Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!

In an episode of my new favorite show 30Rock, Tracy Jordan compares Liz Lemon to the Cathy cartoon above. This reference might not mean anything to you, but Cathy’s exclamation “Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!” is probably universally understood by all women. And my sister B and I shouted the line all weekend in anticipation of our chocolate-making course at Delightful Pastries bakery in Jefferson Park’s Polish neighborhood. For two relatively health-conscious girls who are unable to resist sweets, a chocolate-making course is an occasion met with mingled excitement and apprehension. But on Sunday, we did not plan to resist the chocolate or to feel remorse for eating it.

In the midst of a snow storm, B and I entered the warm bakery that smelled of rising dough, sugar cookies and chocolate. On our way back to the kitchen, we stopped to admire rows upon rows of colorful pastries and truffles and fresh breads, feeling the snow melt away and the cold leaving our limbs. I am convinced that baking is one of the noblest professions there is. Nothing imparts as immediate a sense of well-being as a warm loaf of bread or cookies with bunny faces.

The kitchen was taken up by a long, wide table flanked by glass-fronted refrigerators filled with stacks of chilled dough. Utensils and cutting boards dangled from the walls and bowls and baking sheets and pots and pans were jammed this way and that into high shelves. Sixteen people crowded around the table and each of us had a baking sheet with two pastry shells and a sheaf of recipes. B and I took our places at the end of the table to watch our instructor Dobra plop truffles from a pastry bag onto a baking sheet with an expert flick of the wrist.

Dobra opened Delightful Pastries in 1998 with her mother Stasia. Dressed in a white chef’s apron with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, Dobra is a tough-looking woman in her late 30s with large hands rough from mixing and lifting and kneading. She speaks with a gruff Polish accent, inflected with a dry sense of humor. Dobra led us into the back of the kitchen, past a giant mixer with giant attachments that put F’s pink mixer to shame and made me weak in the knees.

We crowded around a little furnace to watch Dobra mix chocolate into a battered pot. B and I stood on our tiptoes to see into the pot as she described the desired temperature and consistency of the chocolate-caramel sauce sputtering over the stove. The scent of hot caramel filled the back room and made me very hungry, even though we had just eaten lunch at the Irish pub down the street.

All memory of lunch evaporated as B and I were caught up in the flurry of tastings that followed. Caramel sauce, truffles, ganache, whipped cream, chocolate mousse, cream cookies, chocolates, caramels and pie crust—we tasted everything without a trace of guilt.

We also learned things. We didn’t so much create chocolate desserts as assemble them from the ingredients that Dobra had already prepared. This was fine with us. It was warm in the kitchen and snowing outside and B and I were content to whisper to each other and do anything that Dobra told us to do.

Dobra gave each pupil five chocolate truffles and we cheerfully dipped them in melted chocolate.

When they had dried, we coated them with cocoa powder and nuts. B and I split a nut-covered truffle, expecting the plastic spoon to bend as it cracked through the lump of chocolate. But the spoon crushed smoothly through the truffle, and we each took half. It was sweet but not too sweet, soft but not mushy. “Chocolate should be bitter,” Dobra said. “And chocolate should not be hard. You know chocolates that are tough when you bite them? That’s no good. Chocolate should be soft when you bite into it. It should be soft trickling down your throat so you think, Aaah, that’s a good truffle.”

Next, we assembled chocolate mousse pies. Dobra passed around a bowl of mousse and we scooped generous portions into our pie shells.

Then she passed out a bowl of heavy whipped cream to top the mousse. “Fancy people buy cakes,” she said. “Cakes can be fancy, but pies should not be fancy. A pie should be a mess. In the pie shell, you put good, simple fillings. Chocolate, apples, anything you want. Then whipped cream. You just put it all together and then it’s done. It goes out on the shelf just like this,” she held up a pie shell filled with a mound of mousse and cream, “And it’s just perfect.”

You can tell a lot about people from the way they decorate desserts. Once we had covered our mousse with cream, we decorated the tops of our pies. The woman next to me carefully painted chocolate into a tribal pattern of thick stripes along the rim and spread a dollop of chocolate in the center. The organizer of the event—K—sprinkled cocoa powder over his, then added nuts, then drizzled chocolate, then a dollop of mousse, followed by a chunk of bitter chocolate. His young daughter carefully arranged nuts over the top of her pie, piece by piece.

I drizzled chocolate over the top of mine, while K watched in amazement. “Look what you’re doing!” he crowed. “That’s great!” He whipped out his camera and snapped photos while I flicked chocolate across the top of the pie. He made me clear my baking sheet so the pie stood out against the white parchment paper, and took another photo. Everyone watched as my face turned red. My fussy nature was clearly written in my chocolate drizzle.

Next, we poured ganache into the smaller of the pie shells and learned how to cut caramel into squares (run the knife under hot water and dry off before cutting).

I could have stayed at Delightful Pastries all day. The kitchen was comfortable. The equipment was well-worn and well-loved, the counters cluttered with recipes and bits of chocolate, the refrigerators filled with cookies and dough and sheets of colored sugar. B and I lingered in the front of the bakery, reluctant to leave behind the warmth and the scent of sugar that clung to our clothes and hair.

