[Pink Praline Chocolate Cake]

Pralines can be a confusing thing, considering that the same pretty word (It would make a cool name for a little girl, no? Or would this ruin her life you think?) is used for different confections.

The original praline is made by cooking almonds in melted sugar: the mixture is left to cool then reheated several times, forming an irregular crust of crispy chewy caramel around the tender almond. These pralines are usually golden brown and thus referred to as pralines brunes, but a coloring can be added to the sugar and then all bets are off. But praline is also the name given to Belgian chocolate bites with a smooth filling, sometimes made with pralin (a mixture of grilled almonds and cooked sugar, or ground brown pralines) and, this has to be said, often too cloying for my taste — I am a ganache girl at heart.

And then there is the pink praline. Often featured in specialties from Lyon, the pink praline could look to the untrained eye like a brown praline in pink clothing: it is an almond in sugar after all. But there is in fact one capital difference here: the sugar surrounding the almond is not caramelized. This gives the pink praline a unique kind of texture, quite different from the brown praline’s sweet stickiness: your teeth meet a slight resistance at first, but the powdery sugar coating quickly surrenders, crumbling in little flakes on your tongue, while you start chewing on the meaty almond.

Like anything pink and edible, this praline benefits from my unconditional adhesion. It is a fine candy to eat out of hand (particularly with coffee), but it can also be used as an ingredient in baking or cooking recipes: tarte aux pralines roses (a great classic, not unlike a pecan pie — recipe here), île flottante aux pralines roses (as tasted at Aux Lyonnais), brioche aux pralines roses (such as Pralus‘ famous Praluline), or a delicious magret de canard aux pralines roses (as tasted at the Café Fusion). Even Heston Blumenthal has featured pink praline tarlets in his tasting menu, that has to tell you something. The pink praline is like a magic wand, lending color and flavor and a tickling name to anything you choose to make — I’m sure even a pink praline meatloaf would be irresistible, but let me test that recipe first and I’ll get back to you.

G. Detou sells pink pralines in bulk, whole or pre-crushed (convenient and cheaper), and I had bought a bag of the latter a few months ago with the firm intention of making a tarte aux pralines roses. That tart hasn’t happened yet, but some of the pralines were put to good use in this pink praline chocolate cake, which I baked for my sister’s birthday party a few days ago. I had made her a chocolate and pistachio cake for her previous birthday, and since a chocolate cake is always well received, I decided to make yet another adaptation of my favorite coffeecake, moist and fluffy, using cacao powder, chocolate chips, and a good sprinkle of pink pralines on top. And who knows, maybe these two cakes — one green, one pink — are the first in a series of chocolate cakes using a different color of ingredient every year?

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[Swiss Chard and Parsnip Soup]

… a.k.a. the smoothest soup to ever be born on my stove. Yes: after months of coveting and weighing and dreaming and stealthily searching eBay, I finally caved in and treated myself to my very first immersion blender. I am slowly taking in what that means — onions and herbs chopped in a pinch, banana milkshakes, velvety soups and most importantly, stiff egg whites without the forearm cramps — and I could just clap my hands in happy anticipation if you weren’t looking.

The first thing I used the new toy for was this soup (actually that’s not true, I first used it to turn a piece of stale bread into breadcrumbs but I figured that wasn’t quite post-worthy). These days, the inspiration for most of the soups I make comes from just walking to the produce stall, choosing two vegetables that look healthy and well-behaved, then celebrating their marriage hastily with a very small crowd (just two witnesses, onions and garlic) in my cast-iron chapel.

It’s very difficult to go wrong with the pairing of just two vegetables — particularly if they’re in season at the same time — and this soup was no exception: complementary flavors (“Green and slightly bitter”, said the chard. “Starchy and subtly sweet”, replied the parsnip.) and a unique textural understanding between the two, never-before witnessed in my kitchen until the magic blender entered it, with its shiny, immaculate cape and its faithful following of fancy little accessories.

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Image courtesy of Heidi Swanson

For the second time now, Pim has put on her fundraiser hat and enrolled us food bloggers to help: in this new Menu for Hope campaign, she is organizing a virtual raffle to raise money for the earthquake victims in Northern India and Pakistan, who are still in dire need of help. The funds will be collected by Unicef through the First Giving website (and no money will pass through our hands).

How does this work? Each participating food blogger has donated a prize for the raffle, and the list can be found here — quite the Prévert inventory. Readers are invited to donate $5, which will get them a raffle ticket and a chance to win the prize of their choice. You are more than welcome to give more if you can: each $5 will get you one chance to win. Don’t forget to note, in the comment section of your donation, which prize(s) you are interested in. At the end of the campaign on Dec. 23, we will have a drawing and pick one winner per prize. The results will be announced after Jan. 1.

The gift I am contributing is the gift of haute-couture sweets: I will treat the winner to pastries at Pierre Hermé as soon as he or she sets foot in Paris, to be gaily sampled (read: devoured) with a cup of tea at the nearby Café de la Mairie, sitting at the terrace if it’s sunny. For examples of what that might entail, you can read some of my past accounts. Think you might like that? Then head over to the First Giving website and donate $5 for your raffle ticket!

Hold the fruit lightly in your left hand. With the edge of your right thumb nail, cut a slit through the thin skin, close to the stem. Pull the skin up and away carefully, trying to pluck most of the white strands from the little nostril. Keep tearing at the thin peel, working your way down and around, until the clementine is completely naked. If it is still clutching a few scraps of pith out of modesty, remove those too. Pull the fruit gently apart in two halves, separate each segment and pop them into your mouth, one by one.

Thin-skinned pulpy bites bursting open on your tongue, the juices sweet and fresh and acidulated like candy. And afterwards, all afternoon, that lingering smell on the tip of your fingers. Orange-blossom essence with a hint of bitterness, a fragrance of crisp, bright winter days, for the sake of which you would happily volunteer to peel your friends’ clementines at the school cafeteria — and still do now with your boyfriend.

What distinguishes the Corsican clementine from other varieties of clementines? It is the only clementine produced in France — Spain and Morocco being our top two suppliers — and it can be found on markets and fruit stalls between November and January. Small, delicate and juicy, its segments are snugly enclosed in a thin smooth skin. Its peel displays a slight green tinge early in the season — nothing to do with jealousy or being picked too soon, this happens when fall nights aren’t cold enough to turn the chlorophyll into orange pigment.

Good-natured like all clementines (a sub-variety of mandarins), it has no seeds and is easy to peel. Perhaps even more characteristically, the Corsican clementine is hand-picked and sold with its thin, deep-green leaves still attached, lending it a definite air of elegance, and giving the wise consumer a unmistakable indication of the fruit’s freshness.

This year is a good year for quality, but not quantity — the annual crop will be about fifteen thousand tons instead of the average twenty — so if you stumble upon a crate of these bright jewels, snatch it while you can. Keep the fruit at room temperature and eat them within five days or so: on their own, or use them to make marmelades, salads, a sauce for game, candied peel, etc.