Sharing Gifts of Food for Christmas, by the Book : 1988’s Holiday Volumes Address Topics From Cookies to Environmental Toxins

Fantasy Chocolate Desserts by Robert Lambert (Chronicle Books: $14.95, 108 pp.)

The luscious illustrations in this beautiful book give a feeling of gratification to any food art lover, and perhaps a sinful craving to the chocolate lover. Bay Area food artist and pastry chef Robert Lambert successfully delivers his creative message, arousing sweet taste buds with his stunning chocolate desserts. Award-winning photographer Patricia Brabant, who specializes in food, helped produce the dramatic effect that Lambert wanted to project.

The good basic recipes in the cookbook include a variety of genoises, tortes as well as fruit, chocolate, and custard fillings and sauces. However, the interesting part lies in the assembly and presentation of each chocolate dessert, using exciting colors and shapes. Every serving plate becomes a stage and stimulates the imagination. For instance in his recipe for Raspberries with Custard and Fruit Sauce, Lambert coats a 10-inch black dinner plate with a vanilla custard sauce. Using a plastic bag with small hole at the tip, he squirts out a squiggle of a raspberry sauce, then another lacing of apricot sauce across the custard. Berries are scattered about and the plate gets a final garnish of broken shards of white chocolate “tile” with multihued striping.

Another example is the Chocolate Ribbon Cake, which is made with layers of genoise, custard and nectarines. The cake is frosted with white chocolate ganache and garnished with ribbons and cut-outs of colorfully tinted chocolate. An apricot pie becomes a piece de resistance for the chocolate freak when flavored with brandy and latticed on top with chocolate pastry.

Creating dishes for many celebrities, the author was once asked to prepare a dessert for a small buffet dinner for the cast of Dynasty. He recreated the recipe in the book and called it Joan Collins’ Broken Heart. The “broken heart” was molded from Coeur a la Creme with a crack along the center while dark chocolate tiles were used to line the crack. To create the effect of blood, Lambert poured red raspberry sauce into the break so it pooled around the heart.

Throughout the book, there are anecdotes and commentary that give a history of how and why each dessert was created, enough to provide reading pleasure to the beholder.