Jacques Torres' A Year in Chocolate: 80 Recipes for Holidays and Special Occasions

Let your New Year’s resolution be Eat more chocolate.” With Jacques Torres’ A Year in Chocolate as your guide, you won’t have any difficulty sticking with it from January right on through December.

From the elegant Poached Pears with Chocolate Fondue to serve on New Year’s Day and a festive Bûche de Noël filled with chocolate cream and ornamented with meringue mushrooms, to homemade Easter eggs and autumnal Pumpkin Seed Brittle, the world-renowned pastry chef and chocolatier presents us with a calendar’s worth of treats sure to make every celebration more luscious.

All the holiday classics are featured here: Valentine’s Day bonbons, a molded chocolate Easter Bunny, ice cream sundaes for the Fourth of July, and Chocolate Caramel Corn for Halloween. But for Torres’ chocolate-drenched imagination, tradition is also a springboard; among the book’s many fanciful creations are Chocolate-Covered Matzohs for the Passover seder and a Chocolate Tamale to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Adapting all his recipes for the home cook, Torres showcases his favorite chocolate creationsfrom traditional French pastry to classic American treats. With 150 ecstasy-inducing photos of the finished dishes, A Year in Chocolate will be the chocolate cookbook of the season.