Award-winning author Alice Medrich shares how alternative flours reinvigorate your baking with deeper flavor and texture, whether you are gluten-free or not. In your book Flavor Flours (Artisan Books, 2014) and the newly released paperback version, Gluten-Free Flavor Flours, you delve into the world of baking with non-wheat varieties of flour, making them the hero
When it comes to cookies, I like to refer to Alice Medrich‘s book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies. The title says it all isn’t it? These beautiful Goldies are addictive. Be warn. If you like Pepperidge Farm’s Milano Cookies, then I am sure you will enjoy these, as they are actually quite similar. I sandwiched […]
“My career started with a handwritten recipe for the tiny cocoa-dusted chocolate truffles given to me by my Paris landlady in 1973. The truffles had captivated me with their pure bittersweet flavor…
I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot. I haven’t counted them but it’s probably in the triple digits. And of those scores of titles, there are only three dedicated to desserts. One is by Maida Heatter, another is by Lindsey Shere and the final is this one, Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich. Read on for why this book has a special place on my shelf.I don’t shun desserts but I don’t make them that frequently.
From SAVEUR Issue #153 Our secret weapon for foolproof desserts is Alice Medrich. The pastry chef is widely dubbed the First Lady of Chocolate for good reason: In the 1970s, she introduced Americans to chocolate truffles and never looked back. Medrich went on to author nine cookbooks, providing us with iconic desserts, such as her take on the Queen of Sheba cake, a velvety chocolate torte, or her satiny chocolate pudding. The results are elegant and positively addictive. _Keep reading »_
Alice Medrich's Blondies - made July 31, 2022 from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt in Your Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich 1 cup (4.5 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (6.125 ounces) packed light brown sugar 1 large egg 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 tablespoon dark rum or bourbon, optional 2/3 cup (2.33 ounces) coarsely chopped walnuts, optional 1/2 cup (3 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips or 1/2 cup toffee bits Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the brown sugar. Use a wooden spoon to beat in the egg, vanilla and rum, if using. Stir in the flour mixture followed by half the walnuts, if using. Spread the batter in the pan. Sprinkle the remaining walnuts and the toffee bits evenly over the top. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the nuts look toasted, the top is golden brown and the edges have pulled way from the sides of the pan. Cool in the pan on a rack before cutting and serving. Every once in awhile, I remind myself I have a ton of baking books I should be using. I literally have full bookshelves of them. And that's after I culled a lot of them out and donated them to my local libraries prior to my last two moves. So I should make more of an effort to use them since I've only tried a fraction of the recipes from those books. That reminder usually comes when I catch myself looking at new ones and almost buying them. Before the mental slap of "use what you already have" comes around. So with this recipe, I did. I've had good luck with recipes from Alice Medrich's Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy baking book and this was no exception. Her original recipe calls for adding nuts and chocolate chips into these blondies. I don't like nuts inside most baked goods and I don't really see the point of adding chocolate into blondies. If I wanted chocolate in a bar cookie, I'd make brownies. Instead, I added toffee bits for a little extra flavor and a bit of a crunch that delivers better than nuts would inside baked goods (nuts steam and soften in baking, hence losing most of their crunch). These blondies were really, really good. I only had a sliver as I was packing them up for Soldiers Angels care packages and the recipe only makes an 8-inch pan's worth of blondies. But I had enough to love the flavor. Surprisingly, I think it was due to the rum. I don't drink but I have rum on hand for baking and it worked really well in this recipe. It cuts the sweetness and adds a flavor you may not guess unless you know it's rum. My non-alcoholic palate wouldn't have known but I thought it was perfect in this blondie.
The secret to the chocolate brownie of your dreams? Take the chocolate out.
