Rating: 
Summary: An excellent addition to any chocolate lover's library.
Review: Nick Malgieri has out-done himself with this book. Every recipe I have tried has yielded fantastic results and tons of compliments. His instructions are clear and accurate. The ingredients are simple and the recipes are straight-forward. This is my favorite chocolate cookbook. When entertaining, I reach for this cookbook first.
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Summary: The kind of treatment only chocolate deserves
Review: Nick Malgieri would not be Nick Malgieri if he didn't begin his book with a complete overview of the history and culture of this enigmatic ingredient. You'll get to appreciate what a long road chocolate has traveled since the Spanish conquistadors first learned of it from the Mexican Aztecs in the sixteenth century. Chocolate charmed (and addicted) Europe as a beverage for several centuries, but it wasn't until the nineteenth century that European pioneers like Conrad van Houten, Rudolphe Lindt, and Jean Tobler (all of whose names have been immortalized as high-end chocolate brands), and Americans like James Baker (of the baking chocolate brand) and Milton Hershey (of the Pennsylvania chocolate giant) brought chocolate into the food industry mainstream. Cacao trees are maddeningly difficult to grow; harvesting must be done by hand; beans must be fermented, then sun-dried, then roasted, and only then is the cacao shipped from its tropical home to chocolate factories all over the world. In the factory, the cacao goes through a number of sophisticated and costly processes that result in the many varieties and quality levels of chocolate products we now take for granted.Nick Malgieri's Chocolate is a demanding, no-compromises book, simply because there are so many ways home cooks can be tempted to relax their standards. Inexpensive "compound chocolate," a product based on cottonseed oil, is one of them. It's easy to work with and inexpensive, but it's not the real thing. Chef Nick would rather have us learn to achieve a temper pure cocoa-butter-based chocolate, the way the professionals do, for better flavor, surface sheen and that quality chocolate "snap." Tempering involves coaxing the fat molecules in the chocolate to line up in the right direction; it requires quick wits and sensitivity to small temperature variances. It sounds tricky at first, but Malgieri is a dedicated teacher; he won't let you fail. You break through barriers, you learn, and you become a better cook. Food photographer Tom Eckerle's contributions to Chocolate are exquisite, capturing every chocolate grain and nuance of shade, but Malgieri's scholarship, depth and leadership qualities make Chocolate a must-have-on the counter, not the shelf. (It's a handsome volume but, go ahead, stain it.) The cakes section alone is book length: first explaining in detail basic methods for producing cake layers for chocolate cakes, using genoise and sponge cake rounds and sheets, then moving into scores of meticulously delineated examples of plain cakes ("Chocolate Sour Cream Cake"), single-layer cakes ("Vermont Farmhouse Devil's Food Cake"), rolled cakes ("Swiss Roll," and the "Traditional Bûche de Noël" or "Yule Log"), layer cakes ("Chocolate Chestnut Cake"), meringue cakes ("Chocolate Pavlova"), molded cakes ("Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse Cake"), cakes in bowls ("Chocolate and Vanilla Trifle"), and individual cakes ("Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes with Boiled Icing"). Malgieri goes on to give equal depth to cookies, creams, mousses, custards and soufflés, ices and frozen desserts, pies, tarts and pastries, chocolate confections, sauces and beverages, and finally a pair of sections on the demanding subjects of chocolate decorations and showpieces. Every recipe in Chocolate fits in with Malgieri's overarching purpose as an educator: to cover the field, teaching, explaining, and coaching serious, intelligent cooks, both amateur and professional. This kind of painstaking groundwork is necessary, if one is to show true respect for the world's most demanding culinary ingredient. Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com
Rating:
Summary: This book is unbelieveable!!!
Review: Not only is it beautiful, it is packed with delectable recipes that will satisfy any chocolate lover. The supernatural brownies are unbelieveable. But make sure you use only the best chocolate. The better the chocolate the better these fantastic recipes turn out. The chocolate ice cream is rich and delicious. The cakes are to die for. If you love chocolate, you must have this book!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Mediocre Chocolate Book
Review: The author is famous and comes with quite a pedigree. In the introductory material, he festoons the reader with stories of working in Europe with the finest confectioners and chocolatiers; unfortunately, this experience does not seem to be reflected in the recipes of this rather ordinary book on chocolate. In the end, I suggest that you forget this book and instead pick up one of the many fine chocolate cookbooks put out by Hershey's.
The first dozen or so pages cover equipment, chocolate, ingredients, tempering, etc. It is brief, declamatory, and useless. The instructions for Buche de Noel were extensive, imprecise, and confusing. Some of the cake assembly requires professional techniques, none of which is explained. I laughed when the author expects people to have an oven big enough to accommodate 4 cookie sheets at the same time (in the recipe for his recreation of LeNotre's Concorde Cake). Molded cakes are no easy matter, and the instructions in this book are woefully inadequate. For Rigotorte, the author casually tosses off the recipe for a chocolate pate sucree in 3 sentences; properly treated, this basic but not easy recipe should take 3 pages. The instructions for tempering chocolate are sufficient only for someone who has done it before. The last chapter has several worthwhile showpieces (suitable only for those with some experience), but it could use a few more pictures.
