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Rating: 
Summary: The best and most usable chocolate cookbook
Review: I have many chocolate cookbooks that look better but not perform better. I lost my copy and it's like losing an arm. There is not a better chocolate cookbook out there.
Rating:
Summary: The best and most usable chocolate cookbook
Review: I have many chocolate cookbooks that look better but not perform better. I lost my copy and it's like losing an arm. There is not a better chocolate cookbook out there.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious and foolproof!
Review: I've baked quite a few of the cookies and cakes from this book and they've always turned out great! The directions are always clear and Maida introduces each recipe with some background information, telling the story of how she came upon the recipe, what the finished product looks like, serving and storing suggestions, etc. These descriptions help when trying to decide which chocolate dessert to make when choosing from such a wealth of choices.I love the orange chocolate loaf cake and since Maida says the recipe can easily be doubled I always do. This cake goes quickly and it pays to have a spare! A friend of mine gave one of these recipes to her caterer for her wedding cake -- people are still talking about that incredible cake!
Rating:
Summary: I wish I could give this a 6-star rating!
Review: I've come to this page because my copy of "Great Chocolate Desserts" is falling apart from so much use & I need to replace it. I use it so much because I trust it completely. Every cookbook should be written like this one. Before each recipe Heatter describes the end product. Her instructions are incredibly thorough & easy to follow. She even gives advice on which brands of chocolate work best. And the results are terrific. I've earned the reputation of being a superb dessert-maker only because I rely so heavily on this book!
Rating:
Summary: I wish I could give this a 6-star rating!
Review: I've come to this page because my copy of "Great Chocolate Desserts" is falling apart from so much use & I need to replace it. I use it so much because I trust it completely. Every cookbook should be written like this one. Before each recipe Heatter describes the end product. Her instructions are incredibly thorough & easy to follow. She even gives advice on which brands of chocolate work best. And the results are terrific. I've earned the reputation of being a superb dessert-maker only because I rely so heavily on this book!
Rating:
Summary: If you like chocolate, buy this book
Review: I've had this book for 20 years and love it. I've made many recipes very successfully because the instructions are so clear. Particular favorites are the chocolate madeleines, the chocolate pumpkin cake and the combo of Maida's chocolate ice cream (it ain't brown, it's CHOCOLATE) and hot fudge. Yum!
Rating:
Summary: 6 stars? 10 would do this book justice.
Review: I've had this book for 20 years and made nearly everything in it. The only recipe which I think must have a mistake in it is the "pepper" brownies. I've never been able to make them come out, and I've varied the cooking times, the tempetature, the ingrediants etc. Ok, my favorite is the "French Chocolate Mint Truffles." You can vary this one to your heart's content. First, you can roll the results in "dipping chocolate" get a bar of high quality chocolate heat on a double boiler and use a fork to dip the cured truffle, place on wax paper to cool. Second, you can use almost any flavoring, almond, coconut, orange, lemon, peppermint, etc. Third, you can use milk chocolate, if the the mix starts to thin when you heat it, add a tablespoon of powdered sugar. Fourth you can use white chocolate although this is tricky and requres a lot of powered sugar to get it to "set" like a 3 to 5 tablespoons of powdered sugar. (With the coconut ones I mix in a 1/4 cup of grated coconut.) Ok, then the basic brownies, ooooh you'll never buy a box mix again. Then the flourless cakes, so rich, its incredible. On to the "Pots of Creame" Yum, you'll have people begging for more. The trick here is to use a pan to hold the pots in, put the pan with the pots in it in the oven, then add "boiling water" and cook for exactly 22 minutes. The centers will be smooth and look runny but they'll finish cooking as they cool. Also be very careful getting them out of the oven, hot water will go right through your oven mitts. I use a canning jar lifter to get the pots of creame out of the pan. But in any case please be careful the burn you could get is bad. I could go on and on, but if you can follow directions they all seem to come out fine.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Resource
Review: I've really enjoyed everything that I've made from this book. Last July, my daughter made the Marbelized Chocolate Cheesecake to serve to her guests at her tenth birthday party, which I've made quite a few times. I've also made the mint chocolate mousse on a number of occasions. On one, I brought some mousse to a friend's house. She said, after having a bite, "Come on, where's the rest of it? Go get it and bring it over here!". Unfortunately, we had brought her the full recipe.
Rating:
Summary: My chocolate bible!
Review: Maida Heatter has written an excellent book on chocolate desserts. I made the chocolate buttermilk cake for coworkers, and two people told me it was the best chocolate cake they had ever tasted. That's worth the cost of the book alone! I can't wait to try more of her chocolate dessert recipes.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good But Not Great Chocolate Book
Review: This book has a legendary reputation. It was one of the earliest (1978) bestselling cookbooks about just chocolate. Most cookbook authors and culinary professionals either have it or know about it. I find this chocolate book rather over-rated, but it is nevertheless a good resource for chocolate recipes to have on your bookshelf.
The recipes are an impressive collection from far and wide, and this is reflected in the vastly different recipe instructions. The author seems to have left the procedures largely intact from the original source, other than to supply the details you might have trouble with. I suspect that some of the recipes did not work originally, and the author then had to "fix" them. In the end, I had no trouble with any of the recipes I tried, even the wacky ones I thought would not work (such as a cake that uses whipped cream instead of whipped egg whites). The author has a good feel for what the average home cook is capable of, and most people should not have much trouble with any of the recipes.
The tremendous variety of recipes is this book's strongest suit. It is a scrap book full of truly good recipes from many people and places, many of them professionals and/or famous cooks. It has sections on cakes, cookies, pastry, desserts, and other (confections, sauces, decorations, drinks, reprints).
The author commits the ultimate baking cookbook sin: not specifying how the flour is measured, nor supplying the equivalent weights. The author merely says "fill" a measuring cup with flour and level, but it is not clear if this is "scoop and sweep" or "spoon as sweep". I used spoon and sweep (a la Julia Child), and this seemed to give the correct results. The ingredient lists specify sifted flour, and instructions also specify sifting; it is not clear if the author wants the flour sifted twice (once for measurement and another for mixing the flour with other dry ingredients) or just the once listed in the recipe. If the sifting is during measurement, it is also not clear if this suppose to occur before or after measuring.
Besides flour measurement, it is also lax in other aspects. Varying egg sizes are treated as more or less interchangeable (they are not). Reliable and detailed instructions on how to tell when things are done baking are notably absent. There are no detailed instructions on how to do the 2 things used in virtually every recipe: creaming butter and sugar, or beating egg yolk and sugar to a ribbon stage. The temperature of eggs or butter is usually not specified. A majority of the recipes specify decoration or frosting, but the instructions for them are not supplied. There is a chatty essay about the varieties of chocolate, but the author does not give firm recommendations as to specific brands; she merely lists the commercial brands available at the time, although some recipes do list brands. There is no advice on the proper method of cutting flourless cakes that are notably sticky or moist. In the introductory chapter, there are detailed procedures for folding batters and melting chocolate, subjects that are usually absent from baking books. However, there is not a similar dissertation for whipping egg whites; the brief instructions contained within the recipes are not sufficient. On the bright side, this book has instructions for making pie dough that are complete, detailed, and reliable, quite a rarity these days.
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