Author Archives: joepastry

Reader Susan writes:

I can’t decide whether I like white chocolate or not. I like the very first taste of white chocolate when it hits my tongue and it’s initial flavor is sensed…then it’s all down hill from there. White chocolate does (to me) what milk chocolate seems to do to me; it’s components coat the tongue and the sensation of it’s flavor goes into overload that cannot be washed away! Is that sensation because of the amount of fat in the cocoa butter? What’s the deal with white chocolate?

It’s probably the formulation of the particular white chocolate you’re eating. Like a lot of inexpensive milk chocolates, inexpensive white chocolates tend to have less cocoa butter for the simple reason that cocoa butter is the most expensive component of chocolate (not only is it in demand in the confectionary industry, it’s also used in cosmetics). In general the higher the proportion of cocoa butter, the faster the chocolate melts in your mouth.

However in the US the law only requires that white chocolates contain 20% cocoa butter, the rest being milk powder and sugar. When the cocoa butter content gets that low, the impression is less smooth and unctuous than waxy and/or gummy, and that’s what causing the chocolate to stick to the surfaces of your mouth. That very sensation is why I don’t much care for white chocolate, as its texture gives me more time to contemplate its cloying sweetness.

Good question, reader Leeza. Pretty much nothin’. White chocolate has zero cocoa solids, which are the essence of chocolate flavor. The only thing that comes from the cocoa pod that’s found in white chocolate is cocoa butter, which has no flavor of its own (sometimes it does have a residual chocolate smell, though the type you find in most bars has been deodorized).

It does however possess one highly desirable quality: a melting point that’s just below body temperature. That melt point is what normally gives high quality chocolates their silky, dissolve-on-the-tongue texture. It’s also why cocoa butter body rubs melt on contact with skin. But then what if cocoa solids aren’t your thing? Cocoa butter can be just as easily employed to deliver the sweet sensation of sugar and milk solids, which aside from the cocoa butter is pretty much all white chocolate is.

I’ve often wondered why white chocolate is permitted to be called “chocolate” at all. Though in fact in many countries it isn’t. Here in the States it’s only been recently that “white chocolate” became a permanent candy classification. Prior to a few years ago candy companies were only allowed to market white chocolate as “chocolate” via temporary permits (presumably while the FDA made up its mind as to whether it could be called “chocolate” or not). Finally in 2004 they decided in favor of giving white chocolate permanent status as a confection.

Is my Derby hangover still with me, or are there weird things happening around the perimeters of the blog? Please bear with me as I try to get all this straightened out. It seems pretty clear it’s ad related.

I only just got around to checking the list of winners for the 2012 James Beard Awards (thanks to reader Mic for reminding me that they were even happening!). Congratulations to Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s on her book award for Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. I confess I haven’t seen it yet, the fall of the big box bookstores has made browsing the year’s cookbook titles a whole lot more difficult. But I can see it’s a book Mrs. Pastry will want to get her mits on and soon!

Congratulations also to Mindy Segal on winning Outstanding Pastry Chef this year. Mindy’s restaurant, Mindy’s Hot Chocolate, was just down the street from my old apartment on Damen Avenue in Chicago. I had the pleasure of working with Mindy at time or two on some food industry events and I can tell you she’s a serious character. Once during an interview I asked her what she thought of the molecular gastronomy movement. “It’s bullshit” she shot back. How can you not love that?

Funny, Mindy also makes killer ice creams, which makes it something of an ice cream year all the way around for the James Beard Foundation. Congratulations to all the winners and the nominees, especially in the Baking & Dessert category, Lisa Yockelson (Baking Style, Art, Craft, Recipes) and Frédéric Bau (Cooking with Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques) and in the Outstanding Pastry Chef category, Chefs Joanne Chang, Melissa Chou, Hedy Goldsmith, Dahlia Narvaez and Ghaya Oliveira. You made us all proud, gang!

Summer, Buddy Holly, Good Golly Miss Molly and boats. Once I start listening to Ian Dury I find it very hard to stop. He may have been small, he may have had polio, he may have been a little too into disco…but he was a force, and one funny song writer. This will shake off your blues.

VERY perceptive question, reader Camille. Pâte à bombe is of course the delicious base of whipped egg yolks and sugar syrup that’s often used to make chocolate mousse. “Pâte” is variously translated as “dough”, “paste” or “mix.” And “bombe” as we’ve established pretty much just means bomb. I think the only possible explanation is that pâte à bombe is/was a base that’s employed in the making of dessert bombes.

But didn’t you say that bombes are classically made with ice cream and not mousse? To my understanding, yes. However you can use pâte à bombe as a base for ice cream. I’ve never tried that, but I’d be extremely interested.

Reader Cora wants to know when chocolate mousse first showed up on the culinary stage. I’m not sure to be honest. However I do know that mousses have been with us since the eighteenth century (or the Century of Foams, as I like to think of it). That was the period when court chefs around Europe, especially in France, discovered the frothing power of eggs — and went wild with it. Those people made foams out of everything: vegetables, meats, fish, you name it.

When did chocolate mousse finally appear? That’s a difficult question to answer. The first American printed reference to chocolate mousse dates to 1892 as far as I know. How much further back it goes in the French record I have no idea. (Hint, hint).

Reader Carlo, are you trying to get this blog investigated by the DHS? People use the word “bomb thrower” to describe anyone who’s style of political discourse is crude, demagogic or, er…”explosive.” But the term was originally coined in the 1880′s to describe anyone who was an anarchist, most especially an eastern European anarchist. In 1881 a group of Russian anarchists killed Czar Alexander II with a bomb. Just a few years later, in my old hometown of Chicago, the so-called Haymarket Affair occurred, in which anarchists threw a bomb at a group of police who were trying to break up a mass anarchist/socialist demonstration in favor of the 8-hour work day. Seven of the police were killed.

Today we consider anarchists and socialists at opposite ends of the political spectrum…one group wants a stateless society, the other a very powerful state. However back in those days they were two sides of the same coin, both vehemently anti-industrial, anti-capitalist and anti-Church. Both looking for ways to destroy the old class and/or international financial orders, place the ownership of the means of production in the hands of groups of non-elites, and deliver more individual liberty to average people. Sure, there were some radically individualistic schools of anarchism, but the more “mainstream” ones were collectivist in their thinking.

Indeed 125 years ago anarchism was surprisingly popular as political ideologies go. Its main problem was that its adherents tended to be quite violent in their attempts to create “propaganda by deed.” They were also frequently contemptuous of quaint democratic notions like voting. As such, there was a natural ceiling to their popular appeal here in the States. Still one could make the argument that of all the revolutionary collectivist/egalitarian ideologies that have been floated here in the U.S. — socialism, communism, etc. — anarchism has probably been the most successful, at least from an historical point of view. American Communism never posed a real threat to the established order here, but there was a time when anarchism actually did.