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This is one of my favorite cookbooks.

Sure, some of the recipes are far out of of the range of what I'll ever try, and even the least-complicated are 3-bowl recipes, but for all of that it ranks WAY up there on my list of favorites.

Medrich has figured out how to make chocolate recipes that taste like chocolate and are absolutely wonderfully rich, but which are relatively low fat, and which do not resort to using Strange Substances to substitute for butter or sugar. Her Chocolate Decadence is marvelous, and I adore her Chocolate Walnut Torte.

Note1: The recipes do take a little time to make, and this is one book where it is important to do exactly as you're told and not (as I admit to doing quite often) simply approximating. The results are worth it.

Note2: Regretably, her brownies, alone among the recipes I've tried, don't quite measure up. For brownies, I use Cooking Light's Bourbon Fudge Brownies--made with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa (yup, for this I get brand specific). So far, I've had them with bourbon, rum, milk (a suggested substitute), and with coffee as the liquid portion of the recipe. They've always been yummy.

I'll need to look that up, then. The cakes in Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat are really, really good, but the two cookie recipes are only good.


The best brownie recipe I've ever found comes from Cooking Light: their Bourbon Fudge Brownies are wonderful. So far, I've had them with bourbon and made them with milk (many times) and rum (once). All were splendid.

I don't know if this link will stay good, but here's the recipe.