Cioccolati Italiani - Milano

With only two full days in Milan, I needed a strategy to maximize my gelati intake. The resulting strategy: focus on chocolate and eat as many flavors as possible in one sitting. On my first day, having gotten up before 8 am and powered through Da Vinci's Last Supper and Sant'Ambrogio (including paying homage to his relics, i.e. robed skeleton), I rewarded myself for a productive morning with a visit to Cioccolati Italiani at 10:30 a.m. Pictured above is a cold chocolate (cioccolato freddo) and a degustazione known as la storia del cioccolato. I couldn't eat/drink them all fast enough so I ended up with some soupy bits, but I attacked the best ones first, remaining cold enough to give me brain freeze. The highlight was the 70% Venezuelan chocolate with the 70% or 65% Nicaraguan putting in a decent showing. My least favorite was 45% Papau New Guinea (or some Pacific island), but that was only because it was milk chocolate. I didn't understand the chocolate that was flavored with Sicilian oranges since the orange taste was not discernible, but just as well since I don't like citrus with my chocolate. I'm a bit removed in time now to remember the specific taste, but I do remember after eating all of it that I fell into a happy chocolate stupor daze that persisted longer than the typical happy feeling I experience while and immediately after eating chocolate. It was probably the cumulative effect of all that dark chocolate.

The next evening, I regretted that I had not eaten gelato ALL DAY and decided to have gelato for dinner. I went to Choco Cult and had a scoop of cioccolato peperoncino and a scoop of dark chocolate fondue. The two scoops combined were probably the size of half of my face. I found a park bench and proceeded to do damage control by madly licking the gelati before it melted. It was an interesting combination of savory and sweet and definitely a meal in and of itself. Kind of like if I were to eat at a kosher dairy restaurant...maybe?

Score: 7 types of chocolate gelati in less than 48 hours. Vacation success!

Crumbs, Washington, D.C.

A few qualifiers, also known as damning with faint praise:

1. A cupcake, when done well, can be beautiful to look at and tasty...but in and of itself, is not a complex confection.
2. New York has an obsession with cupcakes that has infected DC, for the better in the case of Georgetown Cupcake, which should represent the minimum standard for cupcakes (and the fact that it represents what cupcakers aspire to as the gold standard is a sad reflection of the masses' standard);
3. I will try almost anything at least once and, like the child to whom cereal box prizes appeal, novel gimmicks will entice me every time.

After dinner at Busboys and Poets with my high school friends, one of them suggested a cupcakery in Penn Quarter called Crumbs, with original outposts in New York. The catch with these cupcakes was that they were filled. Excellent, I thought in my head, the more elements the better. Less may be more in architecture, but not necessarily in pastries.

We arrived towards the end of the evening so the selection was limited. Having bought Rocky Road ice cream earlier in the week, my cupcake of choice was the S'more; I like to have a theme running through my dessert selections at any given point in time. A s'more, which would be one of the few things that I could tempt me to camp, is melted chocolate and marshmallow sandwiched between graham crackers. In this case, it was a chocolate cake with marshmallow fluff filling, topped with chocolate icing, and two graham crackers flanking a line of three marshmallows. The cake was somewhat moist and aerated, but at least not memorable for being terrible (both the cupcakes and the cake slices at Cake Love are too dense, even when served at room temperature), the icing was not overly sweet but not buttercream alas, and the topping was well presented. I was lukewarm about the marshmallow fluff. I wonder if it is possible to sprinkle little marshmallow pieces throughout the cake batter, preserving their soft, marshmallow integrity? That might have been a better embodiment of the marshmallow component of a s'more. The textures of the marshmallow fluff and cake were too much like oil and vinegar mixing...perhaps a marshmallow mousse next time? But thumbs up to Crumbs for the creative attempt!

Bibiana, Washington D.C.

When we go out to eat, we usually don't go for Italian, but the dearth of good restaurants in Jerusalem left me wanting for Italian food. I am also not one for Italian desserts (except for gelati and an excellent, coffee-soaked tiramisu that I had recently) but if hazelnuts are God's gift to Turkey and theobroma is the food of the gods, then the combination, Nutella, must be Italy's gift to the world. I still haven't forgiven my parents completely for having withheld their knowledge about Nutella's existence, leaving me to discover it only at the late age of 18. But boy, have I been making up for lost time! Thus, when I saw that "Nutella" was on the dessert menu at Bibiana, I thought that no amount of pasta (truffle risotto to start, black spaghetti with seafood as the main) or cured meat (a planche of salumi) could preclude dessert.

