I had my first taste of this cake at my friend Adam‘s last December. I was in New York for a whirlwind visit to promote the big fat pink book, and he and Craig had invited me to dinner at their place.

I would have been grateful for any home-cooked meal, which is by far my favorite kind when I travel, but this was a truly delicious dinner, one that refutes the “amateur” in “amateur gourmet.”

After a salad of roasted beets and a dish of milk-braised pork (read Adam’s post for the recipes), dessert was this almond cake, after a recipe Amanda Hesser published in the New York Times, and then in the edited collection of her columns, Cooking for Mr. Latte.

It was a spectacular almond cake, buttery and fragrant, moist in the middle with a good crust all around. After I’d finished the extra slice Adam gave me to take home (or in this case, back to the hotel) with me, I vowed to bake one just like it.

It took me a few months to act upon this wish, but I finally did when my nephew turned two in the spring, and the family got together to celebrate.

The distinguishing trait of this recipe is that it draws its flavor not from whole or powdered almonds, but from almond paste, and this contributes to the smooth, tender texture of the crumb. (It also reminds me of Julia’s Swedish cake, which I’ve had my eye on for a while and hope to make when apples return.)

I lightened up the recipe a little, lowering the amount of butter and sugar*, and using yogurt in place of sour cream, but the cake remained a pleasingly indulgent affair.

Because the almond and the blueberry are BFFs, I also prepared a quick blueberry coulis to serve with the cake: the idea was to make it a little more sophisticated, and provide a note of tartness to cut through its richness. And, well, I also had some blueberries in the freezer that I was hoping to use in preparation for a much-needed spring defrosting, which still hasn’t happened, but let’s not dwell on that.

The grown-ups around the table agreed this was a very, very good almond cake, but more important, the birthday boy wolfed down his (admittedly small) slice, asked for seconds, then thirds, and eventually had to be distracted with the toy shinkansen we’d brought him back from Japan so there would be leftovers for tea the next day.

* The original recipe calls for 8 ounces of butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar; I used 7 ounces butter and 3/4 cup sugar.

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Rue des Martyrs, a street that shoots up from the 9th into the 18th arrondissement, is one of those typical Paris market streets that seems to defy business logic by offering no fewer than seven bread bakeries, some of them but a block from one another.

Because I live in the neighborhood, I’ve had the opportunity to sample the goods from (almost*) all of them, and I’ve been particularly impressed with the breads I’ve purchased from Maison Landemaine, on the eastern sidewalk: their tourte de meule (a round rustic loaf) and their baguette**, both leavened with their natural starter, are excellent, and they make a very good chocolate bread, too.

In French, the concept of chocolate bread poses a slight semantics problem, because the name pain au chocolat (literally, chocolate bread) is already taken by a much-loved member of the viennoiserie family that involves croissant dough wrapped around one or two sticks of chocolate to form a rectangular little pad. In some parts of France — especially in the south — this is cutely called a chocolatine.

But what we are talking about here is a regular bread dough that is flavored with cocoa powder and studded with small bits of chocolate — an entirely different animal, one that’s more to my taste. And since I’m always looking for new and delicious ideas to keep my natural starter entertained, it wasn’t long before I decided to make my own.

I remembered Nancy Silverton has a recipe for chocolate cherry bread in her sourdough baking book Breads from the La Brea Bakery, so I looked it up, but hers involves sugar and butter — she developed it to please the customers who came in wanting dessert rather than a loaf of bread — and I wanted my dough unenriched.

Instead, I simply elaborated on the recipe I use for my sourdough baguettes, substituting cocoa powder for part of the flour and folding coarsely chopped chocolate into the dough, and making bâtard-shaped loaves. Because Nancy Silverton notes that the cocoa powder hinders the rise of the bread, I followed her lead and added a little fresh yeast to aid the action of the starter.

Aside from this addition of yeast, the technique is very similar to the one I describe in my baguette post, with an overnight fermentation for flavor and flexibility; you can refer to it for pictures of the different steps.

Because it is just bread with cocoa powder and a little dark chocolate, it is neither too rich nor too sweet for breakfast (i.e. no brick feeling in your stomach, and no sugar crash by mid-morning) and it is a luxurious treat to begin the day with, lightly toasted, and spread with butter or almond butter.

