Salon du Chocolat, Oct 28 - Nov 1, 2023

 

At Friday night’s opening of the 2023 Salon du Chocolat I made a bee-line for Maison Pralus.

There are always ready snacks of their famous cake, Le Praluline. An incredible brioche made with pink praliné chips (sugared almonds). It is a classic Lyonnaise dessert  first made by August Pralus in 1955. 

Let Them Eat Bûche de Noël

 You can not go two steps in this town
 

 Without tripping over a log
 

 A chocolate log or a bûche de Noël
 

 Which evidently extends its welcome well past Noël into the celebration of Epiphany with a French king cake or galette des rois featuring yummy almond paste frangipane stuffed puff pastry and a surprise lurking favor inside but that's for a later post.
 

  
The variations on a theme are endless in Paris. Traditional bûche is made from a genoise or other sponge cake, generally baked in a large, shallow Swiss roll pan, frosted, rolled to form a cylinder, and frosted again on the outside. The most common combination is a basic yellow sponge cake, a rolade, frosted and filled with chocolate buttercream; however, many variations on the traditional recipe exist, possibly including chocolate cakes, ganache and espresso or other flavored fillings.

  
This macaron-decorated bûche de Noël looks like a kid's choo choo train to me.
 

  
Two choo choos meetup at a crossing.
LOOK OUT!

 Most of them resemble a bed with a headboard, footboard with stuff thrown on top...

 A marron glace serves as a pillow from elegant des Gateaux et du Pain.

Inside:La châtaigne en jeux de textures, amertume d'un miel d'arbousier : biscuit moelleux à la pâte de marrons, châtaignes entières « cuisinées », caramel et fleur de sel, crème douce-amère au miel d'arbousier, mousse de châtaignes.

 You can easily buy just a slice from a boulangerie

 An Austrian bûche slice at Angelina.
 

 Complimentary colors red + green for this single slice. Pastry chefs are artistes and have a color wheel onhand I'll bet.

 There are even whole mini bûche de Noël(buchette) for mini Parisiennes.

I have yet to taste a bûche de Noël but when in RomeParis...

Have you eaten bûche de Noël? Did you love it?
Should I?

Jean-Paul Hevin Choco Passion

Jean-Paul Hevin Choco Passion, watercolor, 9" x 11" Darling Jill of Mad About Macarons fame took me to master chocolatier Jean-Paul Hevin's Chocolate Bar on rue St. Honore.
Only 30 desserts to choose from! We chose the choco passion - intense dark chocolate ganache + passion fruit mousse - so divine it levitated right off the table.

It would be wise to study up ahead with this Assouline book on J-PH by Le Figaro food critic par excellance, Fancois Simon.

Utterly luscious photos + chocolate recipes in the back.

After tea and dessert you will be well- armed to face the endless chocolate displays downstairs...

Resistance will be so easy...

Chocolate can be quite the seductress you know...

Oh dear, how not to give in to temptation?
BONJOUR JEAN-PAUL HEVIN CHOCOLAT PASSION!

L'Art de la Ganache

Brought back by popular request the recipe for the La Maison du Chocolat ganache!

L'Art de la Ganache, original art, 9" x 11"

Photo by Evert-Jan De Kort

Please visit his chocolate-obsessed site!

For the dark chocolate ganache:

1 Orinoco Bar (all 75 gr. each)

1 Kuruba Bar

1Monsera Bar  

You can mailorder bars from La Maison

or use the best chocolate bars you can get your hands on.

500 mi (2 cups + 2 thsp) single cream

½ vanilla pod (bean)

Kitchen Utensils: whisk, Mixing bowl, saucepan

For the Directions:

1. Finely chop the dark chocolate and set aside in a mixing bowl. Take the vanilla pod (bean), split the pod length-wise and remove the seeds. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil, remove from the heat: add half the vanilla bean and seeds, and leave to infuse for 10 minutes..Return to heat until just before boiling. Remove vanilla pod and pour infused cream over the shaved chocolate.

2-Leave the chocolate to melt for 2 minutes, then whisk lightly in a circular motion, starting from the center.

As the ganache thickens, move the whisk towards the sides of the bowl, until you obtain a smooth texture.

3-You can enjoy this ganache warm or pour it over ice cream, cakes, or fresh strawberries.

At La Maison du Chocolat, we like to pour it into a stainless steel frame set on a marble slab. We leave it to solidify for 24 hours before covering it with a layer of dark or milk couverture chocolate.

You can find this recipe and many more of master pastry chef Gilles Marchal in the brand new LMDC book just out on Amazon - very lush indeed.  This video is from Melt Chocolates in London.
BONJOUR GANACHE!

La Maison du Chocolat - Ganache

 Yesterday I had to take a night class at La Maison du Chocolat. Life is tough sometimes..

Especially when your first assignment is to taste a perfect La Maison bonbon, filled with the silkiest, smooth, intensely chocolatey ganache. Ganache is that divinely, "infused" chocolate filling in most French bonbons.
La Maison du Chocolat specializes in these precisely made perfect ganache-filled chocolates, infused with flavors of menthe du Maroc, citron d’Andalousie, vanille, or framboise

Our instructor Michael Olsen, formerly a tea taster and now the guru of the Madison avenue shop, shows us how to make ganache ourselves. Always the boiled light cream is poured into the chocolate (here shavings of a variety of La Maison bars), and never the other way around.

The hot chocolate is whipped and then "infused" with a puree of peche de vigne - a special French peach that only grows in the vineyards.

This tasting dish of the still warm ganache, is really quite small, I promise you. Just a hint of peachiness comes through at the end. The overall mouth feel is luxuriously...what? Words elude me. Heaven on earth?

Michael then shows us how to make an insanely easy chocolate mousse for guests simply by whipping into the ganache some whipped cream and voila! No raw eggs required!

Just a still life of the mousse, the bowl and ready-made ganache La Maison sells.

Remembrances of things past. Of course no one got to lick the bowl at this elegant class...ahem

Another tragedie gone to waste. Although I'm absolutely certain no PB reader has ever been remotely near a chocolate-covered kitchen utensil.

The origin of all this divine chocolate is the homely cocoa bean. In La Maison's case, only the best Criollo, the creme de la creme of beans are used and then extra specially processed for them by top of the line chocolate maker, Valrhona.

Night class ended with a Q & A - asking Michael a gazillion chocolate questions. Our take-home assignment was to try out the new special limited edition box of chocolates.. Since I'm still hung over from tasting last night's mousse etc., I will wait a bit before I tackle our homework.

La Maison has regular chocolate classes anyone can attend.

Do come!

BONJOUR GANACHE!