ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

ChefSteps

Always wanted to create an epic multicourse dinner? In our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/tasting-menu-spring">Tasting Menu: Spring</a> feature, we’re sharing recipes from a carefully orchestrated tasting menu we served at a cozy spring dinner party in the ChefSteps kitchen.Our menu description: Chocolate. Cherry. Cream.


But really, what’s in there? An elegant slice of flourless chocolate “cake,” a ganache “cherry,” homemade cherry sorbet, and a cookie crumble borrowed from <a href="http://milkbarstore.com/main/">Momofuku Milk Bar</a>—plated to resemble a pretty forest glen.


Plating suggestion: An earthenware plate


Pair with: A Recioto di Soave from Northeast Italy 


Wine note: This sweet wine from the Veneto vinicultural zone in Italy is made from the garganega grape. Lighter in body than many sweet wines, it’s a great way to mellow things out toward the end of the meal.About the dish: A mini slice of custardy chocolate cake. A plump “cherry” carved from rich ganache and dipped in a glimmering glaze. Smooth, ruby-hued sorbet. A crunchy crumble that calls to mind Oreo cookies. It all adds up to a scene-stealing dessert—the kind your friends and family will recall years later while discussing the best dishes of their lives.A traditional black forest torte involves chocolate cake laced with kirsch, the signature cherry liqueur of Germany’s Black Forest region. Sour cherries snuggle between the layers of the confection, along with whipped cream flavored with yet more liqueur. The result: a dense, booze-soaked dessert designed to thwart the best-laid plans of dieters and teetotalers the world over. This riff dials back the sugar and chucks the hooch, involving instead some novel, work-intensive components. We consider it a labor of love, however, since the custardy little cake never fails to wow and the sexy “cherry” has aphrodisiac powers that put Barry White’s most velvet-toned tunes to shame. Plus, the process is at once fun and incredibly empowering—engendering a sense of serious modernist mastery even before you’ve elicited the inevitable “oohs” and “aahs” from your very happy dinner guests.