Karen DeMasco’s The Craft of Baking aims to inspire the home baker to try new variations of homely desserts and sweets, and is successful at encouraging creativity to some degree. There is a wide range of recipes and some modest but interesting suggestions. However, it is lacking in helpful explanations and is too narrow in its selection of ingredients and special brands, and the use of US-centric measures and terminology may be frustrating to international readers.
I come from the school of thought that says rock bands shouldn’t release their Greatest Hits album until their career is complete. Likewise, chefs should restrain themselves from re-releasing their favorite recipes until their career enters a culminating phase. That said, David Lebovitz’s Ready for Dessert: My Best Recipes will be excused since some of his previous books are no longer in print, and his greatest hits truly are classics worth reprinting.
Feel like all-chocolate desserts? Have a craving for an ice cream or cake classic? Chocolate, ice cream, cakes: this set features 120 recipes of master patissier Christophe Felder, with 120 recipes that are easy and delicious to share, for moments of pure pleasure.
This is the first cookbook devoted to Latin-American sweets, uncovering a whole new world of exotic flavors. The desserts presented range from baked cakes to ice cream to chocolate, with step-by-step recipes for both traditional favorites as well as original creations.
Loving cake is a natural part of Warren Brown’s constitution. Now, in order to form a more perfect union of flour, eggs, butter, and sugar, he’s offering his unique take on classic dessert recipes from all fifty states, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
At first glance, you may wonder what the fuss over Okashi is all about. A fairly simple book with attractive photographs, it presents appealing recipes that showcase author Ishida’s particular style, incorporating numerous Japanese flavours into many familiar baked goods and dessert items. Creative and suitable for a broad audience, this book should delight many bakers.
A must-have for professional cake decorators, pastry students, and even advanced cake decorating hobbyists, Wedding Cake Art and Design is the only resource a decorator needs to design, plan, and execute picture-perfect wedding cakes for every client.
David Lebovitz is known for creating desserts with bold and high-impact flavor, not fussy presentations. In this book he serves up a tantalizing array of more than 170 recipes for cakes, pies, puddings, ice creams, cookies, candies, preserves, and much more.
If you thought cake decorating was costly and difficult, this is the book that will change your mind forever. Fiona Cairns is bursting with new ideas for making delicious, visually stunning cakes and biscuits easy – even for the least experienced cook – and for far less money than you thought.
Cake: A Global History explores the origin of modern cake and its development from sweet bread to architectural flight of fancy, with the meanings, legends and rituals attached to cake throughout the world, while relating the food’s place in literature, art, and symbolism.
Over the past few years publishers Phaidon have been establishing a presence in the cookbook market. “The Silver Spoon For Children” is their first move into the area of cooking with children. Often, books in this area of cooking, like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “The River Cottage Family Cookbook”, are written for adults as a guide to teaching children how to cook. This book’s approach involves having a child read it, and then prepare the recipes with the aid of an adult. By simplifying the recipes to their essence, and using large pictures and bright colours to grab attention, this book is one that has a great chance of engaging young minds.
The book takes its recipes from “The Silver Spoon”, and is aimed at children aged at least nine years old. The recipes have been tested by children, so parents can be reasonably confident that the recipes will work. As someone who has not been impressed by Phaidon’s cookbooks, this one has been surprisingly good.
Allergy-free Desserts includes recipes for all of your favorite baked treats—cakes, cupcakes, pies, quick breads, cookies, and dessert bars. Written by Elizabeth Gordon, this indispensable cookbook will finally let you enjoy desserts safely again.
Food historian Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra takes us on a gastronomic journey to more than twenty countries with the recipes she’s collected from her friends and artisan bakers around the world during her colorful life. For many of the recipes, she provides the history and shares the experience of tasting the authentic article. With plenty of beautiful photographs, the book will transport you out of the rut of your usual French and American breads and pastries and take you to less familiar locales.
Tartine is a remarkable book that allows the home baker to recreate breakfast pastries, tarts, cakes, and puddings from the renowned California bakery. The authors didn’t hold back anything in making the book, taking from most of their entire menu, yet the recipes are mostly accessible and the skill level required ranges from beginner to intermediate. Most importantly, many of the desserts from the book have a rustic charm but are still delicious and beautiful enough to be showstoppers. The photography of the book, taken behind the scenes at the Tartine Bakery, captures the dream-like quality of the desserts and the remarkable skill of the artisans who make them.
Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is Rose Levy Beranbaum’s follow-up to the acclaimed The Cake Bible, with almost 100 cakes that aim to please a wide variety of tastes. Beranbaum’s meticulous style may please some well-equipped home bakers in a temperate climate, but others might find them too fastidious, controlling, limiting, and overly complicated for what are really supposed to be simple cakes. Frustratingly, even following the recipe to the letter can give results that still leave something to be desired.