The name of the dessert reflected its components...duh. Nutella ice cream or maybe gelato which a chocolate dusted hazelnut on top. Hazelnuts have a very cute shape, as do pinenuts, but walnuts are baroque. The plate was dusted with ground hazelnut and I used the melting ice cream to hoover the hazelnut dust. The main attraction was the Nutella fried pastry filled with Nutella. As you may have gleaned from prior posts, I LOVE fried dough. (On a sidenote, Cacao on Bethesda offered tastings of fresh beignets on the day I arrived to DC. I hope heaven will have never-ending supplies of Cacao's hot chocolate and those beignets). I've had churros filled with dulce de leche and chocolate (not together), but never Nutella...until now. Brilliant! One was not enough, but one was all they gave me. One of these days, I will invest in a deep fryer, after buying a Kitchenaid stand mixer, and hire a house elf to fry fresh dough for me on command. Oh yeah, and since this post was supposed to be about the Nutella and not so much about the fried dough (I was carried away in a moment of ecstasy), the dollop of Nutella that the fried dough rested upon was a bonus. And for inquiring minds who have seen me go through jars of Nutella, I managed to restrain myself from licking the plate.

Cafe de la Paix, Ramallah

Right on schedule, just a week shy of the six-month mark of my sojourn here in Israel/Palestine, homesickness and a touch of loneliness hit me. Fortunately, I have developed coping mechanisms after 12 years of living away from home in three different countries. My go-to source of happiness - chocolate! As pure, dark, and French as possible. I'm not an expert on the Tel Aviv patisserie scene, other than a Toronto-priced cupcake that was good but not mind-blowing, but Jerusalem's scene leaves me in despair, that is, when I can even find French-style pastries. I was intrigued to read about a place in Ramallah called Cafe de la Paix, which was supposed to be a western-style cafe (with Western prices) and French pastries. As luck would have it, Cafe de la Paix was located around the corner from the Sakakini Cultural Center, where I was going to see a concert in the garden. Imagine my delight when I arrive and see in the display case, the pastry shown above. After over ten years of eating this delightful concoction, I still have no idea what it is called, but I call it a chocolate mace. My beloved Premiere Moisson in Montreal used to bake this pastry, and attribute, in part, my affection for my first boyfriend to his habit of buying this pastry (and many other forms of chocolate) for me. Of course, once I moved to England and he moved to Toronto, the chocolate supply chain dried up and, predictably, the relationship ended in flames. Back to the chocolate mace at Cafe de la Paix...90% as good as Premiere Moisson's. Excellent chocolate quality, the chocolate mousse inside was slightly less dark than I would have preferred but not very sweet and held together very well. There were no small caramel delights inside the mousse, but the spikes were dense and a slightly chewy contrast to the soft mousse. Best of all, chocolate in this part of the world (in the summer) can almost always be paired with tart limonana (lemonade with mint, the greener the better). And thus, all was well in my world. Now, if only peace would come to the Middle East, driving into Ramallah, a mere 10 kms away from Jerusalem, be faster and checkpoint-free.

La Cuisine, Jerusalem

My apologies for having been short-sighted in naming this blog. For at least the next year, Patisseries of Toronto and I have relocated to Jerusalem so expect this blog to feature pastries from Jerusalem and the Middle East. I expect there will be times to come when I will be ignorant of the name of what I'm eating, but the photos and the descriptions are what count anyway.

This chocolate mound was not my first dessert in Jerusalem (that honor goes to little balls of fried dough soaked in honey and rose water at Pasha) nor my first dessert in the oPt (that honor goes to knafeh somewhere 10 kilometers from Nablus). But it is the first time that I had my camera and was on a deliberate mission to find a dessert for this blog. It was also a good way to memorialize the first week anniversary in my new apartment.

La Cuisine is a small patisserie in Rehavia, owned by Canadians. My wonderful real estate agent tipped me off to this place so I stopped in on a Sunday afternoon. Like everything else in Jerusalem, the prices are comparable to Toronto. The gentleman at the store warned me about it: "It is very rich and full of chocolate". Little did he know he was egging me on. He was also very helpful about telling me to let it rest for a bit at room temperature, which worked out since I got a little bit lost and wandered around.

