Debbi Fields' Great American Desserts: 100 Mouthwatering Easytoprepare Recipes

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Summary: A Treasure for Dessert Lovers!
Review: Cookie aficionados have known for years that no one does moist, chewy, gooey cookies better than Mrs. Fields. With her latest, gorgeously photographed book, "Great American Desserts," Mrs. Fields gives her legions of admirers more reason to celebrate. The superb recipes I've tried include Flourless Fudge Brownies, Paradise Key Lime Pie, Butterscotch Blondies, and Peanut Butter Mississippi Mud Bars. Those are just a few standout recipes - I can't wait to try more of the 100 classic desserts in this book, which often contain a wonderfully surprising, updated twist. The Paradise Key Lime Pie, for instance, uses heavy cream instead of sweetened condensed milk, and the results are superb! I'm not a vastly experienced baker, just a longtime dessert lover who has gradually taken up baking. I have high expectations for dessert recipes, and will never repeat a recipe that fails the taste test. The recipes in "Great American Desserts" are a feast for the senses! The next desserts I plan to try are the Truffle Cake, and Debbi's Ice Cream Cake. If the results are even half as good as what I've seen previously, I should be in dessert heaven!

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Summary: Debbi Fields' Great American Desserts
Review: I bought this cake a few days ago and made the chocolate carrot cake but I used a different frosting... just a regular cream cheese frosting. It was delicious and very easy to make! Yummy, very well worth the dollars I spent buying this book. However, a word of caution. I really don't think this book should refer to itself as "easy". Some of the recipes do look a bit complicated and the ingredients aren't on your local grocer's shelf. For example, I'd like to make the tripe truffle cake but I just can't find some coffee liquer... and Debbie doesn't tell you if you can substitute it for another ingredient. In fact, she really doesn't give you many tips about ingredients or about baking in general or about the recipe in particular. I think this book is more for the intermediate baker not the beginner. Oh well, the pictures are great and I do plan to try some of the other recipes. The blueberry muffin recipe seems too sugary and doesn't sound good. Some of the desserts I just wouldn't care for making. But, man that chocolate carrot cake is a big winner at our house!!

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Summary: Yummy!
Review: I checked out this book from my local library. I made the Triple Cherry Chocolate Pie and the New-York Style Cheesecake for Christmas. My mother (who is not a cheesecake fan) said the cheesecake was wonderful (she even had seconds!) and my dad loved how fluffy it was. I added bourbon to the caramel topping for a little extra flavor. It was simple to make (for a some-time baker). The pie was good, too, and was unique in flavor and texture. There are several other recipes I want to try, but I'm afraid we'll all get fat (quite a bit of butter in these recipes)! Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your opinion) calories and fat grams aren't listed! I like the way the recipes are broken down into sections (crust, filling, topping) - it makes it easy to get yourself organized. If you need to make a decadent dessert, this is a very good cookbook!

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Summary: delicious!
Review: I have tried both the devil's food and the yellow cake recipes in this book. Both times I cooked the cakes under the recommended amounts of time and both times the cakes came out very dry. After all of the time and money I put into these cakes, I ended up throwing them out! I also tried the blueberry cream cheese tart. This was only mediocre. I will not try to make any other recipes in this book, as I don't want to waste my time or money!

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Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I too was lured into purchasing this book because of the over-the-top recipes but that actually proved to be the downfall. After trying out several I gave up on this book because they either were too hard, didn't work out or were just OK. I made the Carrot Cake twice and it ended up just falling apart both times when I took it out of the pan. And this was after about an hour & 1/2 in the kitchen. Other things like the Flourless Fudge Brownies were way too sweet & rich and made me a little sick to my stomach. I consider myself an experienced baker and there are so many other books which are more helpful and less of a waste. Try the Cake Bible or Betty Crocker books.

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Summary: A Dissapointment!
Review: I was very excited when I added this book to my cookbook collection. I went to this book to search for a special dessert for a special occasion and was very dissapointed with the results. I chose to prepare the "Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake" and boy what a waste of time! I followed the instructions to a tee and used exactly the ingredients it called for. I was so excited to make this incredible-sounding cheesecake. Well, it was awful. It was bitter and almost tasteless. Nobody liked it. It was left on almost everybody's dessert plates! I went back and checked the recipe many times to make sure I didn't miss anything since the author raves and raves about this cheesecake, but I did everything right. What a total dissapointment. I haven't made anything else from this book because I don't want to get burned again. I give it three stars because I only tried 1 recipe from the book. (I was tempted to give zero stars).

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Summary: Poorly written, wasteful
Review: I've tried two cake recipies from this book, the carrot cake and the german chocolate cake, and threw both out after hours of work. The cover says "easy-to-prepare," but these recipies are so poorly written that they require the cook to figure out a strategy. For example, the carrot cake doesn't mention that you need to prep the carrots, apple, yam, and pineapple ahead of time. Your batter could sit for 1/2 hr while you prepped these ingredients. The recipies are also wasteful. I threw out 2/3 of the oversweet frosting, which took 40 minutes to make and called for 2 pounds of confectioner's sugar. The german choc cakes were flat and the frosting goopy. Don't waste your time with this book.

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Summary: Interesting but not entirely pleased
Review: Some of these recipes were strange, and some of the cakes appeared dry-looking although very pretty to look at. I really like the blueberry muffins. The cheesecake section does look very good even though I haven't had the chance to try any of them yet. The chocolate icing calling for 22 tablespoons of butter is fluffy, thick, and excellent. The pictures are very impressive looking but I am not sure if all of the recipes are tried-and-true. I have mixed feelings about this cookbook. The price was right, however, for a hardback.