Chocolate For Beginner’s Techniques and Recipes for Making Chocolate Candy, Confections, Cakes and More by Kate Shaffer Book Review

From chocolate enthusiast to home chocolatier

Making melt-in-your-mouth chocolate may seem daunting―but it doesn’t have to be! Whether you’re hoping to impress guests, give a delicious gift, or add something special to your baked goods―Chocolate for Beginners shows you how to create beautiful confections in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Progress through easy to difficult recipe tutorials for melting, tempering, dipping, and decorating. Try your hand at confections, cookies, sauces, and more―or add a little creativity to your treats using tips for gift packaging, adventurous twists, and fun substitutions.

Chocolate for Beginners includes:

• Bean to bar―Discover the basics with simple kitchen rules for selecting chocolate, tips on necessary equipment, troubleshooting suggestions, and more.
• Sweeten your skillset―Start crafting with techniques covering everything from coating confections, molding a chocolate shell, caramelizing sugar, and more.
• Cocoa cuisine―Satisfy your sweet tooth with 65 step-by-step recipes for a variety of rich truffles, tarts, cakes, mousses, and more.

Sling on the apron and turn up the heat―you have everything you need to start making crave-worthy bites that are sure to delight.

My Thoughts:

Chocolate For Beginner’s Techniques and Recipes for Making Chocolate Candy, Confections, Cakes and More is chocolistic!  It walks you through several aspects of the art of chocolate.

It gives you a brief history of how chocolate is made from the time it is harvested to when it is tempered. 

The book also goes over what to look for and to recognize the real deal from the fake and why it’s important. That is important to know when using the techniques and recipes in the cookbook. All this learned information will help you outside of the cookbook when working with chocolate as you move forward.

There is a section on choosing chocolate that explains the differences from dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and couverture. I never heard of couverture before. I thought I knew my chocolate! It explains the percentages that you see with many chocolates and what they mean.

The cookbook covers some practice with working with chocolate from handling, using, baking, cooking, storing, working, and several tips for chocolate like equipment and tools.

Several techniques are covered along with methods for each technique. There are lots of tips throughout the book and even in the recipes to perfect your recipes.

There is a variety of recipes that is sure to please from mocha chip ice cream sandwiches, several beverages, sauces, cakes, truffles, puddings, pies, tarts, cookies, and much more. 

At the back of the book there are several resources to purchase the supplies and ingredients.

I learned a lot about my favorite food chocolate and look forward to trying several of the recipes and seeing if I can perfect some of the techniques. I plan on making the Classic Chocolate Cake with the Ganache Frosting for my daughter’s 17^th birthday next week.

 I received a free copy of this product from Callisto Publisher's in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this information accordance with the FTC Regulations.