Whether it was the sugar, the time with B, or the fact that the blizzard had finally stopped, I left Delightful Pastries feeling delighted. B took her truffles home to NYC and I sent most of the pies and chocolates to work with F on Monday. But we kept half of a chocolate cream pie for ourselves.

Snow Day!

Grownups don’t get snow days. Work must go on, whether we have to dig out our cars and drive twenty miles through a blizzard or wait for the bus to finally arrive, packed full of sick, wet commuters dripping germs and snot.

So while we once prayed for snowstorms because they meant sleeping in and snow forts, we now dread them—perhaps most of all in Chicago, where it was recently -18 degrees before wind chill.

Today in Chicago, we are under severe storm watch for a storm that was supposed to blow in yesterday. The blizzard was going to begin at 6pm last night and last until 11am today. Six o’clock came and went and the sky was still clear when I went to bed last night. This morning, the news amended that the severe storm would now be arriving closer to noon.

It’s noon now, and we await the storm. Luckily, it’s Saturday, so there’s nowhere to go, no need for high heels in the slush, no need for a humid bus ride, no need to do anything but enjoy a snow day at home with the kitties. Gleefully anticipating the worst, F and I have stocked up on provisions. We have stacks of books to read and Netflix to watch. We are ready for a snow day. And I am ready for a day of cooking.

While we are awaiting the snowstorm that may or may not arrive, F and I are spending a pleasant Saturday at the “kitchen” table. Our kitchen and living room are divided by a low counter, so our large table near the front windows doubles as a kitchen table, a dining room table, a computer table, and any other sort of table we might need. Right now, F is drawing and I am putting the finishing touches on my Oscar night menu.

We have invited a group of friends over to our little apartment tomorrow night to watch the awards. We are providing the snacks and the piece de resistance is a Milk-Chocolate Tart with Pretzel Crust from this month’s issue of Food & Wine. The introduction to the recipe reads: This dessert from pastry chef Colleen Grapes at the Harrison in Manhattan, a tribute to the chocolate-covered pretzel, hits just the right salty-sweet note. Grapes mixes crushed pretzels with flour, butter, sugar, and egg to make a crunchy crust, pours in a luxurious milk-chocolate filling, then sprinkles on more crushed pretzels as a garnish.

This is one of those decadent, delightful desserts that I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) make during the week for just F and me. Having guests over is the perfect excuse to make something really rich and indulgent, enjoy a single piece, and send the leftovers home with friends.

The Ingredients:
CRUST
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 ¼ cups coarsely crushed think pretzels (3 ½ ounces)
¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 large egg
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
FILLING
1 ½ cups heavy cream
¾ pound milk chocolate, chopped
Maldon sea salt, crushed pretzels, and crème fraîche, for serving.The only ingredient I did not get was the crème fraîche, since I plan to slice the tart into smaller pieces for our party guests to nibble on as the night progresses.

1:00pm
Forecast: clear skies

First, the crust. As we do not yet own the bubble-gum pink standing electric mixer, I used our food processor with the blade, which seemed to work just fine. I mixed the butter, ¾ cup of the pretzels, and the confectioner’s sugar until creamy, then added the flour and egg. Once combined, I added the rest of the pretzels, making sure to leave some pretzel pieces intact. Then I flattened the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and chilled in the fridge for 30 minutes.

2:00pm
Forecast: partly cloudy, no snow

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees as a rolled out the dough between the sheets of plastic wrap to a 12-inch round. I peeled off the top layer of plastic wrap and inverted the dough into (what I thought was) a 10-inch tart pan (more on this later). I pressed the dough into the fluted corners and trimmed the overhanging dough. Then into the fridge again for another 30 minutes.

3:00pm
Forecast: partly cloudy, no snow

As I do not have pie weights, I lined the bottom of the crust with parchment paper and filled with rice. I baked the crust for 20 minutes, and then removed the parchment paper and rice, covered the edges with tin foil so that they wouldn’t burn, and baked for 10 more minutes. Then let the crust cool completely.3:30pm
Forecast: gray sky, no snow

I melted the bittersweet chocolate and brushed it over the bottom and up the side of the crust, then back into the fridge for 10 minutes.

I brought 1 ½ cups of heavy cream to a simmer, turned off the heat, poured in ¾ pound of milk chocolate, and let it rest for 10 minutes. Then stirred with a whisk, poured into a bowl, and let it cool for one hour at room temperature.5:00pm
Forecast: getting dark, flurries

Then poured the chocolate into the crust and slid it back into the fridge, where it will rest until just before the party, when I will sprinkle the top with pretzel bits and sea salt.

I realized about halfway through this process that my tart pan is too small. I was so excited to actually own a tart pan that I put it to use with wild abandon, even though it is likely, upon reflection, approximately 2 inches smaller than the 10 inches the recipe calls for. Oh well. My tart may have more crust than chocolate, but I don’t think anyone will know how far I have strayed from Food & Wine’s recommended tart size—except that half of our party guests read this blog, so they will find out, and they will judge, as they are all gourmands and better cooks than I.

8:00pm
Forecast: Dark, cold, but no snow

There are worse things than having a cup of leftover milk chocolate. This evening for dessert, I made F a vanilla ice cream and milk chocolate crepe, drizzled with milk chocolate sauce.

Tomorrow will bring further party preparations, an Oscar party, and a photo of the finished tart…and maybe our winter storm.