Great Cakes

Rating:
Summary: Learn How to Bake a Cake
Review: 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: unbleached flour does not have a higher protein content than all-purpose (this is brand dependent), the silly notion of melting chocolate in a 225 degree oven, and not supplying the flour measurements in weight as well as volume (she describes sift, spoon, and sweep, which is about 3 1/2 oz when I tried it). I also dislike her idea to dump out excess flour when flouring a cake into the sink; since flour tends to clog drains, I do it over a garbage can. The section on suggested equipment is comprehensive: 30 different cake pans are listed, about a dozen categorized as essential, and 50 different tools, about half categorized as essential. The pantry chapter has a good dissertation on the important ingredients and what to do with them. The chapter on techniques gives complete instructions for all of the important baking tasks, such as how to handle butter and fats, beating eggs, folding batters, lining baking pans, bain-marie, telling when cakes are done baking (it differs greatly depending on cake type), de-panning cakes, storage, and a fascinating section on freezing. The metric conversion table for liquids in the Appendix is wrong.



Rating:
Summary: The award-winner is back in print
Review: There simply isn't a better baking teacher than Carole Walter, and this wonderful book is packed with ideas no-fail recipes for everyday cakes and special cakes. And the bonus is the "quick and easy" section--more than 200 pages filled with recipes for cakes that can be made from scratch in less than an hour!

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: This cookbook has quickly earned the hallmarks of a great cookbook: its pages are dog-eared and ingredient stained. I bake a lot for my friends, family and church and this cookbook is an all-around winner. The sour-cream chocolate cake is meant to be eaten late at night with a glass of ice cold milk. I have made the fresh fruit and southern pecan pound cakes to rave reviews. I have yet to find a bad recipe. This weekend I plan to make the gingerbread and I am sure I'll not be disappointed. Thank you Carole!

Rating:
Summary: LOVE THE COCONUT CAKE RECIPE!
Review: This is a great cookbook for anyone who likes to make cakes from scratch. The coconut cake recipe is absolutely delicious! This is the only cookbook I use when I want to make a cake. Her directions are easy to follow and even a novice like me gets great results!

Rating:
Summary: LOVE THE COCONUT CAKE RECIPE!
Review: This is got to be your first step to cake education. Its more than a cook book, its a baking course between 2 covers. I recommond it in the shelf of every beginner baker.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent results for the average cook!
Review: 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!