I Heart Dessert

Yay! I just got the new Dean & DeLuca Fall Catalog. They have a lot of new items, especially for Halloween. As always, Dean & DeLuca have the most mouth-watering pictures…here are some of the ones that have caught my eye:

Fall Cupcakes – 9 for $55, Three each of Pumpkin with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Icing, Cinnamon with Mayan Chocolate Buttercream Frosting and Vanilla with Vanilla Frosting.

Pumpkin Truffles – $36, These truffles are filled with white chocolate ganache with a hint of nutmeg and wrapped in dark chocolate. The flavor sounds so interesting!

Caramel Apples – $48, I love caramel apples and nothing says Halloween quite like these caramel & chocolate dipped ones.

Pumpkin Cake – $120, This cake is too cute! It has six layers of vanilla spiced cake with praline butter cream and also a layer of chocolate fudge.


Apple Crate Cake – $200, This cake is almost unrecognizable! It really looks like a crate with apples inside. No wonder it costs so much.

Green Tea Truffles – $42, The color of these green tea truffles definitely caught my eye.

Chocolate of the Month – $180-$720, I’ve heard of monthly wine clubs, monthly coffee clubs, even monthly fruit clubs, but a Chocolate of the month program is definitely something new and more my style. You now have the opportunity to try a new assortment of chocolates each month and have them delivered right to your doorstep. There’s a 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month program.

The Ultimate Chocolate Truffle: La Madeleine Au Truffle -$350, The description says its a “1 oz. fresh tuber melanosporum dipped in a dark chocolate ganache“. Ok, I know what you guys are asking…what is a tuber melanosporum? Well, that’s just the scientific name for a Black Truffle. And it’s not to be confused with chocolate truffles. Although in this case this Truffle is in a way a chocolate truffle, more like a chocolate truffle truffle. Anyway, Black Truffles are those very expensive fungi found in France by specially trained pigs or dogs. I’m not sure how you would even eat this ultimate truffle, just bite into it? And I’m also curious about the taste…I like chocolate truffles and I like Black truffles in dishes, but the two together seems like a pretty odd combination.

During my trip to Vegas a few weeks back, I was had some of the best creme brulee. I’m usually not fond of creme brulee, because 1) I’ve never really had great tasting creme brulee before and 2) there’s no chocolate in it & I tend to not order non-chocolate desserts (that’s just the chocoholic in me). But, the creme brulee I tried in Vegas made me see creme brulee in a new light and see how versatile and delicious it could be. The creme brulee dessert I tried, was a duo of creme brulee, one was classic vanilla and the other was deep chocolate. I was surprised to see a chocolate creme brulee, this was new to me and boy was I excited. So, now I’m sort of in my creme brulee phase and craving it more than ever. I’m in the process of looking for a creme brulee torch, so that I can whip it up in my kitchen, but I’m stuck on whether I should invest my money into an expensive professional one or just get one of those dinky creme brulee torch sets. Bed Bath and Beyond, sells a creme brulee torch set that comes with a torch and 4 ramikins for $19.99. This sounds much more tempting than the Williams Sonoma torch for $39.95 which sadly comes with nothing else. Oh, decisions decisions.

Bed Bath & Beyond Torch Set
Pros: $19.99 and I can use the 20% off coupon. Sweet!
Cons: there’s probably a 90% chance that the torch will be a dud

Williams Sonoma Kitchen Torch
Pros: you could probably torch to your heart’s desire with this baby
Cons: $39.95…and this torch probably won’t be used very often in a regular kitchen