SAMPLE RECIPES:
1. How to Melt Chocolate
2. White and Black Chocolate Cheesecake
3. Michele's German Chocolate Cake
4. Sacher Torte
Chocolate Cake: 150 Recipes from Simple to Sublime
by Michele Urvater
Broadway Books
Date: September 2001
ISBN: 0767906071
Hardcover
ORDER/INFO
Book Description
Chocolate cake is America's favorite dessert, from fudgy brownies to mile-high layer cakes. Now, virtually every rendition of this best-loved dessert is presented in one tempting volume–more than 150 cakes for every occasion.
Bestselling cookbook author and pastry chef Michele Urvater has collected and reinterpreted the finest recipes from American and European baking traditions. Here are easy homemade classics such as old-fashioned Devil's Food Cake and Buttermilk Chocolate Cake as well as more challenging pastry-shop fare such as Sacher Torte, Hungarian Dobos Torte, and a festive Double Chocolate Christmas Log. There are heirloom cakes that date to the beginning of the last century and desserts as up-to-the-minute as individual warm chocolate cakes.
Urvater guides bakers of all skill levels through a wealth of original and tempting variations on the standards, such as Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake or Hawaiian Coconut Cake with White Chocolate Ganache. And a plethora of fillings, icings, buttercreams, and glazes allows for nearly endless mixing and matching of layers and frostings.
Each recipe has a designated level of difficulty, so even the novice baker will be able to achieve instant success–and chocolate gratification. Meticulous recipes along with advice on advance preparation, serving, decoration, and storage all make this comprehensive tribute to the ultimate dessert a book that belongs in every baker's library.
About the Author
Michele Urvater is the author of the bestselling Monday-to-Friday cookbook series and former host of the TVFN program of the same name. A baking and culinary graduate of New York City Technical College, she began her career sharing a single chef's job with two other women in a small restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She then worked as a chef in a private corporate dining room and taught cooking classes before beginning her second career as a cookbook writer. Her third career began just a couple of years ago, when she fell in love with the pastry arts and returned to school to earn a diploma as a pastry chef from the esteemed French Culinary Institute.
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How to Melt Chocolate
From: Chocolate Cake by Michele Urvater
(Broadway Books; September 2001; ISBN: 0767906071; HC)
Cookbook Heaven @ recipelink.com
CHOPPING CHOCOLATE
To melt chocolate properly, first chop it into pieces that are roughly 1/2 - 3/4 inch in size. If the pieces are chopped into different sizes the chocolate won't melt evenly and you risk having to heat it too long for all of it to melt.
At home, I chop thin pieces of chocolate with a chef’s knife and thicker chunks with an ice pick. I also chop chocolate, nuts, fruits, and other items on cutting boards reserved exclusively for baking so that these ingredients do not pick up the residual taste of garlic, onions, or other aromatic savory items.
MELTING CHOCOLATE
Chocolate can be a bit tricky to melt because it is an emulsion of cocoa butter and cocoa solids. If the chocolate is heated too much, the cocoa butter separates from the cocoa solids, streaking the chocolate gray. Chocolate must be heated without a drop of moisture and never to more than l15 degrees F for dark chocolate or 100 degrees F for milk and white chocolates. If you overheat chocolate, it scorches and becomes grainy, as it will if a drop of moisture falls into the melting mass. To avoid overheating it, always melt chocolate slowly over indirect heat. Another foolproof way is to partially melt the chocolate by whichever method you choose, remove it from the heat source, and let the remaining chunks of chocolate melt by the heat of the surrounding warm chocolate. For small amounts of chocolate, use the double-boiler or microwave method. For large amounts of chocolate, use the double-boiler or oven method.
Double-Boiler Method of Melting Chocolate:
For the double-boiler method, chop the chocolate fine, place it in a clean stainless-steel bowl or the top of a double boiler, and set the bowl over a saucepan of very hot or gently simmering (not boiling) water. You do not want the bottom of the bowl to come directly in contact with the water below nor the water to be boiling and spewing up large masses of steam, which could fall into the chocolate and turn it lumpy. Also, do not cover the bowl or double boiler because steam could collect under the lid and fall back into the chocolate, causing the mass to harden and become grainy. As the chocolate begins to melt, stir it with a heat-resistant spoon or rubber spatula, working the chocolate from the sides of the bowl into the center mass. When the chocolate pieces are almost entirely melted, remove the bowl from the heat, stir, and let the remaining chocolate melt by the heat of the larger mass.
Microwave Method of Melting Chocolate:
For the microwave method, finely chop the chocolate and place it in a clean microwavable plastic or glass bowl. Set the bowl in the microwave oven and heat it, uncovered, at 100% power for 15-second intervals, or at 50% power for 1-minute intervals, stirring between intervals. When you melt chocolate in the microwave, it retains its shape, which can fool you into thinking it is not melting. Be sure then to stir it between heating intervals or you won't be able to gauge if it has melted, and you might overheat it.
You can remove the chocolate from the oven when it has almost melted, then stir and let any tiny undissolved lumps melt by the heat of the surrounding mass. Read the back of the box to find out how to microwave those 8-ounce packages of chocolate from the supermarket that contain smaller, individually wrapped l-ounce chunks. They suggest melting the chocolate in its paper wrapping in the microwave oven. I have tried this method and it works well.
Oven Method of Melting Chocolate:
For the oven method, place the chocolate in a moisture-free, ovenproof pan, and set it, uncovered, in an oven that has a pilot light. Leave the oven door ajar and wait until the chocolate has melted, 5 to 7 minutes.
Melting Chocolate with Liquid:
Even though I said earlier that you cannot melt chocolate with a drop of liquid because it will seize up, you can melt chocolate in liquid if you have the proper ratio of liquid to chocolate. To be on the safe side, melt chocolate in 1 tablespoon of liquid for 1 ounce of chocolate, even though for certain chocolates, such as milk and white, which contain fewer cocoa solids than dark, you need only 1 tablespoon of liquid for 2 ounces of chocolate.
A much-used preparation in cake-making is "ganache" a superb cream and chocolate mixture used as either a filling or a glaze. To make a ganache, bring heavy cream to just under the boil and pour it over chopped chocolate set in a bowl. It is crucial that before you blend them together, you let the mixture stand for 30 seconds to make sure the heat of the cream has been absorbed by each piece of chocolate, i If you don't wait, you might end up with microscopic bits of undissolved chocolate that would make your icing bumpy.
Troubleshooting
If, despite all your good intentions and precautions, the chocolate seizes up while you melt it try to salvage the mess by whisking in, for each ounce of chocolate, 1 teaspoon solid vegetable shortening (not butter, which contains water),
If you feel you have overheated the chocolate and it is about to scorch, immediately transfer the mass to a large clean bowl or dump it on marble counter, and scrape it back and forth few times to cool it down quickly, then scrape it back into a dean bowl.
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