Great Cakes

There are an awful lot baking cook books available these days, but few are worth anything. This book is one of the few truly helpful books that actually shows you how to properly bake a cake. Many baking books feature a famous chef on the cover, along with casual recipe instructions and the admonition that this really is easy to do; usually, this is a lie. This book fills in all the details, and is really the only cake cook book you will need. Please note that this is not a "throw it together and bake" kind of cookbook; for these, I suggest books like The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, or Pillsbury's Best of the Bake-Off. The chapters are arranged like a textbook. The author expects you to systematically bake your way through each chapter in order, gaining skill and experience with each chapter. You are not suppose to skip around at random, picking out a few appealing recipes. The first chapter has pound cakes, the easiest; last chapter has European tortes and gateaux, the most difficult. It has chapters on ingredients, equipment, techniques, pound cakes, butter cakes, coffee / streusel cakes, cakes with fruit, sponge cakes, roulades, chiffon, angel food, american, cheesecakes, tortes and gateaux, filling, frosting, glazes, sauces and toppings, and decorations. The quality of the cakes are very high. When I need a high caliber Sacher Torte in a professional setting, the recipe comes from this book. It has a rare and complete recipe for Genoise. It is also one of the few books that insists on clarified butter for the Genoise (the only other one I can think of is Beranbaum's Cake Bible). The only real complaint I have is the suggestion to bang Genoise batter in the cake pan on the counter just before baking (never do this; better a couple of small holes in the finished cake than a deflated cake). Her recipe for chiffon cakes produces more loft than conventional procedures. I also wish the author would use the classic European names for the recipe titles; it would make looking up certain patissiere classics easier. The last section tells you how to match frostings and fillings to the cake, some valuable and hard to find recipes for glazes, and a definitive recipe for creme anglaise. There is also information on substituting different baking pans, and a sufficient amount of information about cake decorating for the home baker. The most vexing feature of this book is the format of the first part, which has critical information on tools, pantry, and techniques. This is a most important collection of information that is essential for baking, but is usually left out of most baking books. The bad part is that these three chapters do not have a listing of the subjects; if you need to find something, say how to fold an egg foam batter, you will have to leaf through the entire chapter to find it. All other chapters have a complete listing of recipes in the Table of Contents. One can disagree with the author on a few points: unbleache

This book is a great one for the intermediate baker. If you only want to piddle in making cakes get a joy of cooking, but if you love cakes as I do and are willing to spend the time, this is a wonderful book. This book is great but the only prob is that it has only a few pages of color photos but they help and are beautiful. It does have line drawings showing techniques.

Coveres: ingredients, equipments, procedures, pound cakes, buter cakes, nut cakes, cheesecakes, chiffon cakes, sponge cakes, fancy cakes, and low-fat cakes.Overall, this is a wonderful book. There are pages and pages of terrific explanations of ingredients and equipment and things to look out for. The explanations are all very clear. This is a great book for the beginnning cake baker. Even if you're intermediate, you can learn a lot from this book. I feel this is at a slightly lower level than "the cake bible". Many of the cakes are really easy and fast, and I don't think that, in general, the decorating taught here is that fancy. On the other hand, I really like the parts on "what can go wrong" which are comprehensive for each type of cake. So it's a different type of book. There is a much bigger cheesecake section here than in the "cake bible" and low-fat cakes that aren't included there. Like "the cake bible" there aren't that many pictures - if you're looking for a coffee table book go elsewhere. This book deserved its James Beard award.

We thought this was going to be one of those "gourmet" cookbooks that are about worthless to the average cook. But, not so! It is well worth the money! The Blueberry Crumb Squares, which is a coffee cake, was the most tender, melt-in-your-mouth, coffee cake that we have ever experienced! My daughter and I love cooking, especially desserts, and we are excited about the recipes in this book!

Kudos to Carole Walter. "Great Cakes" is a desserting and deserving winner of the James Beard Award. "Great Cakes" is much more user friendly than "The Cake Bible" and stands on its own among The Best of the Best