Chocolate Epiphany: Exceptional Cookies, Cakes, and Confections for Everyone [Hardcover]

This book is on a level that few chocolate, or to that matter dessert, pastry etc books have reached. It shouts quality from every point of view: From the excellent cover, to the gloss pages ,on to the beautiful photographs and finally to the most important aspect, the recipes, this is a book that mirrors its author's love for the subject.
Francois Payard is a Frenchman living in the USA, and is the owner of a patisserie and bistro in the New World. Unlike many Europeans that have negatively changed their culinary and patisserie heritage to suit the tastes of their new homelands, Mr Payard very succesfully presents French chocolate patisserie, slightly adopted for the American tastebuds but without being commercialised or cheapened by using margarines, shortenings, or too much sugar.
The book uses both Metric and Volume (cups and spoons) measurements so that ingredients can be easily measured by all. It does not however use Celsius temperatures, only Fahrenheit, but this can be easily remedied with a comparative table.
This book is geared towards both the Professional and the amateur. Most of the recipes can be made by home cooks, but read the instructions carefully. The author gives some useful tips to read before one attempts the recipes.
Then the feast starts. There are more than one hundred recipes included, starting with breads and brunch dishes. In this chapter we find among others: Chocolate cherry bread with cocoa nibs, Chocolate brioche with chocolate chips, Chocolate blinis.
Then we move on to Cookies and Petit Fours: Here I particularly like the Florentines, Triple chocolate Financiers, Chocolate coconut rochers, Cracaos, Flourless chocolate cookies. There is also a recipe for chocolate churros with dipping sauces.
The next chapter is Candies and Chocolate. It is one of the best chapters. All the products here are mouthwatering. They include: Chocolate Marshmallows, Chocolate Nougat, After "8" chocolates, Muscadines, Rum Truffles.
Then come Mousses, Meringues and Ice Cream, with Chocolate Creme Brulees, Coffee and Chocolate Panna Cottas, Floating Islands in Spiced Chocolate Sauce, Milk Chocolate Parfaits with Chocolate Popcorn, Dark and white chocolate Napoleons, Trio of Chocolate Mousse Cake, Bittersweet Chocolate Sorbet.
The Tarts chapter is represented (among many others) by Chocolate Meringue Tart, Chocolate Pecan Tart, Chocolate Pear Almond Tart, Peanut Caramel Tart.
The Cakes chapter should really be called Gateaux or Entremets Section as most of the products are elaborate or layered creations, along with some decadent cakes: Gateau de crepes with Green Tea Cream, Chocolate Rum Savarin, Flourless chocolate cake, Chocolate Saint Honore, Pine Nut Turron Cake, Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Orange Marmalade, "American" Opera Gateau using Peanut Buttercream and Peanutbutter Ganache, are only some of many creations.
Then come Plated Desserts: White chocolate cheesecakes with blueberries, Chocolate crepes with Vanilla Ice cream and Candied Orange, Chocolate sticky toffee puddings, to name a few.
The final chapter includes the basics, such as buttercream, browned butter, almond cream, simple syrup, praline paste, chocolate mousse etc.
With all this and at this price this book should not be absent from any chocolate lover's library.

Since the highly celebrated book Simply Sensational Desserts had gone out of print, I thought I had missed my chance to try the recipes of one of New York's most famous pastry chefs. I was a little disappointed to hear that Payard's new book would focus on chocolate, since I already had Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme and thought I would be getting more or less the same kinds of recipes. However, even though Chocolate Desserts is the closest comparison you may draw with this book in terms of the scope in which it explores the various forms of chocolate in pastry (cakes, tarts, custards, mousses, cookies), Payard's book is much wider in scope and there is greater variety in the types of recipes you'll find. For instance, Payard includes a few recipes for bread. His book has a slight bias towards cakes, but this book isn't about different ways to dress up one basic cake. Payard includes recipes for cheesecake, pudding cake, crepe cake, flourless cake, angel food cake; classics like Gâteau Basque, Saint-Honoré, Paris-Brest, and Savarin; unusual creations such as creme catalane cake and turron cake; and majestic creations such as an American Opera cake and Black Forest. At the very start of the custards chapter you'll already find a recipe for panna cotta, pots de creme, crême brulée, mousse, and parfait. Those looking for an adventure in working with chocolate will not find a dull moment in this book.

The book is geared towards home bakers of varying proficiencies. However, you won't find recipes for brownies or triple chocolate cookies, or even muffins in here. The recipes in this book are heavily French in character, which is hardly a fault but it's still difficult to become enthusiastic about "muscadines" or "chardons" with no photographs to accompany some of them. Fortunately, there are only a few recipes that don't have photographs.

The book takes a few adventurous steps in flavor (pairing chocolate with sweet potatoes, yuzu, star anise), but mostly the book stays within tried-and-tested combinations. The adventurous home baker with a love for all things chocolate will thoroughly enjoy its many transformations in this book. The recipes range from very easy (cookies, afternoon cake, pudding cake) to highly advanced (such as the Fontainebleau: layered chocolate mousse, raspberries, and sacher cake glazed and wrapped in joconde). Though it's not a very large book, it's packed with quality recipes from a great pastry chef for a reasonably low price.

I had great hopes for this book. It's got great reviews on the cover from renowned pastry chefs and the recipes sound wonderful. I had serious problems with all the recipes I tried. When I talked to a friend is a trained pastry chef, she said the book is written by a pastry chef at a level that is very understandable if you've been to culinary arts school. Not so much if you're a home baker. If you just bake for fun, save yourself frustration and get a different chocolate baking book.