Edd Kimber has featured so often on CookbookCorner that I rather think he’s earned his own shelf by now! But with good reason: his books are inviting, inspiring and, if you’re interested in upping your baking game, indispensable. I’d never want to be put in the position of choosing a favourite amongst them, but I feel it’s fair to say that this new one is quintessential Kimber - he is in his absolute element with chocolate, and I am so ready for it.
If you read “Chocolate Baking” as denoting a narrow single-ingredient cookbook, even an initial flick through these pages would put you right: the recipes, techniques, flavour profiles and sheer variety of chocolatiness is fascinatingly wide-ranging and, indeed, instructive in itself. But it yields more than an education: it purveys a heady amount of pleasure into the bargain. I shan’t repeat the word ‘chocolate’ in every recipe title I chant to you here, but just know it’s always, in one way or another, present. Among those recipes that sang most beguilingly to me are the Coconut and Cardamom Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache; Tonka Bean Milk Chocolate Pound Cake; Burnt Honey and Caramelised White Chocolate Cake; Tiramisu Chiffon Cake; Double Chocolate Olive Oil Cookies; Chilli Lime Chocolate Crinkles; Brown Butter Rye Chocolate Chip Cookies; Salted Dark Chocolate Sorbet; Irish Cream Trifle Pots; Blackberry Anise Eclairs; Black Bottom Coconut Cream Pie; Hazelnut Buns with Salted Butter Craquelin; and, yes, a Toasted Chocolate Sandwich! The recipe I just had to share with you today, though, is this beauty: his Double Marble Loaf Cake.
Extracted from Chocolate Baking, Edd Kimber (Quadrille, £28.00 ) Photography © Matthew Hague.
