How do we love chocolate? Let us count among the ways two recent, sharply contrasting approaches:

• “Naked Chocolate” by David Wolfe and Shazzie (Maul Brothers, $24.95) will seem tough love to many. The authors, an American nutritionist and a British woman described as a health educator, are passionate about the virtues of chocolate in a narrowly prescribed form: raw organic cacao beans.

The cacao beans are ground into a powder and used in many of the book’s 60 or so recipes, along with other ingredients that include fruit, nuts and seeds, all uncooked, though they may be crushed, pounded and dehydrated.

• “Hot Chocolate” by Michael Turback (Ten Speed Press, $9.95) takes an almost completely opposite tack. Turback, a restaurateur and food writer, summarizes chocolate’s origins and refers to health benefits, but stresses the voluptuous pleasure of ingesting it. He has no reservations about using processed chocolate and cooking up the richest possible drink of choice.

The choice he offers ranges over 60 varied concoctions, some shown in well-made color photos in this small-format book.

The recipes are rounded out with a happily sinful menu of whipped creams.

login to post comments