Chocolate and Vanilla - Free eBook

Chocolate and Vanilla that many people see things in terms of black and white, but I always seem to see things in terms of chocolate and vanilla. Maybe that’s because the first important decision I can remember making had to do with choosing between chocolate or vanilla at Tastee-Freez.

Whenever Chicago’s summer heat and humidity became too much to bear, my mother, brother, and I would tumble into my father’s Thunderbird convertible and go to cool ourselves with soft-serve ice cream cones on the Tastee-Freez patio. In the late 1950s, soft-serve ice cream—a kind of frozen custard—was popular at many drive-ins, but we thought Tastee-Freez’s was the absolute best. There were only two flavors, and in my five-year-old mind I remember thinking my personality would be forever defined by my choice. Was I a “golden girl”? or a “chocolate chick”?—a decision made all the more difficult because not only did I have to state publicly which flavor I wanted, but then I had to choose between dips: vanilla butterscotch “angel dip” or chocolate “devil dip.” Was I going to follow my big brother’s lead and go with chocolate all the way, or assert my independence with all vanilla? It then occurred to me that I could just play the middle and choose vanilla ice cream with a devil dip.

After twenty years as a professional pastry chef, I still haven’t decided whether I’m a chocolate chick or a golden girl, but I have come to the conclusion that most people are one or the other. Even as you read this I’ll bet you’ve already decided which camp you’re in—and which camp your friends and loved ones fall into as well.

I wrote this book to pay homage to America’s two favorite flavors, to share some of the chocolate and vanilla recipes that mean the most to me and that I really love to make, and to help indulge the chocolate and vanilla lovers in your lives.

There’s more than a good chance that there’s an ardent chocoholic in your close circle, because while vanilla reigned as America’s queen flavor for almost two hundred years, now chocolate is king and even seems to be gaining in popularity. At Tru, the fine-dining restaurant in Chicago I co-own and where I work as an executive pastry chef, I love going into the dining room and asking guests to let me choose desserts for their table. I begin by asking them if they’re chocolate people or custard people (custard being just a code word for vanilla). Without question, the chocolate people make up a very vocal and emphatic majority—“Bring on the five-course chocolate collection!”—and I’m always happy to oblige.

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