"chocolate and vanilla" news and stories

Chocolate and Vanilla is the newest cookbook from Gale Gand, who is the pastry chef/owner at Tru in Chicago and the first celebrity pastry chef from the Food Network show Sweet Dreams. The book is relatively short compared to some of the encyclopedic volumes that publishers have been putting out lately and has only 144 pages and 60 recipes. This not only makes the book a little bit more manageable for the reader who doesn't want to haul around a 20-pound cookbook, but really allowed Gand to narrow the focus to the two most important flavors in pastry: chocolate and vanilla. The book is divided into two sides, the "yin and yang of the dessert world." In the vanilla section, Gand goes into recipes that use vanilla extracts as well as vanilla beans, bringing out the flavor that underlies just about all others. In the chocolate section, the recipes are divided up according to the type of chocolate they use, making it easy to select a recipe that uses a favorite and easy to try a wide range of chocolate flavors in recipes. You can take a look at a sample recipe for Chocolate-Praline Cake in a Jar before you check out the whole book.

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Ed Atwell, an experienced baker and donut maker, has just patented the first donut in Canada. Now, it's not the recipe that is patented, but the technique used to make the two-tone pastry. The donut is exactly half chocolate and half vanilla, with the two batters touching but not blending together. When he baked up the prototype batches, Atwell remarked that "they were the most beautiful doughnuts [he]'d ever seen."

The donuts are sold under the name "Sunnymoon" and are unmistakably distinctive in their appearance. The inventor remains optimistic about sales because Canada is the most competitive donut market in the world, with the number one rate per capita of donut consumption. From all appearances, however, the Sunnymoons are off to a good start in terms of sales and, if they become family favorites, Atwell can be sure that his "beautiful doughnuts" will not be forgotten.

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