Celebrate with Chocolate: Totally Over-the-Top Recipes

Don't let the relatively diminutive size of Marcel Desaulniers's Celebrate with Chocolate fool you. In this age of coffee-table cookbooks, the 45 recipes and 16 pages of color photographs in this book might lull you into thinking that these desserts are simple. But look carefully at the cover and see the important subtitle, Totally Over-the-Top Recipes.

The almost 20 pages of clear, easy-to-follow information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques give the confidence needed to tackle projects like the five-page Dancing Gingerbread Men Peppermint Fudge Cake: super-spicy, mildly chocolaty, moist sponge cake layers are separated by voluminous white chocolate mousse mixed with mini chocolate chips and crushed peppermint candy, and then enveloped with a smooth chocolate glaze and topped with dancing gingerbread men. Not exactly child's play. For those not easily intimidated, Desaulniers has a seriously decadent recipe for Granny's Chocolate-and-Walnut-Covered Coffee-Cocoa Marshmallow Squares. When you finally unstick your kitchen, the dense, richly flavored, chewy marshmallow bites will elicit groans of pleasure.

There are also a few less complicated concoctions such as Bob's Big-Ass Chocolate Brown Sugar and Bourbon Birthday Cake, Double Chocolate Pecan Tart, and the surprisingly easy Cocoa Berry Yogurt Mousse, which comes together in just a few minutes. For the most part, the cakes, cookies, frozen desserts, mousses, candies, and other chocolate treats in Celebrate with Chocolate are not for the faint of heart or the kitchen novice, but if you're seriously into chocolate, and are up for the challenge, let Desaulniers be your guide. --Leora Y. Bloom