Boom!

Hello, I'm Julia Child.

Welcome to my house.

What fun we're going to have baking all kinds of incredible cakes, pies and breads right here in my own kitchen.

David Ogonowski's known for the fanciful desserts he created at Olive's in Boston.

Today, he indulges our fantasies with this triple chocolate truffle treat.

Learn how you can make it, too, on... [Captioning sponsored by VIEWERS LIKE YOU] Look at this marvelous chocolate dessert.

We have a chocolate pastry shell filled with... what is this, David Ogonowski?

This is David's creation.

What have we got inside there?

We've got a chocolate truffle filling which is filled with white chocolate, milk chocolate, biscotti.

We have a cocoa cookie, which is holding an espresso parfait.

Pastry chef David is going to create this whole thing for us.

How do we begin?

We're going to begin, Julia with the pâte sucre, the cocoa pâte sucre for the crust.

I'm going to take 2½ cups of flour.

Is this just regular, unbleached all-purpose?

This is all-purpose.

For this particular recipe, it's what works best.

Yeah.

I'm going to take half a cup of sugar.

I'm going to take half a cup of cocoa.

Now, which... which kind of cocoa is that?

This cocoa is Dutch processed.

Yeah.

To this, I'm going to take half a teaspoon of salt Mm-hmm.

I'm going to sprinkle that on.

And I have two sticks of butter here which are waiting to go.

I'm going to cube these.

Half a pound.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

So, now that I've got this in cubes we're ready to go.

I'm going to take the dry ingredients, here-- you sort of roughly blend them on the table.

You prefer doing this by hand rather than machine?

I do, I find that the machine, with a small amount-- it doesn't really work the butter in very well... and you end up with clumps that you have to go in with your fingers and break them up, anyway.

We're going to work the butter-- break it up with fingertips as quickly as possible.

So, you have your butter really chilled before you begin.

Yes, you don't want to have it frozen, by any means because you want to be able to... Because you can't work with it, yeah.

Right, you want it to be somewhat malleable.

But you want it to be pretty much fresh out of the refrigerator.

And this is, naturally, unsalted butter, isn't it?

Exactly, it's sweet butter.

And sweet, unsalted butter is, most of the time even though you don't find this out it's much fresher and it's also a lot easier to work with because there isn't any salt and you don't have to be left wondering how much to add to a recipe.

So, I'm going to take it and just work it through my fingers pinching it a little more vigorously and I want to work it into approximately pea-sized pieces about a quarter of an inch.

Mm-hmm.

And the finer that you take them down the smaller that they are the more crumbly and the more cookielike a result you'll have.

Oh, and that's what you want.

I want this to be somewhere in between flaky and cookielike.

Mm-hmm.

So, I'm just going to take it up in my palms like this once it's sufficiently broken down.

So, I'm just going to take a plastic pastry scraper.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm just going to go through this and... Well, that chops it up more.

chop, should there be any larger pieces.

Mm-hmm.

Bring it all back together.

I'm going to take my mixture make a small fountain or well, as they are called.

Mm-hmm.

So, I'm going to take two eggs and I want the yolks, I want two of the yolks which I'm going to pop right into the well.

So, I've got two yolks there and I'm going to take two tablespoons of ice water and add those to the mixture, as well.

And now I'm going to take this-- briefly, just break up the yolks blend them in with the water and then, just slowly start to add dry ingredients from the outside.

And... That's the really old-fashioned way of doing it.

It's... it works... it works really well.

Yeah, mm-hmm.

And I'm going to take the whole thing and just sort of lightly toss it together.

So now, at this point I've chopped it all with my pastry scraper I've got it sitting here on the bench-- I'm just going to take the heel of my hand and the French call this "fraising" in English, "crushing the dough" and just take little bits of it to make sure... Well, that's sort of melding everything together.

that it's mostly blended together.

Exactly-- I do the fraising once through.

Mm-hmm.

And I just take it; kind of roughly form it into a rectangle.

So, now I'm going to take the dough, Julia-- I'm going to cut it in half.

