Gourmet's Sweets:: Desserts for Every Occasion

`Gourmet's Sweets' by the staff of the magazine `Gourmet' is an older volume (1998), done under the stewardship of Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl's predecessor, Gail Zweigenthal. Since the volume is dedicated entirely to desserts, it does not have the primary virtue of almost all the other `Gourmet' books, which typically begin with a large number, usually ten to twelve, of menus for entertaining. This volume fills this tradition with two very specialized menus for `A Garden Dessert Party' and `A Champagne Dessert Party' The main difference I see in this book, between the style of editor Zweigenthal and successor Reichl, is that the prose is just a bit `breathless', as if the authors are so taken aback by the marvelous offerings that they are just too tickled to deal with mundane matters. Reichl's editing seems to give far more respect to the intelligence of her audience. On the other side of the coin, the text is not infected with those malignant terms spoiling contemporary popular culinary prose such as `signature', `decadent', and `tons of...'. The best audience for this book is a bit hard to place. On the one hand, true to the `Gourmet' style, many of the recipes are fancy originals or fancy versions of old standards, done up in their best party garb. This means the instructions for recipes are far more elaborate than you may find in more conventional sources. And, the elaborate recipe write-up extends even to those `everyday' desserts. One perfect example is when I compared this book's Moravian sugar cake recipe to the one in my local church fund-raising cookbook. The church book actually had one more ingredient (margarine and shortening in place of butter), but the `Gourmet' recipe spelled out all the steps in far more detail. While the church cookbook called for (leftover) mashed potatoes, `Gourmet' gave us chapter and verse on how to prepare the potatoes for the recipe. While the `Gourmet' book had richly detailed recipe procedures and supplementary sections on basic pastry techniques, it was NOT a good replacement for one of the excellent baking manuals available today such as `Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook', Sherry Yard's `The Secrets of Baking', or Kate Zuckerman's `The Sweet Life'. It is simply a collection of good dessert recipes at a reasonable price. So, if you know how to bake and you have room on your shelves for another book of desserts, this is as good or better than many you can pick for the price. I should also note that the recipes are quite modern, as illustrated by the use of butter (see above) in place of margarine (watch those trans-fats!). And, like all `Gourmet' collections, the index is an excellent guide to finding a suitable recipe by ingredient and time to prepare.

I`ve only recently found this magazine but I`d have to say already that it`s one of the greatest there is and this book just proves that point even more. Gourmets Sweets has catered for everyone with 200 mouthwatering desserts from profiteroles to icecream and sauces to souffles with 75 full colour photos of delightful and impressive desserts. It`s not hard to see why GOURMET is Americas premier cooking magazine.