Chronicle Books Blog

Soft raspberry-flavored dark chocolate truffles jewel this white chocolate frosty gelato for a dazzling interplay of flavors. Pair it with chocolate soufflé cake for a winning party treat.

Truffles
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or 1 cup chocolate chips
3 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon framboise
1 3/4 cups half-and-half or milk, divided
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cups heavy (whipping) cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons framboise (optional)

Prepare a large bowl or pan of ice water.

To make the Truffles: In the top of a double boiler, heat the chocolate, cream, and butter over simmering water, stirring until smooth. Stir in the framboise. Transfer to a small container and let cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until cold and firm, about 1 hour. With a small measuring spoon, scoop out 1/2-teaspoon portions and drop them onto an aluminum foil–lined baking sheet. Occasionally dip the spoon in hot water to ease the scooping. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the half-and-half, the sugar, cornstarch, and salt. In a saucepan, bring the remaining 1 1/4 cups half-and-half just to a boil over medium heat. Whisk the sugar mixture into the hot half-and-half and boil 2 to 3 minutes, or until thickened. Let cool to 110°F on a candy thermometer. Place the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl and pour the hot half-and-half over it. Stir until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Place the bowl in the ice bath and stir the mixture occasionally until it cools to room temperature. Stir in the cream and vanilla, cover, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. When the ice cream is almost frozen, spoon in the framboise, if desired, and churn until blended in, about 1 minute more. Add the chocolate truffles and churn until blended in, about 15 seconds more. Transfer to a container, cover, and freeze until firm, about 2 hours.

Makes about 1 1/4 quarts

Purchase Ice Creams & Sorbets

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What’s Thalia really like? That’s easy. She’s just how you would imagine—absolutely gorgeous.

By the time I met Thalia in person, I had been hard at work on the book for a few months. I’d talked to her on the phone several times, and of course I’d seen her music videos and photos. So when I finally met her face to face, I couldn’t believe the person standing before me was the same glamorous superstar I’d come to know.

She walked into the photo shoot wearing not a lick of makeup. She had her hair tied back in a ponytail and sported a baseball cap and sweatshirt. And she looked incredible—without even trying! She greeted me with a big hug and kiss on the cheek. She was so gracious and welcoming. We chatted for a bit before she was whisked away to the makeup chair.

An hour later she stood in front of the camera and turned on her star power. With a shake of her hair and a tilt of her chin, she transformed into a megawatt megastar. That’s what I love about Thalia—she can go from completely down-to-earth to out-of-this-stratosphere fabulous in no time at all.

Best of all, she’s not afraid of showing her true self—even going so far as including photos in Belleza of some of her less-than-flattering moments. How many stars would dare feature a photo of herself with bad skin when she was a teen? Or a shot of her goofy bleached bangs in the 80s? Not many. And how many would speak frankly about her beauty mistakes? Thalia does.

Every step of the way, Thalia intimately involved herself in the making of the book. From writing the text to thoroughly vetting the Spanish translation to even fixing the models’ hair and makeup at the photo shoot, her personal touch is stamped on every page of the book.

Jodi Warshaw, Senior Editor

Pre order your copy today:
Thalia: ¡Belleza! Lessons in Lipgloss and Happiness

Popularity: 100% [?]

You can’t escape reading about “organic”, “sustainable”, “local”, and “ethical farming” everywhere these days–in newspapers and magazines (not just food ones), and it’s getting big coverage on TV too (food scares, the obesity “epidemic”, farm subsidies, discussions about Michael Pollan’s best-selling The Ominvore’s Dilema” etc.). Trying to eat food that is real is one of the hot button issues of our times. Living in the Bay Area we have a huge privilege over most of the U.S. due to our proximity to some of the best, and most diverse, produce growing regions anywhere (and that includes grapes grown for wine!).

The feedback we get here in our office on what’s become a constant basis from magazine and newspaper editors, as well as TV producers, is “What authors and books do you have that talk about organics, and sustainable, locally grown foods?”. We have various books that have come out in recent years that have either been ahead of their time, or quite recently released and totally in line with people desiring food that’s fresh, not treated with toxic chemicals, and that hasn’t been flown from 5000+ miles away to get to you Tomatoes in February? Forget it.

These food issues are truly on my mind on a daily basis (it is impossible not to when you’re directly connected to the world of food in the early 21st century!).