Yeah.

The entire recipe will make 12 tarts.

Today, I'll make six.

And does it freeze?

It freezes perfectly.

Good.

So, I'm going to take half of it.

Take half of it and wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge.

And take half of it and wrap it in plastic and put it in the freezer.

The dough that I put in the refrigerator is going to need to rest for at least 20 minutes.

To get really chilled.

To chill the butter... Mm-hmm.

and to let the gluten in the flour relax.

It really is crumbly, isn't it?

It is, it's somewhat a cross between a cookie and a pie dough.

Yeah.

And then I'm just going to take this and flatten it out to further blend the ingredients while it rests.

Mm-hmm.

Now I have the dough which has sat for about half an hour in the fridge-- a minimum of 20 minutes.

It's good and chilled.

It... it's very chilled.

It needs to be sufficiently cold so that you can work with it.

If the butter's too soft it's going to smear out onto the countertop.

You're going to have to use a lot of flour to hold it together.

It just isn't going to work too well.

I'm going to dust it with a little bit of flour... Mm-hmm.

just to make sure it doesn't stick to our countertop.

And I'm going to proceed to line six flan rings.

Now, I'm spraying these all down with nonstick vegetable spray just around the edges.

These are false-bottom pie rings but I've found, after working with this dough a few times that you don't actually need the bottoms, so... That's because you've got this parchment...

Right, I'm using a parchment liner and spraying the bottoms and then just fitting them in.

These are five inches.

Five-inch rings.

Exactly.

So, I'm going to divide this dough into approximately six.

This is one-sixth of my block of dough.

And that's really chilled, isn't it?

I'm going to form it into a rough circular pad because that's what I'm aiming for.

Yeah.

I'm going to take my rolling pin... tamp it out... and dusting it with flour as I need to.

Mm-hmm, using as little as possible.

As little as possible and also making sure that it doesn't stick so there are those two... those two extremes to be concerned with.

And this dough tends to be a little bit brittle because there is a lot of sugar in it and it tends to shorten it even further.

Mm-hmm.

So it may break apart occasionally.

I use my bench scraper to scrape it up.

Yeah.

I'm not going to need this.

That was excess just to make sure I had enough.

Take it up on my rolling pin.

I'm going to take this and guessing where it will fall as best I can... Yeah.

drop it into the flan and then ease the dough into the ring using... being as gentle as I possibly can to make sure that I don't stretch it out.

And I just pinch it into the sides.

Mm-hmm.

And then I press it off with the palm of my hand.

You can use a rolling pin if you want to.

Just roll it across the top.

And if I have any holes since the dough is a little bit brittle you can just go and take pieces of scrap and just patch them.

You can patch the sides, too, if you wanted.

Right.

Yeah.

And what we need to do now now that we have six of these ready-- we need to let them rest for at least 20 minutes, and chill And chill.

So, I'll put these in the fridge.

Thank you.

Now I have six of the tarts that have been sitting for approximately 20 minutes, half an hour in the fridge, to firm up the butter and to relax the gluten.

Pricking them, this is to keep them from rising up?

Exactly.

Okay, shall we bake them?

Let's bake them.

I'll open the oven.

And they bake at 350 degrees for about 12 to 15 minutes and I turn them halfway through... Yeah.

which is always a good idea to make sure they bake evenly.

I think they're done.

They look great, Julia.

You see they're sort of dry on top.

Mm-hmm.

They don't feel at all damp to the touch.

They're beginning to separate a little bit from the molds.

They will shrink a little bit especially toward the end of their baking time.

So, in other words, they're done.

That's another good sign.

Great, great.

Now are you going to make that delicious filling?

Right, we're going to move on to the truffle filling.

Good.

So...

Check on your water, there.

Okay?

What I'm going to do, for starters is take six ounces of bittersweet chocolate chop it up.

And this is that fancy chocolate you buy at a pastry store.

I would advise when making this that you do pick a very delicious brand of chocolate.

Don't skimp because it's a wonderful tart that really exposes the flavor.

