David Lebovitz loves Little Flower caramels, and the new cookbook

David Lebovitz knows his sweets. The Paris-based blogger is a former pastry chef at Chez Panisse and one of my favorite cookboook authors, with several dessert cookbooks and a guidebook to Parisian pastries to his credit. He knows his stuff.

So when he says that Pasadena’s Little Flower Candy Co. makes caramels that are the equal of anything he can find in France, that’s a pretty big deal.

“People often ask me, after taking a bite of a caramel in Paris: Why can’t they get caramels that taste like that in America?” he wrote in a blog post Thursday. “Like bread – those kinds of wonderful foods are, indeed, available, but you need to know where to look. A while back I was in Los Angeles and a magazine had mentioned Little Flower Candy Company’s caramels. So I ran to a store ... that sold them, and they were really excellent. They could rival anything in Paris. In fact, they were better than quite a few caramels I’ve had around here. And I’ve had quite a few.”

That all by way of introducing a recipe he’d found in owner Christine Moore’s new cookbook “Little Flower: Recipes From the Cafe.” It’s for chocolate caramel tartlets, which look really good. I’ve previously written about the book and Moore’s granola, which has been my staple breakfast for the last month and a half.

But I’m no David Lebovitz. Listen to the guy from Paris.

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