Overview

In Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts, Claire Clark, head pastry chef of The French Laundry, shares 100 memorable desserts from her 25 years of experience as a pastry chef. The range is wide, from her mother’s recipe for shortbread, to complex multilayered desserts worthy of a four-star hotel. As a result, the skill level required of this book ranges from novice to intermediate as well. Her skill as a pastry chef and as a teacher shines through in the text, and the result is a solid volume of desserts that have spot-on flavors.

Full review

Structure of the book

Indulge has 100 recipes in 9 main chapters:
Biscuits and cookies (11 recipes)
Cakes (12)
Pastry (17)
Meringues (7)
Custards and creams (8)
Desserts, mousses and jellies (13)
Puddings (8)
Ices (12)
Petits fours (12)
Many of the recipes have full-page photographs. As this book was originally published in the UK, the measurements are primarily in grams and milliliters, with minute amounts in teaspoons. The conversions added to the book are fluid and avoirdupois ounces. At the beginning of most chapters, Clark gives a few “secrets of success” that provide some handy tips to getting the right results. Some recipes have tips on the margin or at the end of the recipe which may also include variations on the recipe. The assignment of recipes between chapters seems a bit arbitrary at times, with Opera, Baked Chocolate Mousse, Charlotte Royal, and Cheesecake falling under “Desserts, mousses and jellies” and not cakes or custards and creams, while Apple and Cinnamon Charlotte falls under “Puddings.”

About the author

Claire Clark is the head pastry chef of The French Laundry, and prior to this she had worked at The Ritz Hotel, The Intercontinental at Hyde Park Corner, as a teacher at Le Cordon Bleu, as head pastry chef at Sir Terence Conran’s Bluebird Restaurant, at Clardiges, and the Wolsley, during which she was named “Best Pastry Chef” by Restaurant magazine. She was also awarded the “Meilleur Ouvrier de Grande Bretagne”, which is the highest honor given to a craftsperson in Great Britain on the grounds of professional excellence.

How is this book interesting/special/new/useful?

In this book, Clark gives us a taste of her favorite pastry recipes from her 25 years of experience as a pastry chef. As a result, it has a good variety of recipes that range from the simple to sublime. There are a few traditional British sweets, such as Eccles cake, sticky toffee pudding, Battenburg cake, steamed pudding, and Bakewell tart, but there are also a number of recipes that will be familiar to most anyone, such as brownies, crème brûlée, crème caramel, gingerbread, shortbread, and éclairs. You may be wondering, “Why would the world need one more brownie recipe?” While Clark doesn’t offer anything new for these classics, her skill as a pastry chef and teacher shines through. Her instructions are never patronizing, but have enough details to turn one from a good home baker to a great one. More importantly, the flavors and textures of her desserts have always come out spot-on for me. Thomas Keller raves about her simple shortbread in particular– her mother’s recipe.

When you graduate from the simple recipes and move on to the more complex ones, her advice is even more valuable. The combination of flavors she presents in her desserts are mostly classic and not exotic (some pastry afficionados might even consider them too traditional or boring). She asserts that the multi-component desserts are not out of the reach of the home baker; it just takes some time and patience. The result, she promises, though it may not be as perfect in appearance as the book’s, will be even better than anything store-bought, and I’m inclined to agree. As a result, the daring baker is rewarded with multilayer desserts such as Bitter Chocolate, Praline Brûlée, and Espresso Torte, Tia Maria and Coffee Delice, and Green Tea and Jasmine Delice. The recipes intermediate to these ones still have enough imagination for those wishing to break out of a dessert rut: you can make a “Dumph Noodle” (Swiss-German pudding made of sweet dough), Bramley Apple Risotto, or Vacherin Mont Blanc. With a book with so much variety, there’s enough to keep an avid home baker interested.

What problems/flaws are there?

Probably as a result of different standards of production of baking pans between continents or Clark having access to all sorts of pans given her profession, there is significant variability between the pans used in her recipes. However, the problem doesn’t end there: in some recipes she uses pans that are quite difficult to find: 8×6 (one recipe calls for a removable base as well), 8×12, 7×10, 12×18, 10×12, 10×14, 6×6, 10×4 tart form, 10-inch springform, 6-inch cake ring, 2-inch ring molds, and flexible silicone molds of unspecified size are among the sizes she calls for in the recipes. Tart recipes call for either 8- or 10-inch forms of varying heights. A more experienced baker knows that sometimes the size won’t matter, and if it does, substituting a different size sometimes works if you change the quantities of the recipes (which is thankfully easy given they are in weight) or the baking time. However, the more modest baker might be intimidated into buying all sorts of rare pans he may never use for another recipe, or frightened out of baking from the book altogether. Thankfully, this isn’t the case with most recipes, some have instructions for different molds, and quite a few of them are free-form.

Those who know Clark only from her position as the French Laundry’s head pastry chef might be disappointed to find that not all the recipes are plated desserts from five-star hotels and three-star restaurants; most are quite simple, and very few of them give instructions for decoration. That doesn’t mean that the book or the desserts are any less delicious, but those who are looking for a book of impressive and innovative desserts might find that their expectations won’t be met.

Who might enjoy/use this book most?

Home bakers looking to either expand their baking repertoire or increase their skill levels will appreciate the variety in recipe origins and difficulties, while maintaining a helpful, guiding tone throughout. But since the flavors in these desserts have already stood the test of time for an expert pastry chef, anyone looking for a great dessert book won’t be disappointed by Indulge.