Mm-hmm.

I'm going to take five tablespoons of butter.

So, I'm going to take the butter.

I'm going to put that in first just to protect the chocolate... Mm-hmm.

from any sort of scorching that could possibly go on.

Then, I'm going to add the chocolate.

So, I'm going to turn the cooktop down just a bit under the chocolate because what we want is simmering water.

If it starts to boil, it's going to be a little bit too hot.

Yes, that's practically melted now, isn't it?

Right, it's pretty fast.

Yeah.

Just want to make sure that you don't leave any one particular piece of it exposed to heat for too long.

You want to be very, very careful about stirring it and blending it thoroughly so that it all melts down as one mass.

What I'm actually going to do is turn the heat completely off... there we go-- while we prepare the other filling ingredients.

Now I'm going to take the other components Now I'm going to take the other components of our... our truffle filling which are biscotti pieces... Mm-hmm.

milk chocolate and white chocolate and I'm going to chop them into small dice so that they're ready to go.

And you just want to ferret out any... any larger chunks that you've missed so that you... you get them all fairly uniform.

Mm-hmm.

About how much of each of the... Two ounces of each.

Two ounces of each.

So, we're ready to go with these.

I'm just going to move them... move them aside so they're all ready to roll.

Now that I've got the chopped pieces of biscotti and chocolate I'm ready to separate eight eggs.

I need eight egg yolks for the filling.

Eight egg yolks.

And I'm just using shell halves to flip the yolk back and forth to pull the white out.

And these are US graded large eggs.

Large eggs are... are what most chefs prefer-- there has to be some sort of standard.

Yeah, and that really gives it.

Now I'm going to take the egg yolks; I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract-- real vanilla extract.

Real vanilla.

Not the phony imitation stuff.

Here we go.

I'm going to turn this on, I'm going to crank it up and then after I've slightly... slightly blended them I'm going to gradually add the sugar and then continue whipping until I form a very thick ribbon.

( beater whirring ) And what I want is a quarter cup of sugar.

I want to start beating the yolks before I add the sugar because egg yolks have a tendency to what we call "burn."

I understand at the restaurant you use a boiling sugar syrup because that heats the yolks.

And actually cooks them a bit further.

That's for safety's sake.

It is.

If you have good, fresh, chilled eggs, you're fine.

You don't have to worry about it.

It's also impractical to cook that small amount.

It really is thick, isn't it?

Yeah, it thickens right up.

It gets very, very moussey.

I'm going to take the chocolate and the butter that we've melted down on the stove and I'm going to take the yolks.

Whenever you're making anything moussey where you want to retain some volume... Mm-hmm.

you generally want to take about a third of the mixture-- just eyeball a third of the mixture; fold that in to lighten the mixture scraping completely around the bowl to make sure that you pull up all of the other stuff in this case, chocolate and butter.

It's going to be so good.

So now that I've folded a third in; I don't even want to mix it completely in-- I just want to lighten it and... and scrape down the bowl.

Mm-hmm.

I'm going to add the contents of this with one-third of the egg yolk back into the other egg yolk.

Blend that almost together.

I'll have to say "num-num" at this point.

( both laugh ) Continue with the folding motion and folding is a motion that ensures you retain as much volume as you possibly can.

It's a very simple, kind of spiral rhythm around the bowl.

And it... you cut down through the middle lift up over the side and pull the mixture up onto itself and that way you cover the whole thing as you turn it and you get the most even incorporation.

You can see it's not quite entirely incorporated.

I'm going to stop there since I'm incorporating the chocolate pieces and the cookie pieces and have them finish the work for me.

So there we go.

Now we're going to take the tart shells that we have we're going to grab an ice cream scooper.

I'm going to take one scoop of this.

Well, that's a good idea.

I wouldn't have thought of putting it in with an ice cream scoop but it makes all the difference, doesn't it?

It's very easy, it makes it easy to control.

This is how to equip your kitchen.

Get all the things you might need.

Right.

And I have a small angled spatula right here which is also an indispensable...

