There’s a reason why so many of us covet those tattered recipe cards for our grandmothers’ cookies, cakes, and pies. For most of us, baking seems so precise and formulaic that it can be tricky to improvise, let alone innovate. Then there are the world’s baking dynamos, like pastry chefs Gale Gand from Tru in Chicago and Paige Retus from Olives in Boston, who don’t blink at pulling ingredients off the pantry shelf and creating something brand new.

因此，我们对它们进行了测试，将我们最喜欢的四种烘焙食材（巧克力，干樱桃，杏仁和咖啡）递给他们，以了解它们会创造的东西。最后，两者都用这些食谱使我们感到惊讶，这些食谱与美味一样大不相同。每个人都将我们介绍为她如何受到启发并创造自己的所作所为 - 让我们偷看了专业人士的创作过程。

Rules of the challenge.Before we let our chefs go wild, we laid down a few rules.

•可以掉落四种选择的成分（巧克力，干樱桃，杏仁和咖啡）。
• Also at their disposal were basic baking ingredients—butter, eggs, milk, flour (all-purpose and cake), sugar (white, light or dark brown, and confectioners’), salt, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla extract.
•可以添加另外两种通配符成分，以帮助使他们的想法唱歌。

大风甘德（Gale Gand）的巧克力陶器

最近，我发现自己被简单但具有很高吸引力的食谱所吸引。另外，在使用巧克力方面，我发现最好将其尽可能直接提供。因此，这片光滑，奶油般的巧克力天堂平板很少，成分似乎是完美的创造。没有其他多种口味，所以您最喜欢的就是巧克力的纯净本质，一旦它落在您的嘴里。当巧克力从舌头的温暖中融化时，其丝质质地的全部效果随之而来。

当我设计甜点时，我喜欢对比纹理，所以我知道我想要一些松脆的东西来夸大柔滑的感觉terrine。那是杏仁进来的地方。但是如何使它们甚至更脆弱。我把它们变成了脆性，煮糖，直到金黄色以使其味道更胖。虽然我用咖啡为陶土增添了味道，但干樱桃并不真正合适，所以我选择将它们抛在外。对于额外的成分，我想要一些轻微的奶油来依ne，依靠浓密的巧克力味。这是我认为所需的最终对比元素。- 加尔·加德（Gale Gand）

Paige retus在松饼锡中卷起一个完美的小咖啡蛋糕

当我看到这个富豪榜的成分,与咖啡fee capping off the list, I immediately thought of a yeasted cake or sweet bread, a compelling partner to a hot cup of brew any time of day. Cinnamon seemed a natural with the flavors given so I used it as one of my wildcard ingredients, along with yeast. I almost excluded the coffee, but as I was completing the cake, I felt it needed a glaze. Cinnamon was too strong, vanilla too distracting. Coffee came to the rescue—it was just right. The rich ingredients called for an equally rich and assertive dough to hold them—enter brioche. But brioche can be daunting. So, I monkeyed with the technique to take some of the spookiness out of it, and I sweetened the dough a bit. By leaving the dough to rise overnight in the fridge, you’re not waiting around for the dough to proof. I also used the overnight chill to my advantage: Brioche dough is naturally tacky, so working with it cold helps to minimize the stickiness during shaping. I wouldn’t even try working with this dough at room temperature.

这个咖啡点心从烤箱里很热，储存良好，像梦一样冰冻。我喜欢单个蛋糕的外观。柜台上装满这些釉面迷你蛋糕的篮子太诱人了，无法抵抗。- Paige retus