A Little Something for Everyone

It has been a few years since I spent Thanksgiving with my family.This year I made the trek to Connecticut bringing with me the desserts.

Early in the Thanksgiving feast planning process I was set on making a chocolate souffle cake. I've made this cake before and it is always a hit. Nine eggs, one pound of chocolate and some sugar is really all this cake has for ingredients. Perfect for the gluten free crowd; enjoyed by everyone. One key technique to give this cake as much volume as possible is to use an electric hand mixer to whip the egg yolks and sugar until they are thick and pale yellow. If the egg yolks and sugar are not whipped enough the cake is very short. I use 1/2 pound of 72% bittersweet chocolate and 1/2 pound of 60% semi - sweet chocolate. You can use all bittersweet chocolate or all semi-sweet chocolate. It's up to you. Make it your own!

Chanterelle's Chocolate Souffle Cake

The recipe comes from a cookbook titled Lucious Chocolate Desserts by Lori Longbotham. This recipe isn't the only fabulous chocolate dessert in the book. Check out the Chocolate Panna Cotta and the Classic Chocolate Pound Cake.

The next dessert I settled on was French Madeleine's. Madeleine's are a sponge cake type cookie baked in a pan with shell-shaped depressions, which give the Madeleine's their distinctive shell-like shape. Madeleine's other distinctive feature is the golden brown color of the shell shaped side of the cookie.


One can use finely ground nuts, such as almonds, to flavor their Madeleine's. I usually choose lemon zest. The recipe I use for my Madeleine's is the recipe I received when attending The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, a.k.a. Cambridge Culinary.

French Madeleine's

The last dessert I chose to make for Thanksgiving were Lemon Cream Petit Fours Tarts. The tart dough I made came from Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan. The dough was simple to make. What wasn't simple was working with tart dough that has a large amount of butter in a hot kitchen, with hot hands! The dough was melting faster than I could get it into the petit fours tart pans. After struggling to get twenty mini tart tins filled with the dough, I decided it was time to abandon the tarts and just make some petit fours. I rolled out some of the remaining dough and cut out circles about one inch in diameter. So much quicker and less frustrating. My hot hands barely touched the dough. Once the petit fours tarts and petit fours cookies were baked and cooled, I piped the lemon cream and sprinkled chopped pistachio's on top.

Lemon Cream Petit Fours Tarts

Lemon Cream Caviar Petit Fours

I made the lemon cream using a recipe from Cambridge Culinary. Lemon juice, lime zest, corn starch, eggs, butter, and sugar comprise the out of this world lemon cream. When you get down to it, the tarts and cookies are just the vehicle getting the lemon cream to your mouth. Any leftover lemon cream can be eaten with a spoon!

Happy Thanksgiving!