Offset spatula.

Get all these things.

These are wonderful things to have because they allow you to just get in little corners.

And I'm going to take each of these and I'm just going to spin them in my hand kind of on an imaginary cake stand holding the spatula flush against and trying to push the pieces into the corners.

And what it will do as it bakes it will flatten out.

We're going to bake it at 300 degrees for just ten minutes which isn't enough to cook it but it sets the yolk a bit more so it's not quite this loose sort of fudge.

Now it goes in.

There we go.

Now that these are out of the oven we're going to let them set and cool while we prepare the espresso parfait.

I'm going to take two teaspoons of espresso powder and dissolve them with just enough hot water to dissolve.

Just work in a little bit of it and then stir it around with my finger.

With your impeccably clean finger as we always hasten to say.

Exactly, and we're going to add that to five yolks.

Now, I'm going to start beating this while the sugar's cooking.

This is a boiling sugar syrup.

I have a third of a cup of sugar couple tablespoons of water.

So how do you know it's cooked enough?

We're going to take a bit of it on a tip of a spoon.

Let's see you do it now.

We're going to plunge it into ice water and then quickly pop in with our fingertip and pull out one of the little sugar wads that's on the bottom.

You can see that... And it is a soft ball...

It just about forms a soft ball so I'm going to take the pot and just dip the bottom into the ice water bath just for a moment.

Just to stop the cooking.

Just-- exactly-- and I would ask you to pour while I whip.

So in order to speed the cooling along we can actually take the same ice water bath... plunge this bowl in and beat again till it's cooled down.

( whirring ) It's been about three to five minutes and we've cooled it down in our ice bath so we're ready to go with the whipped cream.

I have one cup of cream whipped to pretty much a soft mound so I'm going to take a third of this mixture and fold it into the egg-yolk-espresso ribbon.

We're not going to blend it all the way through.

What I want to do is just lighten it scrape through the bottom to make sure that I've cleaned the bowl as best I can.

Add the other two-thirds.

You don't want any traces of cream so toward the end, we're just going to gently... gently fold through to make sure that nothing is left.

So I'm going to grab this plastic container.

And the incredible thing about a parfait is that you can still freeze it.

It's much richer than an ice cream because of the yolks.

I chose a rather shallow container because this should sit in the freezer for about six hours.

I'm going to flush the top with film wrap to prevent any air or whatever from touching it in the freezer.

And I'm also... since I have a cover I'm going to use that.

It would be perfectly sufficient to just stop here.

Well, I'll take that and put it in the freezer.

Great, thanks.

Now, Julia, we're going to make some cocoa cookies.

Cocoa cookies!

I have a stick and a half of butter in the mixer.

That's six ounces.

Right, I'm going to crank this up on low speed.

And here, I'm going to assemble dry ingredients.

I have one cup and three-quarters of all-purpose flour.

I'm going to add a pinch of salt.

I'm going to add a pinch of baking powder.

And that's an official pinch right there in case there are any questions.

After it's creamed for a bit I'm going to add a cup of confectioners' sugar.

There's your powdered sugar.

You just don't want to make the mistake of adding the powdered sugar at the start because it has a tendency of... of exploding all over the kitchen.

And you even might want to pulse the machine at the start.

And take two tablespoons of cocoa.

A finger leveler.

It's a pretty level finger.

One teaspoon of vanilla.

One teaspoon.

And... start her up again.

We want to cream this at a pretty high speed.

And when it's sufficiently softened I'm going to take one egg yolk one tablespoon of milk, add those in.

Then I'm going to take my parchment just pour in your dry ingredients.

All at once.

And I'm also going to pulse this very slowly at the start just to make sure that it doesn't spatter all over the countertop.

You'll see it, it will start to come together and right at the point where the entire dough forms a mass-- whoops!-- I take it off the machine.

Pop it onto the countertop with a little bit of flour.

And I'm going to take the dough out clean off the paddle... and scrape the contents of the bowl out.

Sprinkle on a bit more flour and once again, with the palm of my hand just fraise it to make sure that it's, it's completely uniform.

