If you’re a cook who thinks chocolate deserves its own big shelf on the food pyramid, treat yourself to a copy of this cookbook.  The Chocolate Lover’s Cookbook written by Christina Dymock is a useful compilation of tried and true chocolate recipes from her family’s kitchen.

If chocolate is your thing, then this is your book!

The Chocolate Lover’s Cookbook, by Christina Dymock

Christina Dymock attributes her love of chocolate to the great cooks in her family, especially her two grandmothers, and writes, “When I bake with my children, I like to tell them who the recipe came from. Not only am I sharing a time-tested recipe, teaching kitchen skills, and getting in quality time, I’m sharing part of their heritage. What I worked toward as I selected, measured, stirred, dumped, and melted chocolate were recipes that would not only tempt chocolate lovers, but become part of your family culture.”

Mouthwatering photos accompany each of the 50 recipes, and they are easily accessible through the index and the Table of Contents in the following categories:

chocolate info

brownies and bars

Chocolate on chocolate! Make the Chocolate Cookie Pie from The Chocolate Lovers Cookbook.

cakes and pies

cookies

desserts

candy

sauces, fillings, and frostings

My experiments from The Chocolate Lover’s Cookbook

The Dark Chocolate Cookies on page 69 proved to be an excellent lunch dessert for some cross country skiing guests this month. They took their assessment very seriously and sampled cookies from each corner of the cookie sheet.  “Amazing!” was the consensus.  I skipped the chilling step, and they turned out well.

The Chocolate Cookie Pie on page 51 was very rich.  It was stickier than a normal pudding pie, and I’d suggest dipping your knife into hot water before each cut.  It’s rich enough that perhaps serving 10 pieces from one 9 inch pie would be a more appropriate size.  An 8^th of a pie was big enough that you almost didn’t want the last bite.

We were big fans of the S’mores Ice Cream on page 82. Although the end result was quite tasty, I didn’t feel the recipe was precise enough. “6 graham crackers, crushed”.  I took that to mean six whole crackers, but the 1 T of melted butter wasn’t enough to coat them well, so perhaps it should have read six halves.  I threw away extra after doing the layering.  Also, the melting of the marshmallows didn’t go very well, and it certainly wasn’t enough to do two layerings.  I scrapped that and sprinkled with mini marshmallows.  Same effect – way less work and mess.

The Chocolate Twists on page 93 were good but not as good as you think they will be.  Seeing the shape, you expect them to be made with yeast bread and be more of a sweet roll, and it’s a bit of a let-down when your mouth gets a cookie instead.  The directions weren’t adequate.  You roll the dough into a 14×8 rectangle, and then the directions say, “Melt 1 T butter and spread over half the dough.”  Which half?  The next step says, “Fold the dough in half lengthwise so cover one long side with the butter.”  Do you brush with butter before or after the folding process?  I managed to get them prepared and baked so that they sort of resembled the photograph no thanks to the directions.  The final step called for brushing the warm twists with a glaze, but when I did that, the paintbrush smeared the chocolate all over the surface of the roll thus diminishing the overall appearance appeal.  If I’m going to spend this much time on a dessert, I’d rather tack on an extra half hour to make sweet rolls.

The Chocolate Twist recipe could have benefitted from proofreading for clarity.  I found other random proofreading errors throughout the book.  For example:  “These light and flaky twists are a sweet and chocolatey.”  “While the cake layers cool, you can run and errand or two.”  Neither affected the outcome of a recipe, but it left me less confident of the overall editing within the book.

Who needs this book?

Christina Dymock’s 8×9 inch paperback, The Chocolate Lover’s Cookbook, belongs on the kitchen book shelf of anyone who is enthusiastic about chocolate desserts.  Chocolate Crepes for breakfast anyone?  You’ve got milk, eggs, and fruit, and then when you add in chocolate, you have four major food groups.  A breakfast of champions, for certain.

— All photos by Hannah George

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