[DeletedAccount53]

Originally Posted by MsNobleEleanor

Oh wow, lots of chocolate recipes! Which one out of the ones you shared is your favorite to make and why?

I'm delighted you asked because Maman adores making grande dinners and I'm her culinary Sorcerer's Apprentice. You'll understand why shortly.


I have a weakness for pears; even the tinned variety are pretty good where we live, except it's their combination with the best chocolate you can buy, and for me that would be either Valrhona or Green & Black's for it high cocoa content. Not Lindt or Cadbury's: too much sugar content.


Now, combining chocolate with thick cream and you have ganache, the base for fine chocolate truffles or ganache used by a Master Chocolatier creating their special dark delights. But add butter - for all desserts I use unsalted and the eggs are free range organic, and that combination makes for a richly pronounced and deeply, chocolately satisfying dessert. I've used ripe pears instead of tinned - it is heaven! But only if you like pears.


Michelin chef Gordon Ramsay devised that version of chocolate marquise, except he cunningly used half an After Eight to fit while building his marquise before firing a quick blast of blowtorch to give that dessert that appealing gloss.


Not for me becuase I disliked the peppermint fondant which, even halved, tasted far sickly. My family loved it, just not me. Except in any other recipe I'd have used certified organic 'Black Mitcham' Peppermint which Bendinks use in their peppermint chocolates, then that could have overtaken the pear's 1st because Mitcham peppermint has a drier taste, so a lot, lot less would have been used.


I didn't have that splendid peppermint to hand, more the pity.


My family and our friends went wild for the After Eight, but the pear one, the 1st won over even the chocolate & chestnut truffle torte. For why? Because the recipe stated only 'brandy', except Maman used Courvoisier VSOP.


To me, that was a dire mistake. Had I my lockpick set (I play Lock Sport) I'd hvae raided Maman's drinks cabinet and nicked her coveted Hennessy Paradis Imperial.


Chocolate fruitcake, chocolate fudge crinkle biscuits and 'sunken drunken' is for anybody, especially big kids. But the pear takes 1st, but the torte would have overtaken it on my choice of Hennessy and risking Maman's wrath. (OMG she'd have gone bats! )


And this leaves Marcel Desaulnier's Frozen Chocolate Bombe. It cannot be compared to the first five. It's construction is painstaking and ultimately the eating - hands down, that ice cream dessert is stratospheric!!!



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Take a look at this guy: https://www.youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer/videos