The hubby’s birthday recently passed and his heart’s desire was to get a gift card to the Bass Pro Shop, a White Russian and a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s. Yes a strangely eclectic grouping of birthday gifts but luckily they were fairly easy to attain, the most challenging being the Katz’s pastrami sandwich. So off I went on a sunny but chilly late winter day to the Bowery, land of egg creams and dreams. I figured since I was already half way around the world (or at least it seemed that way to me) I would visit a few of the other remote wonders of the city, the first in line being Puddin’, a new pudding shop in the East Village.

Now you may have heard me mention in the past that I thought that the city definitely needed a pudding emporium to placate those winter doldrums. Who wouldn’t want endless quantities of darkly delicious chocolate pudding and mounds of silky, rich whipped cream, perhaps with a hot?. Well, I might just have been wrong in my thinking. More…

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I have to admit that for the past two months I haven’t been keeping up on my motherly meal preparation duties very well. Between my work schedule, the kids’ after school activities, the orthodontist trips and the hubby’s new job, we’ve fallen into a bad habit of dining out for dinner at least two school nights a week, and another night has fallen into a take home pizza/Chipotle/Lenny’s day. With another one of those nights devoted to our favorite neighborhood Japanese noodle shop, I had one night left open with no idea what to do. Luckily, the answer came with the recent opening of NYC’s first Steak ‘n Shake.

From my devoted passion for the Ring Ding to my burning desire to one day open my own Dairy Queen, it should be no surprise that I have long felt the need to one day eat at a Steak ‘n Shake. With the recent opening of Steak ‘n Shake I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. And since it is conveniently located on the way home from karate lessons, it has become our new Wednesday night dinner stop. More…

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On the first day of Valentines Day… Oh wait, wrong holiday. Well, Valentine’s Day is here once again and I imagine most of us either look forward to it with giddy anticipation or utter disgust based on our couple status. Well after 10 years of marriage, I’ve learned one very important thing. Make a list, and make it very detailed down to the finest minutiae. So here it is dear hubby, and don’t forget like you seemed to do with the winter holiday festivities.

1) A box of rigoletto noir chocolates from La Maison du Chocolat — the absolute best confection in the entire world. Each one is a dark chocolate-enrobed caramel crème au beurre, that is to say whipped caramel butter ganache covered in chocolate. Order early as they will be out of them when you show up at 4:30pm on Tuesday afternoon. And don’t try to fill in with the milk chocolate variation or any other imposters. More…

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I found myself on the Upper East Side, killing time with the kids on one of those arduous, winter breaks in the city with nothing to do. What’s a girl to do when she’s feeling glum while everyone else is off skiing or sunning with their loved ones? Eat cake of course! It struck me like a ray of sunlight on a gray winter day. Off we went to Lady M.

Lady M is one of those dainty, elegant shops that are perfect to take a friend to for coffee and a little treat while catching up on a load of gossip. What I enjoy so much about it is that they take the classics and somehow reinvent them, striking the ideal point between enormous coffee shop monsters and overly dainty French confections. They are fun and interesting to look at while still being elegant. Plus, they are light as a feather in your mouth, even when they look like they will be quite filling. I was slightly disappointed to find the selection was full of chestnut cakes. Chestnut is one of the top offenders on my long and boring list of do-not-eat-or-spend-the-day-in-the-emergency-room allergy foods. But never the less, I persevered and managed to find four lovely slices without chestnut to take home. More…

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One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the bûche de noël, a roll of sponge cake and buttercream decorated to look like a yule log. It’s as if the Yodel went to France for the holidays, in a ball gown and tiara. In the classic style, it’s covered with coffee or chocolate buttercream which is combed to look like tree bark and then it’s decorated with meringue mushrooms, snowmen and holly leaves. Modern versions have elaborate and delicate decorations made from sugar, chocolate, and almost every type of sweet you can think of. It’s fantastic to behold, but a bit like pumpkin pie — a special treat that I look forward to but always find that eating it just once a year is enough.