The tight crumb makes it ideal for tartines and I probably don’t need to elaborate on the list of things you can spread on chocolate bread, but I will say this: raspberry jam or dulce de leche make it quite irresistible.

I like it like this, with just chopped chocolate folded in, but you could imagine endless variations, incorporating dried fruit (cherry, fig, prune), orange peel (as in this loaf) or nuts (pistachios, almonds, walnuts), or possibly replacing a little of the wheat flour with chestnut or malt flour.

This bread stays fresh for a few days, like most starter-leavened breads, but if the leftovers dry up they’ll make a fine bread pudding or great breadcrumbs; they’re the ones I used for the Noma-style radishes in soil I wrote about recently.

Maison Landemaine
26 rue des Martyrs, Paris 9ème
M° Notre-Dame de Lorette
+33 (0)1 40 16 03 42 / map it!

* A few of them I didn’t bother to visit; sometimes a glance at the bread shelf is all it takes to form an opinion.

** Bruno Verjus shot a few videos of their baguette-making process.

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Kitchen recycling is my favorite hobby.

So many food scraps can be put to good use with just a little time and flair*, and the satisfaction is immense when I feel I’m using my supplies to the max — making chilled soup from pea pods, pesto from radish tops and croissants aux amandes from day-old croissants, using the whey from mozzarella in bread dough, parsley stems in stews, and the rinds from hard cheeses in soups.

Today’s trick is one I’ve devised because it bothered me to toss the rinds of lemons when all I needed that day was their juice.

I got the idea from a jar of roasted lemon peel, dried and ground, that I bought years ago. It was made by a Sicilian company and simply sold under the name buccia di limone (lemon peel).

That Sicilian lemon powder was so lovely it took me years to go through the little container, until I finally got my act together and realized I could just make my own.

The scent and flavor were so lovely it took me years to go through that little container — it was not cheap, and I seem to have trouble using up ingredients I perceive as rare and precious — until I finally got my act together and realized I could just make my own.

How to make roasted lemon peel

The process is simple: before I juice the lemons, I peel off ribbons of the zest with a vegetable peeler. I leave those out to dry completely for a day or two, then roast them gently in the oven before grinding them with a mortar and pestle, a step that’s rewarded by a fantastic tarte au citron smell.

Because I usually make a small batch and the whole idea is to be thrifty, I place the ribbons of lemon peel in my oven while I preheat it for something else: this means they’re exposed to a moderate heat, but it also means they need to be kept on a close watch until they reach the proper shade of golden brown.

What you get is a fragrant powder of roasted lemon peel that doesn’t pack the punch of fresh zest, but makes up for it with a toasted dimension that pulls it toward the sweet. It can be used to flavor scones and butter cookies, mixed into a fruit crisp topping or granola, infused in cream or milk for crème brûlée or gelato, sprinkled over a fruit salad (think nectarines and raspberries), blended with sugar to make lemon sugar or with tea to make lemon tea, combined with other flavorings in a rub for meat or fish… the possibilities are endless.

In fact, roasted lemon peel powder can be used in pretty much any recipe that call for fresh — I’m trying to find an exception but I can’t think of one — and I suggest substituting it measure for measure then.

And once you’ve peeled the zest for this, and juiced the lemons for whatever reason you had to buy them in the first place, the rest of the rind can be placed in your water pitcher for a day or two, where it will release a faint and refreshing citrusy flavor.

Naturally, this method could be applied to any other citrus fruit.

* For more on that topic, check out C&Z readers’ tips for a green kitchen, including suggestions on how to reduce food waste.

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A few weeks ago, I read Tara Austen Weaver‘s book The Butcher and the Vegetarian, a memoir in which she writes about being brought up as a vegetarian and the challenges she faced as an adult, when she had to start cooking meat for herself to try to recover from a serious health issue.

It’s a very good read, witty and honest, and even for readers like me, who don’t share her dietary background or meat-handling angst, there are a lot of elements to relate to in her story. I especially enjoyed the sections where she addresses the political and ethical sides of the meat question in a remarkably level and dispassionate way.

A number of things she wrote stayed with me after I’d turned the last page, but there is one short passage in particular, early on in the book (p.31), in which her brother gives a technique for testing the doneness of red meat. It’s a small thing, but I liked the tip so much I thought I would, in turn, share it with you:

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