It's also very soft because the butter was sufficiently softened when we made it.

Now, this is sufficient for a couple sheet pans a couple cookie sheetfuls of cookies.

So what I'm going to do is take half of this as I did with the tart dough at the start and save half for the freezer-- wrap that-- and I'm going to take the other half that we'll be using wrap it in plastic and chill it down for a good rest.

So there we go.

Now we're ready to roll some cookies.

We're going to take a portion of this dough.

Chilled dough.

Chilled dough and chilled marble.

And you chilled your marble.

Exactly.

Laid some ice on it.

I'm going to dust my surface with flour and I'm going to remember to use as much flour as necessary...

But not too much.

to keep the dough from sticking, but not too much.

I'm just going to tamp it down at the start.

You can see it pretty much soaks up a lot of flour right at the start.

So you want to give yourself as much as you need.

And I try and get it as thin as I possibly can because the compression on the dough and also the thinness, just helps them be a lot more crispy when they finally come out of the oven.

I'm going to take a pastry brush just brush off some of the excess flour on the top of the dough and we can always just cut around the aberrations.

And you're just avoiding the holes.

Right.

Fit one more in there... and then I'm just going to use my offset spatula and lift them up onto the baking sheet.

You can pop them in your hand if you want to lift them off.

As long as you don't have a hot hand.

( laughs ) Whenever you're baking anything, a cookie, tarts, for example you want to have them be as evenly spaced as you possibly can.

Oh, why is that?

What you get in an oven, you get a lot of hot spots and the sheet pan itself... if it just sort of makes sense that if the sheet pan has absolutely nothing on it that spot is going to heat up a lot more quickly than what's around it so the edges of certain cookies will burn while certain other ones are just beginning to bake.

Well, that's good to know.

So I'm going to take a bit of granulated sugar and dust them all with it which will help them be even a bit more crunchy than they would be give them a nice, little, sweet edge.

And I'm going to pop them in a 325-degree oven.

I'm going to give them about eight minutes.

Eight minutes.

I'm going to turn them, once again and I'm going to give them probably about seven more to make about 15.

Now you're going to assemble it.

We're ready to go, Julia.

What I'm going to do first I've got three kinds of chocolate once again.

I'm going to take some of the bittersweet just kind of spatter it around the plate.

Take some of the milk chocolate.

Take, finally, some of the white chocolate.

Well, that's fun, isn't it?

Oh, it's a blast.

( laughs ) It's great fun.

And I have my tart.

That's pretty, isn't it?

I have my chocolate cookie, cocoa cookie which will hold the parfait.

I'm going to take some fruits-- got some blueberries here, got some fresh raspberries.

That's a nice idea.

And I'll just garnish in a couple different spots on the plate.

I'm going to take a couple of the strawberries here.

And I'm just slicing this strawberry and...

Going to fan it out.

I'm going to pop that in there with the other fruits.

That's a nice idea.

And I have a couple of sprigs of mint that I'm going to grab from this bunch.

And I like to use just the tops.

I'm going to just top each grouping of fruit with a sprig of mint.

Now we're going to take a chocolate piece and I'm going to use these to garnish the plate.

Now I'm going to take our espresso parfait which has been sitting in the freezer.

And I'm going to shape ovals maybe clean it off with our other spoon.

And then you sort of ease it off onto the cookie smoothly as we can, and voila!

And voila!

That's lovely.

Thank you.

Are we going to eat it?

We're going to dig in.

That's lovely, just a little warmth in that and the pastry's so lovely and crumbly and it has a lovely taste.

It's a nice... it's a nice contrast with a lot of... a whole lot of textures are working and the creaminess and cold of the parfait against the creaminess and the warmth of the chocolate.

David, this is just a marvelous dessert.

I've never had so many interesting chocolate parts to something...

It's just lovely and I'm looking forward to making it, come what may.

Thank you very much, indeed.

Thanks for having me.

It was wonderful.

Julia's got the tastiest site on the Web Julia: Bon appétit!