This year, I was fortunate to be teaching a class on genoise, the classic French sponge cake, a few days before Thanksgiving. There was no pumpkin pie at my house. Instead a beautiful, chocolate bûche de noël stood proudly in all its woodsy glory, tiny mushrooms and all. I was pretty excited. It wasn’t Christmas but for me it was close enough. My students however questioned my sanity for a moment and were confused as to why dessert would ever want to emulate a log and mushrooms. More…

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I was wandering through the Columbus Circle Craft Market the other day. It’s another one of those ugly-hat-wind-chime-and-hand-crafted-jewelry markets that floods the city every holiday season. I usually walk through to get out of the chill — it’s at least ten degrees warmer inside the maze of stalls. On this particular day, my eye was drawn to a new vendor. At first I was confused, it looked a bit like Mast Brothers Chocolates, but on closer inspection, it was a place I had never seen before, Raaka Chocolates. Truth be told, I then remembered walking past the first day but being put off by the blueberry–lavender bar.  The place kept haunting me though so a few days later I went to see what they were all about.

On first glance it definitely looks as if they’re riding on the coattails of Mast Brothers, down to the brother’s hand-wrapped paper-covered bars. They wrap all their bars in beautiful “100% post-consumer recycled, chlorine-free processed paper that was made from wind-generated energy” and is designed with soy based ink by Loop in Philadelphia. It’s really a lovely look and hey if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

The chocolate itself is made in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn and it’s from ethical trade beans bought at a minimum of 17% above market rate. You might be surprised to know that the chocolate market is fraught with human rights violations and child trafficking. There are some companies that support fair prices, wages and labor practices in their bean buying practices and that’s one of the things that is driving the price of chocolate up these days (but to be clear, none of that is justifying $1.19 for a regular-sized, partially-melted, Hershey’s bar at the Duane Reade).

Then I was told they don’t roast their cocoa beans and they were vegan. WHOA! I must say, that’s not something you hear in the everyday. In professional circles, when chocolate manufacturers are sitting around the water cooler, trading secrets of turning cocoa beans into the finest French and Swiss chocolates, unroasted vegan chocolate is unheard of. I think I said, “But this is still chocolate right?” I was skeptical, thinking blueberry-lavender and vegan seemed wrong but hooked into at least trying.

Upon tasting, I was quite impressed. I tried all the bars, except the blueberry (sorry, but there was just no way that was going down) and I really liked them. They all had the slightly grainy, dry mouth feel that you seem to find in young chocolate companies but give them some time and I think they will figure it out. The flavors really were what it was all about. My favorite was the Bourbon Cask–Aged. The beans may not be roasted but they’re aged in bourbon casks, much like some of my favorite maple syrup, and the flavor was amazing: chocolate and bourbon, clear-as-day delicious. I also really liked the Black Coffee and the Dark with Salt. I did try the Vanilla –Rooibos and while it wasn’t something that I would typically enjoy, it was their mildest and sweetest bar and I could see lots of people liking it.

They don’t have a store front but their bars are at the market and lots of small stores around the city, and they will be in Whole Foods soon, I just hope they don’t place them too close to the Mast Brothers bars. So give them a try, you just might like it.

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A few years ago, a shop opened in SoHo called “The Best Chocolate Cake in the World”. Well as tempting as that may have sounded, I just never got around to visiting. So a few weeks ago when they opened a location on the Upper West Side and rebranded themselves as ChocoBolo, I figured it was worth a shot. The kids had a day off from school so off we went.

The shop itself is a cute, little, vintage style coffee shop that Sarah Jessica Parker and the ladies would have loved. But the cake display was another matter. It’s never a good sign when the cakes look at best, amateurish, and at worst like a lopsided, caved-in mess. But we were in for the long haul so we placed an order and sat. Sometimes I remind myself of all the crazy places I’ve been — like the tiny restaurant in Korea where we sat at plastic children’s furniture as the chef washed his hair in the kitchen sink in front of us — and I remember I’m still alive and I didn’t get food poisoning so really how bad could this be. More…

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Gateau battu, literally “beaten cake” a specialty from the northern region of France is my new favorite thing. It’s like a brioche but better. Just slightly more cake-like, it’s more tender and sweeter than the average brioche, making it perfect for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Luckily it also happens to be the specialty of Picardy, the town where Dominique Ansel is from and it’s featured at his new patisserie, Dominique Ansel Bakery, in Soho.

