Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts

"Alice Medrich is a great recipe writer and cook book author. Her recipes always work really well. I just love this book because it shows that you don’t need to overload desserts with cream and egg yolks to make them great. Yes, but she sold her company and then it closed. And as with a lot of people who leave the restaurant or professional baking business, she likely revised how she ate (which I did, too). People go to restaurants and love the food, but they should see what is in it. That pasta you love probably has eight ounces of butter in it. Here she does some swapping, for example taking out some of the butter and adding cocoa powder to dial up the chocolate flavour. In America people say “fat is flavour!” which is not true. There are things that don’t have fat but have a lot of flavour, like espresso, marshmallows and raspberries. I tend to make things with a lot of fruit. I wrote an ice cream book so I often serve an ice cream or a sorbet with fruit, with a slice of cake, just because that is the way I like to eat. I love ice cream and you can make a sorbet which is very light, because everyone in France is always on a diet. Not too much, because a lot of those desserts are things that you buy. People say to me, “Don’t you make your bread at home?” And I respond, “Why would I make my own bread? I live in Paris, it is really cheap and good here.” If I am going to get a fancy cake, I will buy it rather than make it. I have a small kitchen, so I am limited to what I can produce in it."