A Passion for Chocolate [Hardcover]

Maurice Bernachon (Author), Jean-Jacques Bernachon (Author), Maria Guarnaschelli (Editor), Vincent Lee (Photographer), Rose Levy Beranbaum (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1989

1st edition. Clean book, no marks or creases in text. Nice DJ!! Book looks new except for inscription on first page."To michelle , Happy 21st birthday."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beranbaum ( The Cake Bible ) journeyed to Lyons, France, to work with the Bernachons, well-known chocolatiers, in order to gain "a glimpse of baker's paradise," translate their La Passion du Chocolat into English and adapt the recipes to American kitchens. She succeeds brilliantly. Potentially life-altering desserts include the elaborate Le President cake (a genoise filled with chocolate ganache and brandied cherries) and the easy-to-make but elegant chocolate parfait. Cakes are stuffed with everything from chestnut buttercream to tea-flavored ganache; recipes for souffles, cookies, meringues and even the humble brownie can be found. Extremely well organized, with much helpful advice on handling delicate pastries, recipes call for proper equipment, high-quality ingredients and careful adherence to preparation. So when Beranbaum says flour should be spooned instead of scooped into a cup, readers should take her direction literally. Decorating tips are also provided, should you want to dust your dessert with gold leaf. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 398 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688075541
• ISBN-13: 978-0688075545
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,206,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Advanced Patissiere, Not for the Beginner, September 13, 2004

By 

jerry i h (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Passion for Chocolate (Hardcover)

Bernachon and his kin own a legendary chocolate business in Lyon, France. Beranbaum is a thorough and careful cookbook author. The result is the most useful chocolate cook book that I own. It is a very productive resource for chocolate recipes. Whenever I need a recipe for, say, a chocolate version of Gateau St. Honore or L'Opera, this is book I go to first, and it is the chocolate book I bake from most frequently. A word of warning, however: the recipes are not necessarily easy to do, and the uninitiated might have some difficulty following the more involved recipes.

This book is a mostly traditional collection of classic, French patissierie. You will find things like buche de noel, caraque, mille-feuille, succes, madeleines, profiteroles, macarons, rochers, mousse, nougats, trois-freres, and truffles. The chapter on basics is probably the most valuable chapter: it has all the basics, such as genoise, pate feuilletee, croissant, pate a choux, pate sucree. pate brisee, succes, meringue, ganache, creme patissiere, and creme chantilly. Beranbaum has done an excellent job of adapting these recipes for the American kitchen. All the ingredients are listed in both volume and weight measures. The procedures are thorough, complete, and reliable.

I do have a few objections. There are some easy recipes, viz Brownies or Viennese Hot Chocolate, but most are rather advanced and not for the casual home cook. Some kind of difficulty rating system would have been a great help. The chocolate pound cake recipe is the wacky one that uses egg whites beaten to stiff peaks, not a real pound cake by my standards. Several recipes use a chocolate coating, but proper instructions for tempering chocolate is not supplied anywhere in the book; for these recipes, I suggest you ignore the author's statements about heating and cooling chocolate and resort to a chocolate cook book that has full instructions for tempering.

It has these chapters: cakes; little cakes and cookies; desserts; confections; beverages; kitchen basics; decorations.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Passion for Chocolate, December 14, 2011

By 

LK (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Passion for Chocolate (Hardcover)

As a chocolate lover, I received this as a gift and just looking through the recipes and the stories along with it, I am excited to try out all of the recipes as they all look amazing! Definitely a great purchase!

5.0 out of 5 stars first purchase ever, October 21, 2011

By 

Jelly - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Passion for Chocolate (Hardcover)

These 2 books were our first ever Amazon purchase! We are really happy with the quality of the books as well as how fast they were shipped. Being in Australia things can sometimes take a while but I was very happy with my purchase and will definitely be buying again.