When I opened my Martha’s Vineyard baking business in 1982, the first restaurant client requested, among other desserts, a cheesecake. I tested a few recipes to no great enthusiasm, until I came upon one in Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts, which itself was adapted from a Craig Claiborne recipe…

This intensely chocolate cake originated from an all-day baking session in my home kitchen with an old friend. We were working to recreate the rectangular Chocolate Tile Cake from a long-gone Greenwich Village restaurant, La Tulipe. The process presented many challenges, including maintaining even, straight lines during the assembly of…

It’s appropriate that we end this tour through the world of French-style chocolate cakes with a version of Julia Child’s Reine de Saba from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. Published in 1961, this may be the earliest American cookbook recipe for this type of rich, slightly underdone,…

The first two entries in the great French-style chocolate cake search, G¢teau au Chocolat and Bête Noire, are room temperature cakes, best eaten within several hours of baking. For this week, we test a cake that is served cold, with either an adornment of whipped cream on top, or plain…

For the second installment of the French-style chocolate cake search I returned to my baking book library and came upon one with an eye-catching title – Growing up on the Chocolate Diet by Lora Brody. It’s been on the shelf for years with one page bookmarked, the recipe for Bête…

For the month of May, we will be exploring French-style chocolate cakes. By this I am referring to single-layer, rich, moist, intensely chocolate cakes. The type that might require a simple chocolate glaze, or just a light dusting of powdered sugar. The type that is sliced into small pieces, and…

I love everything about this cake. I love the thin, flavorful sheets of Marjolaine cake, the unique shape, the unadorned sides that reveal the multiple layers, the whipped crème fraiche mellowing the rich ganache and buttercream, and the ease with which one can cut small slices. I even love the…