michael rostang's double chocolate mousse cake.

Does this cake look like a giant round of chocolate truffle or what? Sorry just had to get that out of my mind and out of the way.

(how-to) ridiculously tall pancakes.

Are you one of those people who look at pancakes that are about three quarters of an inch tall and immediately your eyes narrow as if to sneer disapprovingly - "Fluffy? Those frisbee things?"? Chances are you think that if you have to stoop to view your stack of pancakes at eye level to capture how "tall" they are, they are nowhere near your desired level of thickness. No. Thick and fluffy pancakes are pancakes that no matter what angle from which they are looked at, are undeniably - for the lack of synonyms - tall. That would mean that the pancakes would have to be at least an inch high, and preferably a lot more.

But how?

99% of the recipes out there with superlatives like "fluffiest", "thickest", "bestest buttermilk" (because in the pancake world buttermilk is a sure ticket to fluffy pancakes) often produce pancakes that often fall short - literally - of your expectations. After trying out quite a few myself, I came to the conclusion that even a pancake batter of the greatest potential to rise is unable to achieve great pancake heights by itself. Essentially I mean to say that the key to two-inch-tall pancakes (which incidentally is roughly the height of these pancakes) lies in not just the rising power of the pancake batter but also in the method used to make the pancakes.

Are you curious as to what the method is? Then read on, fellow pancake maniacs!

nutella french toast pudding.

The history of hybrid desserts often goes something like this: If chocolate chip cookies and brownies/pancakes and french toast/doughnuts and croissants are already so good on their own, won't combining them result in double the deliciousness?