Cake Love: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch, provides a wide range of recipes from Warren Brown’s famous Cake Love bakery. Brown takes a scientific approach to cake baking, being a self-taught baker who learned through trial and error. The recipes range from basics to unusual. For beginners, all the standard recipes are included, from frostings to pound cakes to fillings, as well as comprehensive instructions and information on basic baking techniques and equipment. The level of detail in his instructions tends to be excessive in parts, which is useful for beginners, but can be convoluted and distracting for experienced bakers. However, more advanced bakers will appreciate his original creations, such as Triple Lime-Chocolate Crunchy Feet, Cranberry-Lemon Pound Cake Loaded with Chocolate or Hazelnut Sponge Cake.
As the year draws to and end, cookbook publishers around the world bring out their big guns to take advantage of the gift-giving season. Here at The Gastronomer’s Bookshelf we’ve compiled bucketloads of new books to help you fill out that gift-list (and maybe find a few titles you’d want to keep for yourself!). Many of these are novel or noteworthy, while some are just titles we know will be popular gifts. We’ll be featuring these books over the next month. This week we start with pastry, baking, and Christmas-related titles for you to get a head start on all the seasonal treats you might want to make.
In honor of the 10th anniversary of the bakery’s first cookbook comes The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, a collection of recipes from New York’s sweetest bakery. In these pages you’ll find their much-loved recipes for cupcakes and more.
The Dessert Architect gives plenty of inspiration for a student of pastry arts to create his or her own impressive creations through 50 creative recipes. It also provides a few guidelines in creating your own plated desserts and what factors must be put into consideration in a professional kitchen. However, the photography needs some improvement in showing off the desserts. Also, the lack of instructions for specific plating techniques and the exclusion of newer methods in plating and construction keep the book from becoming an authority on plating in the modern pastry chef’s bookshelf.
In Carrément Chocolat, master patissier Pierre Hermé takes you on a journey through chocolate. He presents his beliefs and desires, reveals his sources of inspiration, and shakes up accepted beliefs.
The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook takes you on the journey of a restaurant one month at a time with ambitious menus that capture the flavors of the season. Though some recipes might sometimes be long and involve too many steps, they are not usually out of reach of the home cook and patience will be rewarded with an impressive feast. Each month also features the profile of a person close to the restaurant and a story about the area, giving the reader a vivid portrait of a hidden culinary gem.
This definitive collection from the undisputed queen of cakes brings together all of Mary Berry’s most mouth-watering recipes in a beautifully packaged edition. Filled with 250 foolproof recipes, this is the most comprehensive baking cookbook you’ll ever need.
In Cake Chic, London’s queen of couture cakes, Peggy Porschen, shares the secrets of her celebrated sugar designs. From cookies to miniature cakes, to stunning tiered creations, Porschen’s style is unrestrainedly chic and girly. Her unique style and enthusiasm are inspiring and will motivate home bakers to get busy in the kitchen, rolling fondant and piping royal icing. However, despite its casual, accessible tone, this book is aimed squarely at advanced bakers, with some discrepancies between the base recipes and decorating guides requiring careful and skilled adjustment and planning.
A collection of cakes, cookies and pastries that represent the intricacy of French-style baking, and the delicate simplicity of Japanese flavors from Keiko Ishida, the French-trained founder of Atelier K in Tokyo.
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New release: The Complete Mushroom Hunter The Complete Mushroom Hunter is the only mushrooming book that will introduce you safely and with confidence to the hobby of mushroom hunting and gathering. Gary Lincoff escorts you from getting equipped for mushroom forays to preparing and serving the fruits of the foray. |
New release: Salades Acclaimed chef Damien Pignolet shows us the endless possibilities of the salad. Here are entrée salads to stimulate the appetite, side salads to refresh the palate, and warm salads that serve as a meal in their own right. |
New release: Street Food of India The acclaimed photographer Sephi Bergerson has been tracking down the very best street food in India. The resulting book is a visual celebration of this splendid everyday cuisine and a virtual feast in itself, with nearly 50 authentic and detailed recipes. |
New edition: The Food Substitutions Bible This new edition of The Food Substitutions Bible has the best instructions for the home cook or professional chef who needs to find a great substitution when a vital ingredient is missing at a critical time in the preparation of a recipe. |
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New edition: Will Write for Food Noted journalist and food-writing instructor Dianne Jacob has revised her award-winning book to include a chapter covering all the how-to’s of food blogging as well as updated resources and new information on working in other popular genres, namely cookbooks and food memoirs. |
New release: The Yogurt Cookbook By acclaimed author Arto der Haroutunian, The Yogurt Cookbook offers over 200 recipes ranging from hearty peasant fare to elegant, light dishes. He expands yogurt beyond the narrow limitations of breakfasts and desserts, incorporating it into an impressive array of recipes. |
New release: The Lost Art of Real Cooking The Lost Art of Real Cooking heralds a new old-fashioned approach to food-laborious and inconvenient, yet extraordinarily rewarding and worth bragging about. From jam to smoked meat, the authors arm you with the skills that let you connect on a deeper level with your food. |
New release: Leiths Meat Bible Leiths Meat Bible is the ultimate meat cookbook. Packed with recipes from all over the world, it has something for every occasion, from a simple after-work supper to an elegant dinner. All recipes are foolproof with an emphasis on proper technique. |
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