire recited, just as she'd practiced in the mirror last night, "and I decided to use lemon and raspberry. So my pastry cream has lemon zest and a bit of lemon juice, and then I will layer fresh raspberries between stripes of cream between the pastry layers." How are you making the pastry?" Alan pressed. Claire swallowed, suddenly nervous. "Full puff. I found that it layers better than rough puff." Alan gave her a nod of consideration. "Takes longer too." "Are you concerned about the combination of two tart flavors?" Dame Sophie asked in a prim, almost trilling voice. "It can be quite a collision if you are not careful." Claire nodded. "I tried a number of combinations, and this cream should have enough sweetness to counter the lemon. And fresh raspberries, I find, gave a better mouthfeel than freeze-dried or using an essence in the cream itself." Lindsay leaned on the counter, her expression playful. "Tell me about the chocolate, Claire. C'mon, tell me you're using good chocolate." "Of course I am," Claire told her with a laugh. "I'm doing a dark chocolate icing and marbling with the vanilla icing, instead of the other way around." "Daring, Claire," Charlie praised, smiling in his usual would-be devilish way. "Turning history on its head, innit?" Claire made a show of exhaling. "I'm going to try, Charlie, and hope not to offend history or the judges in the process.”

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Book:The Crime Brûlée Bake Off
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“Switching on the lights above the kitchen island, I turned on the stove and started melting some butter. I poured it into a mixing bowl, then added some monkfruit sweetener, an egg, a splash of vanilla extract, then whisked it until it became light and fluffy. And here was the twist I was planning: instead of Oreo and white chocolate, I was using matcha and dark chocolate as substitutes. The carbohydrate content in matcha was super low, so I wanted to experiment with different recipes using matcha powder, hoping to offer several items in that flavor at the bakery. After adding some plain flour, baking powder, a pinch of salt, and some matcha powder, I mixed them all to form a dough, then added some dark chocolate chips and several crushed matcha cookies into the mixture.”

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Book:Salty, Spiced, and a Little Bit Nice
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“Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith. I fot Id bettir clear it wif thi relevint oforities furst & hens avoyd any truble (like happind thi lastime) so I went 2 c mentor Scalopin. Certinly yung Bascule, he sez, i do beleave this is a day ov relativly lite dooties 4 u u may take it off. ½ u made yoor mattins calls? O yes, I sed, which woznt stricktly tru, in fact which woz pretti strikly untru, trufe btold, but I cude always do them while we woz travelin.”

PhoneticBascule
Author:Iain M. Banks
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