Birthday Cakes: Recipes and Memories from Celebrated Bakers

I LOVE this book and quite honestly I find the rather bland reviews perplexing. I tried the angel food cake recipe and it is by far the best I have ever made; tall, light and perfect. The Comfort's Coconut Cake is to die for and the Buttermilk Poppyseed bundt cake turned out great as well. I made a few others and not one got ho-hum from anyone. Seriously, I think the coconut cake alone justifies the purchase of this book and my girlfriend for whom I made this cake on her birthday agrees, two enthusiastic thumbs up! The other thing I really liked about this book is the great photos and the stories behind the cakes. It is our family tradition for me to bake a homemade, from scratch cake for everyone's birthday and my children thoroughly enjoyed thumbing through this book and saying "This is the cake I want for MY birthday!" What delight it elicited from each one to see the creation they picked sitting before them on their special day. I haven't tried the more complicated Princess cake but both my girls have tagged it as their choice for their sixteenth birthday. So what if it's complicated or time consuming, they only get one sixteenth birthday in their entire lives. Let's go out of our way to celebrate the life that is uniquely theirs. If you really are unsure about buying it, order it from your library and try it out. Then you can buy it with the confidence of experience. But don't miss this great resource for making memorable birthday cakes.

I almost didn't buy this book because of some of the lukewarm reviews, but I'm glad I did! This is a wonderful book with numerous recipes that are easy to make and delightful. The "1-2-3 cake" is one my children love to make. All the recipes are clear and should be easy enough for anyone who knows anything about baking. The decoration ideas have really helped me take my creations up a notch. I promise you'll enjoy this book from the beautiful pictures right down to the delicious finished products!

I couldn't disagree more with the above reviewer who felt this book "couldn't decide what it wants to be." I think the cookbook's purpose is clear: to provide great recipes to folks who don't need their hands held through the process of baking a cake, including some who aren't intimidated by four pages of instruction. Maybe it isn't for the novice baker, but I was thrilled with the illustrations, the birthday-memory anecdotes, and the variety of recipes.

This book is lovely. Is a wonderful collection of cake recipes, contains a good variety of well explained recipes with color pictures and well detailed intructions on how to create them at home. It also features a list of where to get cakecraft suppliers. Simply a beautiful book to look at!!!

First let me say the photographs are beautiful and the pages are thick! That is definitely a nice start for any book.The recipes range from a birthday cake for Elvis (chocolate with peanut butter and bananas) to chiffon cake to German chocolate cake to beautifully domed cakes covered in fondant (this recipe is from 'The Baker's Wife' by Ortiz.). There is nothing spectacular about any of the recipes...they are down-home good recipes that are accompanied by warm-hearted birthday tales.Anyone who has a favorite home-made birthday memory will love this book or someone who is looking for a 'simple' but stunning birthday cake that tastes great. I have really enjoyed reading this book and the Banana spice cake I made came out wonderful. I look forward to making many more cakes from this book.