Chocolate-Dipped Espresso Bean Shortbread & a Visit to Bonnie Gordon College of Confectionery Arts

When you get the chance to go on a culinary date with some rich, hot piece of French... chocolate, you can spend hours imagining where the two of you might go together: for a dip in a pool of ganache; for a spin in an ice cream maker; to an intimate gathering in the creamy middle of a flourless chocolate cake.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a chocolate class hosted by Cacao Barry at the new location of the Bonnie Gordon College of Confectionery Arts. The class centred on the proper tempering techniques when working with couverture chocolate (the chocolate pieces used in baking and candy making). I discovered that chocolate, like any amorous relationship, requires specific temperatures, much patience, and careful tending to elicit the appropriate response (or a delightfully inappropriate response). 

Reine de Saba - Julia Child's 'Queen of Sheba' Cake

Most accounts of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon speak of their interaction as strictly platonic - a matter of state and trade agreements, not seduction. I don't see how that's possible if this rich, dense, chocolate cake named in her honour was amongst the gifts she brought to him. It remains a mystery how this cake is actually connected to its namesake, but it's so delicious you too would give the Queen "whatsoever she desired" (1 Kings 10:13) once you had a bite.

Mexican Chocolate Layer Cake with Cinnamon & Chili Frosting

This cake speaks Spanish. It has a sultry, seductive, chocolatey nature accented with a chili heat that teases the palate with each bite. It purrs like Penelope Cruz, asking you to follow its taste to that sensual place to which the Latin culture seems to have direct access. This is a cake of unexplored depths, layers of pleasure, and exotic flavor that elicits moans and awakens the rhythm and mystery within. My friend A. requested a chocolate cake for her teenage daughter's birthday, specifying that her daughter really likes Mexico. I envisioned a coming together of flavors I'd experienced before in a Mexican hot chocolate - cinnamon and chili - and infused the frosting with those flavors to top a dark chocolate cinnamon layer cake. I was surprised and excited by the amount of passion these flavors elicited in me, and in the cake as a result.