“I'm always giving away my recipes,” Neil Zevnick, Elizabeth Taylor's former personal chef, tells TODAY.com. “I'm not one of those cooks.”
He was Taylor's personal chef for nearly a decade in the '90s and says her favorite dessert always had to be on hand.
“She had a tiny refrigerator under one of her nightstands, and I always kept a container of Toffee Fudgies in there,” he says. “If she had the urge to eat Taffy Fudgie, it would be right there on hand.”
Recipe for Butterscotch Elizabeth Taylor — published exclusively for TODAY.com — he makes a dessert that is “halfway between brownie and fudge,” he says. It looks like edible brownie dough suspended in a sticky animation.
Zevnik says the treat has undergone “significant changes” over the years to better suit Taylor's tastes and has since become his “signature dish.”
Yawn warns that the Fudgies are “REALLY rich”, which is also a way of describing their benefactor's wealth. jewelry collection. Yawn says he and Taylor often chatted about her multimillion-dollar trinkets while hanging out in the kitchen.
“I'm very focused when I'm cooking, but in between cooking there were many times… when we sat and talked about all sorts of things,” he says, “about life, about relationships and the state of the world, and sometimes we talked about jewelry.”
This includes Krupp Diamond weighing 33.19 carats (later called the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond), given to her by Richard Burton, the man she married twice.
“She was at an event the night before, sitting in bed reading or something, and the ring was still on her hand, just laying there, and I looked at the ring and said, 'Can I?'” Zevnik recalls. “She sort of raised her hand, put it on top of my hand, paused and said, 'Vulgar, isn't it?'”
However, giant gems did not prevent her from enjoying everyday pleasures: Thanksgiving Buffets she received guests, put roasted turkey legs and “cranberry jelly from a jar” on a plate. She also enjoyed seating children, adults, celebrities and non-celebrities together at her parties to level the social playing field.
“She was a very down-to-earth, simple person,” Zevnik recalls. “When she was at home, she wasn't a diva.” And she just wanted to eat Fudgie.
Butterscotch Elizabeth Taylor
Recipe by Neil Zevnik
Ingredients
- 10 ounces semisweet and bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter
- 1½ cups cake flour
- 3 tablespoons unsweetened alkalized cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon espresso powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 bag of Heath toffee pieces
- 5 large eggs
- 2 cups fine granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon chocolate extract (optional)
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 325 F. Spray the inside of a 9×13 pan with nonstick cooking spray (I use “butter”).
- Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler, stirring until smooth. Cool slightly.
- In a large bowl, whisk together cake flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder and salt. Add Heath pieces.
- In a medium bowl, beat eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla extract, and chocolate extract until smooth. Pour 1/4 of the chocolate-butter mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly, then pour the egg mixture back into the chocolate mixture and beat until smooth.
- Pour the chocolate egg mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until the dry ingredients are combined.
- Pour the dough into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 30 minutes; the center will be soft, but not runny, and the edges will begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. Cut into small rectangles approximately 1×2 cm.
- Store in the refrigerator and preferably eat at room temperature. They keep well for a week or so.