At its heart, this pastry is very simple (probably the only thing in this region that is simple), consisting of a crushed hazelnut and brown sugar base and what is ultimately a mound of firm chocolate ganache. In terms of texture, the smoothness of the chocolate contrasted with the crumbly paste. I was rewarded with lumps of coarsely ground hazelnut, which I had the option of mixing into the chocolate ganache or eating on its own, if I pleased. I like having options when eating a pastry; it reminds me of the choose-your-own-adventure books of my childhood. Quality ingredients were used, which would expect from anywhere purporting to call itself a patisserie. The chocolate, although dark, was neither acidic nor bitter and the brown sugar in the base added the necessary touch of sweetness.

Admittedly, the density of this dessert was somewhat daunting and knowing that I had no more chocolate in the house for the next day, I saved some for the following evening. I ate the "leftovers" in candlenight on my patio with hibiscus tea (slightly acidic, but not very strong, thereby complimenting the chocolate well) and looked up at the banana tree's leaves and the stars. I might say that it was even better to eat amongst the pleasures of the night, without the critic's concentrated scrutiny.

Ma Maison

Lest it be said that I have failed to explore the suburbs of Toronto, with the companionship of my trusty Zipcar, Colin the Civic, I ventured out to Ma Maison in Etobicoke and ordered a Valencia. Pero, que pasa? I was disappointed by this pastry, which I chose for its looks. This order taught me a lesson about superficiality.

My first contact with Valencia was the hollow, light pink, shimmering chocolate ball on top. Remembering a similar chocolate ball on my Cacao pastry, I eagerly bit into this one. Hmm, tasted somewhat old and stale (for chocolate). This was not a promising beginning, but perhaps Ma Maison outsourced its chocolate and the pastry itself would be better.

My first impression of this pastry was its density. So dense that huge pieces of it remained stuck to my fork after I licked off my fork. It is essentially an uncomplicated pastry. Chocolate ganache (not shiny, again, perhaps a sign of age or bad tempering?) enrobed a simple chocolate mousse sans base. At its core was an explosion of dark chocolate rice puffs and dark chocolate pieces. I characterize it as an explosion because literally, when I cut into the center of the pastry, dark chocolate pieces and rice puffs jumped out at me. I have tasted and appreciated the rice puff element in a piece of pastry but this version failed on at least two levels. First, the rice puffs were soggy so the essence of a rice puff - light, airy, crunchy - was lost. Second, as a result of the soggy rice puffs, they seemed thicker and only served to exacerbate the density and heaviness of the pastry.

I try so hard to like pastries, but this one was a flop. It was uncomplicated and the one area where it tried to be creative, i.e. the core of the pastry, was poorly executed. Let's hope the chocolatines and croissants from Ma Maison prove to be more successful tomorrow morning.

La Bamboche

La Bamboche has two locations in Toronto, and I visited the one on Manor Road, just south of Yonge and Eglinton. I biked uphill on Yonge (which is not nearly as bad as biking up Avenue Road), and was rewarded at the end of my trip with this pastry shop!

I've ordered so many macarons that I think I can finally stop and declare that they are just not my thing (which is just as well given the prohibitive price). This macaron was caramel sea salt. I have no idea why it was colored pink, but it was a pretty color. The meringue itself was blah. But the butter cream and caramel inside was a revelation. As, you can see in the close up, it was as if the caramel had been injected into the butter cream. I have been known to eat butter on its own, which some people think is weird. When you add some cream and sugar to the butter and call it butter cream, somehow that makes eating it all right. I'm easy and won't quibble over this. Final verdict...silvanas, which I think are the Filipino equivalent of macarons (also meringue outside, but softer, and a butter cream interior) are superior to macarons, but the interior of this caramel sea salt macaron totally made the pastry!

By the time I arrived at La Bamboche, there was only one chocolate pastry left and it didn't seem very exciting. Rather, since I had read that the patissier was known for combining interesting flavours, I had this layered mango yuzu cake. Of note, obviously, are the two layers of mango mousse (sweet, but not cloyingly so) and the gelatinous layer of yuzu. Yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit. The last time I had it was as part of a sake cocktail. Yuzu is deliciously tart (the kind where you get nice chills just thinking about the tartness) and the combination of sweet mango and the citric acid of the yuzu makes this dessert pop with complementary flavors. Bonus points on the gelatinous texture of the yuzu, which I sometimes ate on its own to isolate and savour the flavour. Additional bonus points for attention to detail on the tops of the blueberries which were filled with some sort of gelatin to make the tops sparkle rather than being empty black holes.

I will return to La Bamboche earlier in the day when I can select from a greater variety of pastries and, hopefully, will score a chocolate pastry.

Given my penchant for a chocolate cranberry combination, I wonder how a chocolate yuzu combination would turn out?