It had been a little under a year since I last ate at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and I can say that it’s the first time since moving to Berkeley in 1995 that I had an intensely heightened sense of all parts of the hot-button OrganicSustainableLocal triumvirate. Even though many people might balk at trying to adhere to these methods of eating/sourcing these types of ingredients due to perceived elitism or financial privilege, what it all comes down to is getting the critical mass to start eating REAL food again–non-processed or artificial. It seems so logical to me that it’s frustrating that the convenience of buying food in the mad rush of these times has eclipsed people’s enjoyment of it!

The highlights of the meal (enjoyed with two first-timers visiting from Toronto, who truly made the pilgrimage to Chez Panisse one of their necessary stops on their vacation):

a bottle of Navarro Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc 2005
a bottle of J Vineyards Pinot Noir 2002 (we brought that!)
Pizzetta with rocket salad and prosciutto
Celery soup with chervil and crème fraîche
Local white sea bass roasted in the wood oven with gypsy pepper salad, almonds, and tzatziki
Sonoma County duck breast with green beands, turnips, and summer truffle
Ram Das Orchards Santa Rosa plum tart with cardamom cream
Coffee chocolate-almond ice cream with bittersweet chocolate sauce (I wonder who’s chocolate they use? Hmmm…)

SUBLIME–the food is always exceptionally fresh. Cooking with this sort of lovely directness is something to aspire to at home; what Alice Waters and company established 30+ years ago hasn’t lost an ounce of relevance–preparing simple, elegant food, pure in delectable flavor in line with the growing season is not only sensible and good for you–it’s what tastes BEST.

Quite excitingly for Chronicle Books, we will for the first time ever be publishing a book with Alice Waters about The Edible Schoolyard, in Fall 2008. More to come on that in the not-so-distant future…

Peter Perez
Senior Marketing Manager | Food & Wine

Popularity: 5% [?]

I still have a worn, outdated Merriam-Webster paperback dictionary that I got when I worked at B. Dalton Bookseller in high school. It’s pretty useless compared to the latest editions, or of course, online resources.

But I love this thing, for a reason that librarians, bookstore employees, publishers, and book freaks will all identify with: the smell of the paper. It’s yellowed, and probably more acidic than a lemon, but one musty hint brings me right back to bookselling days. Really, go smell an old book. It is up high on the scale of safe-for-work sensory experiences.

We work with a lot of paper, and obviously now we really have to steward this precious resource. But as the basic material of books, it’s still pretty unbeatable, and has amazing possibilities. Not just how we print on it, but how you can fold, cut, and engineer it to create all kinds of things. These production features used to be the sole domain of children’s pop-up books. This changed mightily in the 1990’s, when we published a number of sophisticated, production-intensive titles, most notably Griffin & Sabine. May we be so bold to suggest illustrated book publishing hasn’t been the same since.

So I was excited to see something Guinevere pointed me to early in the week: an artist we love, Olafur Eliasson, has just produced a massive book consisting entirely of laser-cut sheets. What’s that, you say? Laser-cutting is a fairly new process whereby a sheet of paper can be burned by laser into highly detailed filigree. Olafur used it to simulate an interior-cross section of a house.

Yes, I agree, excellent. A few years ago we made our first book with laser-cut pages: Turbulence, by the excellent and prolific illustrator Henrik Drescher. If I’m not mistaken, this was the first trade-publishing book to incorporate such a feature (tell me if I am wrong—it was published in 2001). Sure, we only had like five laser-cut pages, not several hundred, but we were there! There are still so many possibilities to explore with this humble medium. More on that, soon.

A laser-cut page from Henrik Drescher’s Turbulence. That’s Beth Steiner in the background, the production genius behind the book.

Alan Rapp, Senior Editor | Art & Design

Popularity: 5% [?]

Fans of the book EcoDesign will want to check out BranchHome.com for all their I’m-green-and-I’m-fond-of-good-design-and-I-shop shopping needs. I’m particularly partial to the colorful bamboo bowls and the spoontulas. (Really, the fact alone that they’re called “spoontulas” would be enough to endear them to me, even if they weren’t also clever and nice looking. Words made from other words! I love it. Here are a few more for you to enjoy: bancho and pumcho (a banana-chocolate and pumpkin-chocolate muffin, respectively), cuteoberfest, owlelope, and of course that perennial favorite, spork).

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