Pamella Asquith's Ultimate Chocolate Cake Book

Rating:
Summary: Chocolate Cakes That Taste Good
Review: According to classic patisserie, there are 6 mixing methods for cakes (creaming, two-stage, flour-batter, sponge, angel food, chiffon; some of us would add 2 or 3 more, but this is a matter for a different day). As far as the book's author is concerned, there are only 2: leavened with egg foams (separated egg or whole egg), and leavened with chemicals (baking soda and/or baking powder). This book contains only those using eggs as the leavening agent (save for one: devil's food cake). On the good side, I liked the flavor of the cakes due to the lack of chemical leavening; on the down side, the cakes require that you vigorously beat eggs separated into whites and yolks, meaning you will need either a stand mixer or very strong arms. The best feature of this cookbook is that all recipes list weight and volume measurements. Criticisms not withstanding, this unassuming little book can be recommended highly (well, okay, the title is a little presumptuous, not to mention untrue).

It has plain (36), fruit and jam (38), nuts (14), liqueur (9), molded (11), and unique (20) recipes for cakes and associated components such as frostings. There are a few color photos, but these were done by a professional stylist and have nothing to do with the recipes or their instructions and are totally worthless. The chapter on nut cakes is especially interesting, as almost all the recipes use ground nuts and are flourless.

The recipe for simple genoise tells you to fold in flour while drizzling in the melted butter; beats me how one is suppose to do both things at the same time, as no details are given. Most professional recipes say fold in flour then fold in melted butter. Most of the recipes have a lower level of sugar compared to other cookbooks; this is sometimes, but not always a good thing. Interestingly, many recipes call for 8 inch cake pans rather than the standard 9 inch ones. The instructions for splitting cakes are inadequate, especially when the author expects you to split a half sheet pan cake in half horizontally. The author claims to have invented the cake batter mixing method, and this is largely true: most cakes use an unusual hybrid mixing method (a combination of separated egg sponge and modified creaming method). Once you master this method, virtually all other recipes are done exactly the same way (only a few cakes use whole egg sponge-black forest, pound, citrus, genoise, etc.). The bavarian creams for the charlottes would be better with creme anglaise rather than pastry cream. The recipes in the last chapter (unique cakes) are rather too facile and prone to failure.

The first third (74 pages out of a total of 239) is devoted exclusively to ingredients, equipment, and techniques. While it is a useful collage of information borne of several years of professional experience, this section is too brief and declamatory to be of much use to the inexperienced home baker. It is also randomly assembled and jumbled together, so you have to flip through all 70 pages to find anything; an index or detailed table of contents would be a great help. Although you can take issue with some of the information, it is by and large an excellent source of information for someone who knows his way around the pastry kitchen. Disappointingly, the description of folding is too brief, and the section on beating egg whites has a lot of advice, but not a specific procedure per se. The use of stale cake crumbs as an ingredient is good advice, but the recipes that specifically call for them are not indexed or tabulated anywhere; if had these crumbs to use, you would have to leaf through the whole book to find recipes that use them.