When it comes to cookies, I like to refer to Alice Medrich‘s book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies. The title says it all isn’t it? These beautiful Goldies are addictive. Be warn. If you like Pepperidge Farm’s Milano Cookies, then I am sure you will enjoy these, as they are actually quite similar. I sandwiched […]
Do you love coconut? Chocolate? Read on. In France you can enjoy a magnificent multi-layer cake, the Marjolaine, made with conventional flour plus ground almonds and hazelnuts. Three years ago Alice Medrich wrote Flour Flavors suggesting alternatives to baking with conventional flours. For that Marjolaine, Alice suggests a combination of shredded coconut and white rice […]
Professional baker, chocolatier and cookbook author Alice Medrich shares her list of “magic ingredients” that turn delicious desserts into stellar ones.
Hey! I’m Valynn, welcome to Vanillyn Bakery. The name Vanillyn is a combination of Vanilla (my favourite ingredient) & Valynn. I started this blog way back in 2012 when I was an accountant that spent A LOT of time baking when I’m not working on excel spreadsheets. It seems like documenting and sharing the recipes […]
Our favorite tips and tricks from the First Lady of Chocolate.
"First Lady of Chocolate" Alice Medrich enriches her unparalleled chocolate truffles with egg yolks—they're positively sinful!
Happy New Year!!! I know you are all on diets now after the holidays and the detox has begun, so you may want to look away, though this c...
This recipe is one part of a master brownie recipe Alice Medrich designed to use whatever chocolate you have in the house. The best version uses cocoa powder.
I make genoise twice a year whether I like it or not. I make it when I teach at Tante Marie’s Cooking School www.tantemarie.com because Mary Risley (Tante Marie) believes that all aspiring professional culinary students should be able to make genoise. Despite its old school reputation, I do like genoise. And I agree with Mary, though I’m not sure working pastry chefs in this country actually make it very often. The problem with genoise is that Americans like super moist cake and genoise was never meant to be moist. The other problem is that, knowing that genoise is not meant to be moist, many chefs make it inedibly dry—which perpetuates the bad rep for genoise. I don’t accept inedibly dry genoise. I appreciate the usefulness of a cake that is dry enough to be soaked with flavorful liquids, but I pride myself on nibble-worthy genoise, one that soaks well but might not really need all of the usual primping, poking, soaking, and fussing that goes on in classical patisserie. Meanwhile—and this is the part I love— the production of good genoise is an ode to technique, a paean to the details that make a difference. I privately think it separates the women from the girls… With only four ingredients plus salt and vanilla, you can mix up a genoise in less time than it takes to preheat the oven. Simple right? But if you don’t measure correctly (please buy a scale) or fold properly, or if you don’t know how to prevent tiny flour balls or a rubbery bottom layer, then sister you are cooked. To raise the stakes still higher, I like to use the smallest weight of flour possible. This means that there can be no unnecessary moisture in the batter or the cake will sink in the center as it cools. To that end I use clarified or browned butter or ghee—and I’ve even used olive oil. And, the quantity of flour called for in the recipe is correct only for the type of flour called for. If you use flour other than the unbleached all purpose flour called for, you may need to adjust the quantity of it to get my perfect cake. Here’s a preview of the chocolate genoise that I’ll make at Tante Marie’s Cooking School on the day after tomorrow, February 8th. I will use it to build a spectacular cake wrapped in a sheet of chocolate and filled with rummy bananas, bittersweet chocolate mousse, and whipped crème fraîche, and I’ll top it with chocolate ruffles. You can do something similar with your genoise, or you can just nibble the cake plain with your coffee! Or, you can click on the link above and sign up for the class. Mary always leaves a few spaces open for the public. ALICE’S CHOCOLATE GENOISE I urge you to use a scale for this recipe and check out the notes below for tips and greater understanding of what’s going on in the recipe. Ingredients: 1.5 ounces (3 tablespoons) hot clarified unsalted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1.6 ounces (1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sifted) unbleached all-purpose flour 1.2 ounces (3/8 cup unsifted) unsweetened cocoa powder (see notes) 4 large eggs 4.3 ounces (2/3 cup) sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt Equipment: 8x2 inch round cake pan Electric mixer with whisk attachment Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F with a rack in the lower third. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Do not grease the sides of the pan. Combine clarified butter and vanilla in a 4-cup stainless steel bowl and keep it hot until needed by setting it in a pan of almost simmering water. Or put it in a microwave safe bowl and be prepared to zap it just before using it. Whisk the flour and cocoa together thoroughly and sift it (or shake it through a sieve) three times and return it to the sifter/sieve and set aside. In a stainless steel mixing bowl (I use my 5 quart Kitchen Aid mixer bowl) whisk the eggs, sugar, and salt to blend. Set the bowl on a low flame and stir (sweeping the sides and bottom of the bowl constantly to prevent scrambling) just until the eggs are lukewarm to the touch. Remove the eggs from the heat and beat them at high speed with an electric mixer until they have cooled, tripled in bulk, and have the texture of very softly whipped cream (a ribbon of batter should dissolve very slowly on the surface of the batter). Sift about one-third of the flour mixture over the eggs. Fold with a large rubber spatula until the flour is almost blended into the batter. Repeat with half of the remaining flour. Fold in the last third of the flour. Add about 1 cup of batter to the hot butter. Fold until blended. Scrape the buttery batter over the remaining batter and fold just until blended. Scrape the batter into the pan. Bake until cake springs back when pressed gently with fingers, 25-30 minutes. Set the pan on a rack to cool. At your convenience (the cake can be warm or completely cool), run a small spatula around the inside of the pan, pressing against the sides of the pan to avoid tearing the cake. Invert the pan to remove the cake and peel off the parchment liner. Turn the cake right side up to finish cooling. The cake should be completely cool before filling, frosting or storing. The cake may be wrapped airtight and stored at room temperature for 2 days, or frozen up to 3 months. NOTES Cocoa Powder? I like Scharffen Berger Natural Cocoa Powder. You can use a Dutch process cocoa if you prefer it. Flour balls in your genoise? These are prevented by whisking the cocoa and flour together and then sifting the mixture a few times before sifting it into the batter, as described in the recipe. For plain genoise, (without cocoa) whisk 2 or 3 tablespoons of the sugar from the recipe into the flour before sifting several times. Interspersing the grains of flour with either cocoa or a little sugar plus fluffing and aerating the mixture separates the grains of flour (to prevent clumping) and makes it easier to fold it into the egg foam without deflating it. Rubbery bottoms on your genoise? This is prevented by folding a little of the batter into hot butter before folding everything together, as decribed in the recipe. Awkward folding? If your mixer bowl is tall and narrow (like Kitchenaid mixer bowls), you might want to transfer the egg foam into a larger wider bowl to make it easier to fold in the flour and butter.
These cookies are among my favorites. I’ve been making them for nearly a decade, ever since I spotted them in Alice Medrich’s 2010 cookbook Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies . I will bet you money that you can’t find another cookie recipe with this much ginger in it. That is,
In this recipe adapted from Alice Medrich's _Pure Dessert_ (Artisan, 2007), labneh, a thick strained yogurt, is the base for a vanilla-spiked filling.
Rich, fudgy, and made from pantry staples.
Alice Medrich shows us how to make the perfect dessert for company -- crusty, hot, and melty chocolate sandwiches.
Recipe: Tricolor Mousse Cocolat was my first baking cookbook, given to me by my husband on my birthday, at least 15 years ago. This is th...
In this fun twist on a classic apple pie, professional baker Alice Medrich enhances the flavor of the tender baked apples with diced dried apricots and orange zest.
'Tis the season for sharing home-baked treats! This year we partnered with some of our favorite bakers to create the ultimate holiday cookie swap. See
Including new books from Chris Bianco, Michael W. Twitty, Alice Medrich, and so many more
We found this exceptional recipe in baker Alice Medrich's book, Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies (Warner Books).
You all must have read about my love for Enid Blyton's stories and how I still drool over the food mentioned in her books. Scones were t...
The secret to the chocolate brownie of your dreams? Take the chocolate out.
