As National Candy Day, November 4th, approaching, I thought you might be interested in this cookbook I was sent by Rockridge Press to test out and review; no other form of compensation was received in exchange for sharing my experiences with the book.
I've had it for over a year which has given me a lot of time to test out some recipes. Of course I focused on the chocolate related ones, which are 28 of the 40 recipes which is a a lot when you consider the wide category of chocolate. I include in that number recipes that used cocoa powder, chocolatey almond bark, chocolate, and cocoa nibs.
The first thing I notice about this book is that I simply do not have all of the tools or easy access to many ingredients for several of the recipes. That is not the case for the chocolate related ones. However, requiring so many different tools and ingredients will limit which recipes you can make in your kitchen. It also limits who can even afford to make these recipes, making such cookbooks rather classist.
There is a two-page section about chocolate which is a good introduction for most people. There are a lot of recipes that use cocoa powder or one form of chocolate or another. Don't worry, none of the recipes require you to make your chocolate from the beans or even from couverture (though I have done that and it is fun).
My family is solidly middle-class, but I simply didn't have the counter space or the materials to really try these recipes. Once the pandemic started making it more of a challenge to find ingredients (or afford them) and I found a new publisher who is putting out my books, one every year, I didn't have a lot of time. None of the recipes only used ingredients and tools that I already had around the house.
Normally, I'll try one to three recipes from a cookbook and share the results here on The Chocolate Cult. I'm sorry I couldn't do that this time around for National Candy Day. If I get a bigger kitchen, get more time, and have more tools and ingredients on hand, and try some of these recipes, the wonder of the Internet will let me come back and update this post.
For now, if you've tried any of the recipes in this cookbook, I want to read your comments about your experience.
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