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How to make Ettore Bugatti's favorite Christmas desserts

Ettore Bugatti's love for cars spawned the automaker that bears his name, but that's not the only passion that he turned into a business. He channeled his love for food into a restaurant called Clos Saint Odile in Obernai, a small town in the Alsatian countryside located not far from the Bugatti factory in Molsheim. It still exists, it's now called La Fourchette des Ducs, and it still makes some of Bugatti's favorites dishes. In 2020, Bugatti taught hungry enthusiasts how to cook a Christmas dinner like its founder; he served minestrone, blazed duck breast with truffle puree and cassis sauce, and strawberry gratin. In 2021, the French company is zooming in on desserts. La Fourchette des Ducs offers customers a cart with 15 desserts around the holidays, including one called Tarte Obernoise that Bugatti served at his wedding. The full recipe is posted on Bugatti's media site. It looks relatively simple: making the dough requires flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, milk, and baking powder, while the filling consists of raspberry jam, egg whites, powdered sugar, and almond powder. It's more time-consuming than, say, opening a box of cake mix because the dough needs to rest for two hours, but at the end you'll be able to say that you made meringue.  If you're feeling ambitious or extra-hungry, Bugatti also provided the restaurant's recipe for hazelnut Kipferle (a croissant-shaped cookie). Making a batch is well within the average cook's reach. You'll need sugar, butter, sifted flour, hazelnut powder, vanilla pods, and cinnamon. If you're more interested in cars than food, you're out of luck: Bugatti hasn't shared how to assemble the Chiron's W16 engine.

Special Edition Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse sells for $2.5 million

Speculative investors should have held off on purchasing Facebook stock. Instead, they would have been wiser pooling resources for the Special Edition Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse. The one-off supercar, with an asking price of $2.5 million, was shown at "The Quail: A Motorsports Gathering" at Pebble Beach over the weekend... and it was sold to an unnamed buyer before the ink on its seven-digit sticker had dried.
While a standard Vitesse will set someone back about $2.2 million, the Special Edition's $300,000 premium bought a host of cosmetic enhancements (the 1,200-horsepower quad-turbo W16 remains untouched) including a paint job specially prepared as a tribute to the 1928 Type 37A. The top half of the aluminum body is painted in Bianco while the lower half is New Light Blue. Inside the two-place cabin is custom-tailored Cognac leather with contrasting New Light Blue stitching, blue accents in the door handles and map pockets. Pictures don't do it justice.
Before you question a cosmetic upgrade costing more than the average new home, there are a few things to take into consideration. First, Bugatti has had no trouble selling more than 300 Veyrons to date, and as far as we can tell there has been zero depreciation on the secondary market for special one-off models. Second, there are less than 80 build slots left before production stops on what will eventually be considered one of the most extraordinary supercars of its era (and the Vitesse is a the top of the model range). Lastly, consider the interesting backstory about this particular white and blue vehicle.

The Bugatti Baby II is a three-quarter-scale Type 35

Bugatti ownership is about to get a lot more affordable — particularly for children with indulgent parents. The French supercar company has announced the Bugatti Baby II, a follow-up to a model produced from 1927 to 1936. Like the original baby Bugatti, a model originally built for the 4-year-old son of Ettore Bugatti, the Baby II is modeled after the Type 35 grand prix car. The Baby II is only about 1/100th of the price of the Chiron Sport at 30,000 Euro (about $33,700). And because it's a three-quarter-scale replica rather than the original's half-scale, it's possible for adults and not just children to squeeze behind the wheel. Finished in French Racing Blue (although other colors can be specified), the Baby II also features eight-spoke aluminum wheels, a leather driver's seat, and an aluminum-trimmed dash displaying a numbered plaque. On the hood is Bugatti's "Macaron" badge, rendered in solid silver, just the thing for the silver-spoon set. As with the original, the Baby II features an electric powertrain and rear-wheel drive, although here it has been upgraded to incorporate a lithium-ion battery, regenerative braking, and even a limited-slip differential. Whereas the full-size Chiron supercar has 1,479 horsepower from its 16-cylinder engine, the smaller-scale Bug is somewhat less powerful, with an electric motor offering 1.3 horsepower in "child mode," which is good for 12 mph; an "adult mode" increases output to just over 5 hp and raises top speed to 28 mph. But just as the Chiron offers an optional Speed Key that unleashes the powertrain's full potential, so too does the Baby II — in this case 13 horsepower with no speed limiter. Typical for Bugatti, production is limited. Only 500 units will be built, about the same number as the 1920s–'30s original. Related Video: