Rating: 
Summary: Exciting sounding...but a bit of a let-down
Review: The desserts described in this rather entertaining book are certainly mouth-watering. Although scattered with cute commentary (often very funny!) and interesting bits of information about times gone by, I find the recipes not to be very workable. My biggest pet peave is the 'Black and Whites', our beloved huge New York cookies,soft,lemony and satisfying. The recipe sounds great...but it doesn't work out! The batter spreads too much, so the cookies are very thin and fragile, with no body and the fondant frosting turns out a mess. A chef's book?
Rating: 
Summary: So I am not the only one that thinks this book stinks
Review: This book seems like a good idea. So far, I have tried to make the Lemon Pudding Cake, the Grasshopper Pie, and the Strawberry Shortcake. I had to throw the mess out EVERY TIME and start from scratch with my own modified version. This book is horrible!The recipes are just wrong and sometimes poorly written instructions. If I could meet the author, I would demand my money back and then punch him in the face for wasting hours of my time and nearly embarrassing me at my own dinner parties. I was going to donate this book to a charity, but why proliferate the bad recipes and frustrate someone else. I think I will just burn the thing.
Rating: 
Summary: What a fun book!
Review: This dessert book takes us back to a time before people were afraid to eat. Before low carb, high protein, no sugar,etc. was the rage. I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and I can tell you that happy people tend to live longer than unhappy people, and making these desserts will keep people HAPPY! Has anyone noticed that Julia Child has lived much longer than Jim Fixx? Most of the well known great chefs are living a long, long time. The Chocolate Blackout Cake in this book is THE BEST, as well as the other 8 recipes I have tried. Order this book, use it, and enjoy. You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty, but recipes don't work
Review: When I saw this book, I had to have it. It is beautifully photographed and the text is witty. The problem is, like some other reviewers have mentioned, the recipes don't work. I promised the gang at work I'd bring in delicious Black and White cookies and the results were a waste of time and money. I have tried four different recipes and had trouble with each. I've never attended culinary school, but I'm a pretty experienced home baker. After the recipes failed, I could figure out the problem and make adjustments, but I don't feel it's my responsibility to do that after purchasing a hardback cookbook. Get this book if you want to set it on your coffee table, but don't take it into the kitchen!!!
Rating:
Summary: Retro Results and Humor with First Class Recipes
Review: `Retro Desserts' by Wayne Harley Brachman, noted Bobby Flay pastry chef and colleague, is, with no great surprise to me, about as much like similarly titled kitsch books as the Stephen Spielberg movie, `Raiders of the Lost Ark' is like the 12 episode adventure serials of the 1930's it was meant to glorify.
I recently reviewed a `Retro Baking' volume that is part of a whole series of `Retro' titles. This has all the faults you may expect in such a title, all the faults which Brachman's book avoids with great aplomb.
As I noted in my review of Brachman's most recent work, `American Desserts', Wayne is one of only two major culinary writer / educators who successfully incorporates humor into their work, the other being Food Network colleague Alton Brown. Thankfully, their humor is so different from one another that you can enjoy both without hearing echos of one in the other. While Alton Brown emulates Stan Freberg and Ernie Kovacs, Wayne Harley Brachman takes his inspiration from Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks. So much for the review of comedy in this book.
The creativity with the baking is really the main attraction. This is important because Brachman is not taking from the gemutlichkeit of the past to add luster to his book, he is giving to us an understanding of past famous desserts with master class level recipes making all recipes from scratch materials rather than the baking mixes which began being marketed in the 1940s and 1950s. This is not a gimmick or a deviation from message. These recipes were, in fact, presented by the baking product companies, as is, to create markets for their base products to compete with Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines. One of the few deviations from true retro recipes is to use cooked eggs rather than raw whenever possible to eliminate any lurking salmonella from contaminated eggs. Otherwise, in the introduction, Brachman states that almost all recipes were reformulated from `authentic period recipes collected from vintage magazines,...'. Some are composites of several recipes and `in a few cases, they are actually retro fakes'. But this really doesn't matter, since except for chapter six (see below), the real attraction of these recipes is the high quality of Brachman's `from scratch' recipe and the retro presentations which will fit so well into a 50's entertaining scheme.
The very reasonably priced book, with a list price of $30, has ten chapters, presenting ten different types of recipes. Practically the only argument I have with the book is that the sixth chapter, `The Posh Nosh - Classic Desserts of the Fancy-Pants Restaurants' should have been first, since the recipes in this chapter are by far the most recognizable to 21st century survivors of the last mid-century. The stars of this chapter are Cherries Jubilee, Bananas Foster, Strawberries Romanoff, Crepes Suzette, Baked Alaska, Peach Melba, Belgian Waffles, and Fondues. A sidebar at the end of this chapter contains my only other disappointment with this book. This blurb lists TV and Movie stars of the recent past and their famous dessert recipe names, with no mention of Danny Kaye, who was, by all accounts, a gourmet cook of the first magnitude.
The other chapters, beginning with the first, are:
`Perfect, Every Time You Bake. Cake...After Cake...After Cake'
`If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd Have Baked A Dozen Cupcakes'
`When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like...' Pies, of course.
`Fruit Cocktails for Two'
`I Tawt I Taw A Pudding Tat'
`Cookie, Cookie, Lend Me Your Comb'
`For Whom the Ice Cream Bell Tolls'
`Willy Wonka, Eat Your Heart Out' on candies and other kids stuff.
`Sauces and Goops', ten retro standard sweet sauces.
Two samples of Brachman's seriously professional technique is his instruction to triple sift all dry ingredients and to butter the bottom of baking pans AND line them with buttered parchment paper. And, since Brachman is entirely self-taught, I am certain he is recommending these techniques from personal experience rather than parroting some cooking school doctrine. This is not to say that Brachman is not giving serious instruction here. He does not belabor accurate measurement, but he does strongly emphasize good organization and laying out measured ingredients in advance. While baking demands high accuracy in measuring weights and volumes, it also requires high accuracy, or at least a high level of attention to time. When you are working with hot sugar or warmed chocolate, things can go from good to bad in seconds.
A symptom of how seriously adult these recipes are is the high incidence of alcoholic ingredients in the recipes. This book is most definitely not kids stuff, even if almost all the alcohol burns off when the desserts are baked. This is not to say there are no kid friendly recipes here. My favorites are the recipes for making marshmallow from scratch and the recipes for ice cream dishes, which do not include making ice cream from scratch.
The success with which Brachman captures the retro spirit of these desserts easily doubles the naturally high value of the recipes in this book. Just as an expert's recipes for sandwiches (Nancy Silverton) and preserves (Christine Ferber) will come as a total surprise to entertained guests. They may expect a coq au vin recipe from Julia Child or Thomas Keller, but they will not expect A-Team effort on the sideboard dishes.
Please take Nick Malgieri's blurb with a grain of salt, as these baking recipes are not necessarily easy. They are just as difficult as they need to be to present first rate baked goods.
Brachman's philosophy may be summed up on page 88 where he says `Humans are the only animals that actually seek out and prefer foods that don't taste good... Here's my point: Healthy can and should be tasty. Fun is good.'
And yes, dear reader, this book is fun and good, very, very good. Buy this book to help learn how to bake.
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