The most basic recipe in the book, genoise, is the oddball version that uses a substantial amount of cornstarch; it does work, but is inferior to the standard version using all flour. A good genoise should also use butter which his does not, but he gets a pass; on the other hand, the recipe gives rather fuzzy directions for how long to beat the batter. The other basic cake, chocolate sponge, uses the separated egg sponge method, but also atypically has cornstarch. Inexplicably, the angel food cake uses self rising flour, which has baking powder; the main reason to make angel food cake is to avoid the use of chemical leaveners.
The physical construction of the book is like a college textbook: heavy duty and durable with thick, glossy pages. The graphics and design are exemplary. The beginning of each chapter has a list of all recipes, a welcome convenience; strangely, the page numbers are not listed, so you still have to do some page flipping to find anything. It has: basics, cakes, cookies, custards, frozen, pies, candy, drinks, and decorations. The chapters on cakes, pies, and cookies were disappointing; the ones on frozen desserts and candy were very good. The chocolate decorations were very interesting, but the instructions were not sufficiently detailed for the novice.
On the good side, the author is always careful to specify what type of cocoa powder to use, and all recipes have storage specifications. On the bad side, the flour amounts do not have weight equivalents, and the temperature of the eggs is never specified. Overall, I was more impressed with the quantity rather than the quality of the recipes.
Rating:
Summary: oooooooooh, baby!
Review: There isn't anything I've tried in this book that hasn't been wonderful. My very favorite thing would be the cinnamon stick truffles -- a friend says I should call them chocolate fudge explosions! No, there aren't a lot of pictures; on the other hand, I don't happen to think they're necessary. No, there isn't an overwhelming amount of technical advice, but there is just enough, and I happen to think that's good enough.
Rating:
Summary: oooooooooh, baby!
Review: There isn't anything I've tried in this book that hasn't been wonderful. My very favorite thing would be the cinnamon stick truffles -- a friend says I should call them chocolate fudge explosions! No, there aren't a lot of pictures; on the other hand, I don't happen to think they're necessary. No, there isn't an overwhelming amount of technical advice, but there is just enough, and I happen to think that's good enough.
Rating: 
Summary: a nice, broad collection of recipes, not much technical info
Review: This book contains a comprehensive collection of recipes, but not much else. It lacks the extra something found in the best books, like the Pie and Pastry Bible by Ruth Levy Beranbaum, which has a lot of troubleshooting info and technical information, or Baking with Julia, which has more in-depth instructions and pictures. The book is worth owning for the recipe collection, though.
Rating:
Summary: I love it!
Review: This book is my favorite cookbook for desserts. It has the most amazing recipes. I've tried several of the recipes from this book, and they have all been extraordinarily good. If you want to make amazing chocolate recipes that make people say "Wow," get this book. It also has a lot of helpful information to make it easy to get the recipes done right.
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Summary: CHOCOLATE- a complete and thorough book
Review: When I received this book I was so anxious to open it. I needed a good thorough book on chocolate that I could take with me here and there. I was very pleased with the over all book. It has a wide range of recipes and includes the history of chocolate as well as types of chocolate. CHOCOLATE gives you recipes ranging from cakes to creams, cookies, sauces, confections and decorations. (chapter 10, SHOWPIECES AND DECORATING PROJECTS is one of my favorite chapters) There are about 380 recipes in this book. Each recipe is easily understandable and so far extremely delicious. I use this book on a regular basis. My clients also get a chance to look through and pick out deserts they are interested in. One important rule when picking out a recipe book is to know that the recipes are used, tested and valued among chefs as well as the lucky ones who get to eat the deserts. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to bake or does it for a living such as I do. It is thorough, interesting, and insightful. WARNING: Make sure you aren't reading this book on an empty stomach. It'll make your mouth water.
Rating:
Summary: CHOCOLATE- a complete and thorough book
Review: When I received this book I was so anxious to open it. I needed a good thorough book on chocolate that I could take with me here and there. I was very pleased with the over all book. It has a wide range of recipes and includes the history of chocolate as well as types of chocolate. CHOCOLATE gives you recipes ranging from cakes to creams, cookies, sauces, confections and decorations. (chapter 10, SHOWPIECES AND DECORATING PROJECTS is one of my favorite chapters) There are about 380 recipes in this book. Each recipe is easily understandable and so far extremely delicious. I use this book on a regular basis. My clients also get a chance to look through and pick out deserts they are interested in. One important rule when picking out a recipe book is to know that the recipes are used, tested and valued among chefs as well as the lucky ones who get to eat the deserts. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to bake or does it for a living such as I do. It is thorough, interesting, and insightful. WARNING: Make sure you aren't reading this book on an empty stomach. It'll make your mouth water.
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