It’s always a nice surprise to find really good viennosserie in New York City. I wasn’t sure what to expect at this tiny shop, it resembles so many of the bakeries out there that are just disguises for a café and coffee stop. But I was more than delighted with the quality of the baked goods. The battu was excellent as well as the “DKA” — Dominique’s kouign-amman, a flaky, caramelized mass of buttery goodness. Kouign is rarely seen around these parts. It’s a specialty of Breton and its secrets are well kept. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like croissant dough, rolled with sugar and baked until crispy on the outside and almost creamy on the inside, a delicious mess of goodness. Trust me, the richness is worthy of the best cardiologist around. More…

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I can remember it like it was almost yesterday, sitting in the tea salon at Ladurée by the Opera in Paris. I felt like a silly schoolgirl next to all those ladies who lunch, but while I was eating my coupe I was momentarily as happy as I could have ever imagined being. I’ve been to Paris twice, once on my own and once on a work-related stage in the kitchens of the pastry gods and both times my favorite moments always happened inside the vaulted doors of Ladurée. Once you walked inside there was a special magic in the air. It was so thick you could feel it and a few moments later you knew you would be lucky enough to taste it. Visions of coffee eclairs and rose religeuse dance in my head whenever I think Ladurée.

When I heard that they would be opening a shop here in our own little city, excited couldn’t begin to describe my feelings. I could already taste the pastry cream as I anxiously waited for the moment it would open. But sometimes all good things don’t come to those who wait. Ladurée had announced its opening for the Saturday before Hurricane Irene flew into town. Alas it was not to be. It finally made its debut the next Tuesday with lines down the street. Probably not a site that Madison Avenue has ever seen before, not even for a must-have Gucci. Since I couldn’t make it, hubby kindly ventured up to get a lay of the land and return with a goody bag for me. More…

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I love online shopping. It has saved my life. I order my shoes from Zappos and Endless, gleefully trying them on and returning them. I live for subscribe and save at Amazon and Toys ‘R’ Us for birthdays and I get my groceries delivered from Peapod, a newly acquired passion. (I spent the last 7 years as a FreshDirect groupie, but recently discovered that Peapod takes coupons and get this, they even double them. Heaven.) Yes, I love my online shopping. I can have three pairs of boots and a case of coconut water on its way before my household has even gotten out of bed. So of course I had to try Gilt Taste, the new online shopping site for foodies.

Gilt Taste was introduced a few months back as the place to shop for all your fantastical foodie needs. It’s headed up with an amazing team including Ruth Reichl and has contributors the likes of Melissa Clark, Francis Lam, John Besh, Laurent Gras and Michael Laiskonis. A lot of care seems to have been taken in acquiring a selection of extremely high quality products. There are Liddabit Sweets caramels, Lady M cakes, John and Kira chocolates and Payard Macarons, just to name a few items available. I have been scanning the site since it launched, anxiously waiting for something that even a jaded, New York, food snob such as me would be taken with and finally it appeared about two weeks ago. The Emporio Rulli, Galla Rulli line, Chocolate Panettone with Orange Peel. One look at the photo and I couldn’t resist, it was a beauty of the traditional Christmas delight filled with Domori chocolate, Italian candied orange and California’s Petaluma Creamery butter. According to the site it was developed in partnership with an AMPI (Accademia Maestri Pasticceri Italiani) member, Fabrizio Galla, a world champion chocolate master from Torino, Italy. I love panettone. Sorry, because I mean, I looooooooove it. I wait patiently for the holiday season to approach each year so I can go out and buy as many different kinds as I can find and taste test them all. Yes I know I seem to love lots of things but heck, I’ve definitely picked the right career — one that I have definite passion for: culinary. More…

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