Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme

bought for my son's birthday, something he wanted, also bought macarons by pierre herme. very good quality and well illusrated.

This book was a disappointment- the measurements are volume only (cups), so for anyone accustomed weight measurements, just even browsing through this book is difficult - you really cant get an idea or feel for the recipe. The pictures are few and uninspiring.I don't like the writing style either - in the introduction to the recipes there are quotes from Herme-talking about his inspiration for the recipe, then the other author takes over and tells you things like `Pierre uses two different chocolates to make the mousse, but if you can only get one high quality chocolate, carry on - it will still be delectable'It just doesn't seem like a genuine collaboration - more like Greenspan was given Hermes recipes and a short note on his inspiration behind it, and it was then just reworked to fit the American, home cook market. Lazy and Uninspiring.A better option would be Herme's 'Pastries' book.Personally, I no longer buy Pierre Herme books-I find that too many of them are just reworked recipes from his other books - it just comes across as lazy (and if you have his PH10 book, you'd never need to buy another of his books anyway-since all the other books seem to be a rehash of these recipes)

Product arrived within the stated time frame and was received in perfect condition and was exactly what I was looking for.

I recently learned about Pierre Hermé and found a few really interesting recipes in food blogs. So I decided to buy this book which to me looks really modern and promising from the outside, in hope to learn the delicate tricks of frensh patisserie...The book has really disappointed me, the inside is really badly designed and not a single recipe inspired me to even read entirely...Furthermore, the book seems to be addressed to people who don't even know the basic recipes of patisserie and desserts. Although I wouldn't consider myself to be an overly knowledgable cook, I would say that only 20% of the recipes were in any way new to me...I am returning the book and would only recommend it to someone who wants to learn desserts from scratch....

I suppose and perhaps, people will be drawn to Pierre on the basis of his reputation. I sadly am now disavowed of this. From a marketing point of view this book will probably be superficially attractive and a logical expansion of Pierre's reportoire.Unfortunately it proved to be in the same vane as Danni Minogogue, Rick Astley, John Major and Jamie Oliver in its mediocrity but worse... and by means of a tested example...the recipes (reported in the third person) obviously have not been subject to any cursory scrutiny.I have now tried Pierre's "inside-out" puff pastry exhausting at least 5 kg of butter and a mountain of flour from various sources and a range of temperatures not called for in modern culinary practice.Whereas I understand the difficulty of this pinnacle of dough's I challenge ANYBODY to achieve even a satisfactory product using Pierre's 'novel' approach. I hesitate using the F word, but faux springs to mind. I could not possibly recommend this nonsense. Stick to Roux brothers..It's damn hard but at least it's not disingenous.Marketing gone mad. 1 star- the minimum i could give, this is NOT a stellar product