Chez Panisse Desserts: A Cookbook

Some of the recipes look really creative and sound excellent. After this purchase, though, I would avoid buying cookbooks listed as being in "acceptable" condition. There are food splatters, grease, and blobs of chocolate all over the cover and throughout the pages of the book. I'm a little bit surprised that it was considered sellable. It's stained and dirty to the point that I don't think I'll use the copy I got. If you have the chance, I would recommend buying it to anyone who loves to bake. I think I'm going to buy a new copy somewhere else.

I couldn't agree with Bob Carpenter more! I do exactly the same thing. I started making the ice creams and sorbets this summer. I've been making ice cream for twenty years - it's NEVER been better. I DO bake, unlike Mr.Carpenter, but I've been so wrapped up in the frozen desserts that I haven't even gotten to the baked stuff. Bob, if you haven't, make the meyer lemon sorbet. It's a revelation. Lindsey Shere's retired now, and I guess that means no more books. Too bad. She was a true original.

With the taste of the wild plum sherbet (p. 174) still on my palate, I have to tell you that this is the only book you'll ever need to make the most spectacular sherbets and ice creams you've ever had. Lindsey Shere organizes her book around types of fruit, and the comparative analyses are alone worth the price. You quickly learn how apples, pears and quinces differ from berries and how they both differ from summer fruits such as nectarines and plums. This book has a lot of classic tart, cobbler and related recipes. I don't bake and use this book solely for fruit sherbets and ice creams! I can attest to the results of several fruit cobblers that my wife made from this book (she's used it for years), but I can't vouch for the recipes firsthand.For the past two years, I've been following Shere's inspiring book religously in making sherbets and ice creams from whatever's fresh at the Union Square Greenmarket on a given Saturday. I've made wild plum sherbet, nectarine sherbet, apricot sherbet, apricot ice cream, peach ice cream, blueberry ice cream, raspberry sherbet, strawberry sherbet, strawberry ice cream and even coconut (though those weren't grown locally). Each one has been great, and I'm only using a fifty dollar Krups ice cream maker. The differing recipes and strong attention to technique provide a clinic on balancing acidity through lemon peel, sweetness through sugar, and texture through blending and straining.

Seriously! In the 8+ years I've owned this book (in hardcover), I've looked to it almost exclusively for simple, but elegant dessert recipes. Whether for backyard barbeques, special occasions, or swanky dinner parties - the recipes have always produced perfect desserts that have dissappeared off plates and left everyone raving. As I delve deeper into the recipes, I'm constantly discovering new flavors and desserts to add to my repetoire. The author takes the time to describe preparation concepts and technique with enough detail to make sure the cook succeeds, with plenty of suggestions for variations and embellishments. Sure, there are a lot of ice cream recipes - but they happen to yield some of the most exquisite ice creams and sherberts I've ever tasted (I now grow jasmine just for this purpose). When I decide to make a dessert, this book is the first, and often the only, place I look.

I've made a lot of pies in my day, and the crust is always the hardest to do right. Even if you use nothing else in this book, the pie crust recipe is worth the price of admission all by itself. The lemon meringue pie, lemon tart, apple pie, vanilla ice cream, you name 'em, they're all infallibly good. You can't live without this book another day.

I was not put off by the large number of recipes calling for an ice cream maker. This seemed reasonable for ice cream recipes. The book has much more to offer: ice creams, sherbets, custards, tarts, cakes, simple or complex fruit desserts, chocolate, spirited desserts, you name it. If you want to make delicious seasonal desserts, from early summer strawberry ice cream to a quick dessert of maple custard for an autumn eveing, or a buche de noel for Christmas, or poached dried fruits in darjeeling syrup, this is THE book to have!