This is a lovely and important book from a dessert maven. And it is timely, for we have a plague upon on.
I read a blog yesterday about the end of quality on the Food Channel:
The author decries the screaming antics of Guy Fieri pitching food that will kill you. And this post mourns the loss of Sarah and Ina and the others who once cooked real food for real people. Now the network has screamers and those morons who preach, “Take a box of cake mix, use a can of frosting, but top it with chopped walnuts and there, there you have lovely homemade dessert.”
It has to be, it has to, that the process of dumbing down has reached rock bottom.
How do we climb back up, out of this culinary abyss? What if we do want something quick with just a few ingredients but that is real and as good a dessert as you could find anywhere. Something like, oh, Apples in Lime Cardamom Syrup. What if you want something simple and quick and clever? Something like an Ice Cream Float with Cocoa Syrup, Kahlua, and Stout? Yes, stout as in beer stout, as in wonderful, blissful stout.
Your first thought about Alice Medrich might be that she’s that chocolate lady, the writer. This book, from April 2012, was her 12th [the 13th, Flavor Flours, is already out from this prolific author].
Sinfully Easy rolls along with chapters devoted to her primary ingredients including:
- Ice Cream
- Fruit
- Puddings
- Quick Pies, Tarts, and Meringues
- Lickety-Split Cakes
I was surprised to find the “chocolate lady” beginning with ice cream and fruit, but I am intrigued by those Apples in Lime Cardamom Syrup and also by Plums in Brandied Coffee Syrup. Those fruit desserts are followed by puddings but the fruit is still there: Salted Caramel Banana Bread Puddings.
And intrigue builds page by page, recipe by recipe:
- Best One-Bowl Chocolate and Vanilla Cakes
- Chocolate Marquise [mousse enriched with butter]
- Honey Balsamic Sundaes
- Lemon Scented Apple Upside Down cake
- Tahitian Vanilla Tart with Winter Cherry Compote
Along the pathway to excellence with ease, Alice gives you hints and advice that are as timeless as all her books. How to make great meringue, easily, and shift its final texture to you dessert needs. Three ways to make chocolate whipped cream, three indispensable chocolate sauces, four indispensable caramel sauces.
There are many reasons to read and sample from this book. All of them good reasons to put this book on your shelf. But there is one more, the final recipe in the book, My House Truffles 4.0.
Almost 40 years ago, Alice began making and selling truffles. Those truffles established her reputation and were the foundation for her career. Over the years, her truffle recipe has appeared in book after book, evolving over time, and we have graciously accepted her generosity to share her truffle perfection. Even perfection, though, can be improved upon and Sinfully Easy gives us her latest and greatest truffle recipe, the one she believes goes best with a glass a wine. Ingredients have changed, chocolate has changed, preferences have changed. The truffles have not just changed. They have gotten better.
Buy the book, roll the truffles, wipe the cocoa powder from your hands, and make sure the wine is red and excellent.