Award winning author, pastry chef, and teacher, Alice Medrich is one of the country’s foremost experts on chocolate and chocolate desserts. Since 1976, when her renowned dessert shop, Cocolat, opened and her first dessert feature appeared in a national publication, Alice’s innovative ideas and recipes and her insistence on quality ingredients have influenced a generation of confectioners, pastry chefs, and home cooks. Alice is credited with popularizing chocolate truffles in the US and (accidentally!) introducing the larger “American” chocolate truffle in Berkeley’s “gourmet ghetto”. Since the sale of Cocolat, Alice has continued to write, teach, and consult with venerable and emerging chocolate companies, including Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker. Her book, Bittersweet (Artisan 2003), named IACP cookbook of the Year, was the first book to decode the use of different percentage chocolates in recipes and to feature cacao nibs. Her latest book, Flavor Flours came out in November 2015 and won the 2015 James Beard Award for Best Baking and Dessert Book.