A wonderful marble cake made with extra virgin olive oil and a touch of white pepper. It actually improves on the second day, it's delicious toasted, it freezes beautifully and it's self-marbling! Cook time does not include cooling time.
After making Alice Medrich’s chestnut pound cake several times I thought I should find another recipe for my chestnut flour – that was w...
Anatomy of a brownie.
Dive into Alice Medrich's 'Flavor Flours' and discover a new world of flavorful, gluten-free baking. Review by Eva Baughman.
Vous devez sûrement savoir depuis le temps tout le bien que je pense d' Alice Medrich , de ses livres et de ses recettes toujours admir...
These special butter cookies are characterized by a very delicate crumb, melt-in-your-mouth texture, and rich nut flavor. The cookies hold their fat round shapes in the oven without spreading much because the dough contains very little sugar and is mixed only enough to blend the ingredients together. When possible, I like to let the dough for this type of cookie rest for at least hours at room temperature (or covered and refrigerated for up to 2 days before baking). It’s easiest to shape them before they rest. Remove them from the fridge at least 30 minutes before baking. However you can also bake them right away after mixing, if needed.
I was getting tired of seeing and hearing about bacon in every recipe all day every day. The only answer was to try it myself. These meringues really are good. You might want to cook the whole pound of bacon although the recipe calls for only 10 strips, because (who knows) you might need a snack... One of my most esteemed tasters says "just pecans and bacon please, hold the chocolate". I see her point, the pecans and bacon are superb with nothing else, but I also like the milk chocolate in there. Have it your way. Let me know. BACON PECAN MERINGUES WITH (or without) MILK CHOCOLATE Something sweet and salty with nuts? And chocolate? How can this be wrong? Makes 36-40 meringues Ingredients: Scant 2/3 cup (85 g) crumbled crispy cooked bacon*, cooled Scant 2/3 cup (60 g) toasted pecans, chopped medium fine 3 ounces milk chocolate, cut in 1/3 inch squares (or ½ cup milk chocolate chips) (optional) 2/3 cup (133 grams) sugar 3 large egg whites, at room temperature 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar *Thin cut bacon works best, you will need about 10 ounces or 10 strips, before cooking. It should be well cooked, using your favorite method. Once cool check to see if it is mostly crispy; if not, chop to the size of crumbles and re cook briefly in a dry frying pan to render a little more fat. Let cool. Equipment: Cookie sheets lined with parchment paper Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven Set aside 1/3 of the bacon for the topping. Mix the remaining bacon with the pecans, chocolate, and two tablespoons of the sugar. Set aside. Combine the egg whites and cream of tartar in a clean dry bowl. Beat at medium-high speed with a heavy-duty stand mixer (or high speed with a hand mixer) until the egg whites are creamy white (instead of translucent) and hold a soft shape when the beaters are lifted. Continue to beat on medium to high speed, adding the remaining sugar a little at a time, taking 1 1/2 to 2 minutes in all, until the egg whites are very stiff and have a dull sheen. Use a large rubber spatula to fold in the bacon mixture, just until blended. Drop generous tablespoons of meringue 1 1/2 inches apart on the lined cookie sheets. Make sure all of the batter fits on the two sheets so all can be baked at once; if necessary make each cookie a little bigger. Sprinkle each meringue with a little pinch of reserved bacon. Bake for 1 1/2 hours, rotating the pans from top to bottom and from front to back halfway through the baking time to ensure even baking. Remove a test meringue and let it cool completely before taking a bite (meringues are never crisp when hot). If the test meringue is completely dry and crisp, turn off the oven and let the remaining meringues cool completely in the oven. If the test meringue is soft or chewy or sticks to your teeth, bake for another 15 to 30 minutes before cooling in the oven. To prevent cookies from becoming moist and sticky, put them in an airtight container as soon as they are cool. Cookies keep for a few days at least.
Creamy and rich, this is the best chocolate pudding recipe we know.
