Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Art of the Cake : Modern French Baking and Decorating by Bruce Healy ISBN: 0-688-14199-4 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 06 October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: How to Stuff a French Cake
Comment: Please note carefully the sub-title of this book: Modern French Baking and Decorating. French cakes have little in common with American ones. Like its predecessors on pastry and cookies, this baking book on cakes is about the types that you will find in classic, pastry shops in France, and not their American cousins. It is also aimed at the serious amateur pastry chef, not the casual home baker. If you are looking for a book to tell you how to make and decorate a chocolate birthday cake for your children, this is not the book for you.
French cakes are both simple and very complicated; they are also amazing and can be heavenly like nothing else in patisserie that comes in a bewildering array of choices. Simply, a French cake is a cake base cut into layers flavored with syrup, sometimes with a flavoring agent between the layers, a filling and frosting of buttercream (but can also be flavored whipped cream, meringue, etc.), plus many decorative touches. The cake bases used are few in number and not that difficult to make. With simple variations in flavoring and decorations, the cake becomes totally different in taste and appearance. So, once you learn how to make one type of cake, you also know how to make at least a dozen other, totally different cakes. This book is a more or less complete guide for making most of the important, popular varieties of French cakes. I should also note that many of these cakes are ones that Americans will actively dislike. For example, succès brushed with flavored syrup is a French favorite, but is also a sugary, chewy, soggy thing that the average American will probably spit out with the first bite.
The organization is logical and also rather sophisticated. Each chapter starts out with a thorough description of a basic technique, and all the recipes in that chapter are based on that technique. For most recipes, you will also need procedures and recipes in other parts of the book, but the author always gives the page number to go to. The chapters are also arranged from easy ones to the more sophisticated ones; it assumes that you will proceed through the book sequentially, and not skip around. The chapters are: Simple Cakes, Round Sponge Cake Gateaux, Round Nut Meringue Gateaux, Meringues, Rectangular Gateaux, Bavarians (also Charlottes and Mousse Cakes), Logs and Leaves, Filling and Frostings, Finishing Touches, Basic Preparations, and a hundred or so pages of reference information. This is definitely not your mother's cake book (unless she grew up in France).
Sadly, making and decorating French cakes is difficult to do properly, and requires patience and practice. It will probably take you several tries to become successful at any one recipe. The techniques described in this book are very similar to professional ones, and, rightly speaking, are the only way you will have a chance. They have done a good job of describing these professional practices and explaining to the amateur chef how to do them. If you pay attention to what the author says and practice, you will succeed. I do have a few quibbles here and there (potato starch did not seem to improve the pound cake recipes; a flat icing spatula will not lay down an even layer of buttercream inside a cake ring; I find American cake circles to be perfectly acceptable, but have never used or seen a French one), but the information is reliable and of the highest caliber.
Rating: 5
Summary: good for decorating ideas, great for basics
Comment: Covers: pound cake, sponge cake (genoise and variations), meringues, bavarians, charlottes, logs, frostings+fillings, ingredients, techniques, equipment.
Wow, what a comprehensive book. What I like about this book is that it covers everything for a beginner, yet has a lot for the intermediate baker. It tells you a lot making and designing cakes without skimping on information about equipment and techniques, and ingredients. It tells you all the basics of how to decorate cakes, prepare pans, separate eggs, all of these very basic but vital things. Yet at the same time, it goes through step by step how to do things like creating charlottes, roll-type charlottes, put together complicated rectangular-layer cakes - all of these more intermediate techniques, and it does so in a way which makes it all seem easy. There are lots of step by step descriptions and (hand drawn) pictures of how to put each cake together. It really breaks down how to do everything.
Edited addition - I've reread this book after becoming a much better pastry chef, and like it much more. The main selling point of this book is that it teaches you pastry techniques the "French" way - but does it in a way that doesn't assume you have endless time to make things and/or endless money to buy specialized equipment and ingredients. For instance, it tells you recipes for almond paste and praline (some books assume you have it in jars), and suggests using simple paint scrapers to make lines of Joconde decoration (rather than buying a ~$60 scraper from J.B. Prince). It skips many long tedious steps (making Joconde wrappings) and there are not many exotic ingredients (such as lavender, cocoa beans, passion fruit, etc..) that you find in some books. It's aimed at the intermediate who wants to learn French pastry technique.
Overall great book. This book was a finalist for the IACP award in the baking category.
Rating: 2
Summary: Wordy, but not always to the point.
Comment: It's a bit wordy, but not always to the point. Perhaps an experimental physicist would have written a better, more concise step-by-step instructional book than a theoretical one. Plus, some of the important basic preparations are missing. For example, recipes that call for chestnuts are redirected to a short paragraph on buying French chestnut products. It is not that difficult to make your own chestnut puree and spread, the authors could have at least offered an alternative with a few lines of instruction on how to roast, peel, candy, and puree chestnuts instead of asking you to buy a jar of French chestnuts for $20, which probably has been sitting on the store shelf for a decade. Besides, with that kind of cash, you probably can buy a chestnut tree and get 100 lbs fresh chestnuts each fall; I guess not everyone has a professor's salary to burn.
The pictures of finished cakes look fine except some of the layers, fillings, and glazes are applied unevenly. Some of the topping designs are less professional, and lack the elegance and artistic looks of modern desserts.
Anyway, overall, it's an ok book, but I would suggest you to get a pastry book that is written by a real professional pastry chef, such as Bo Friberg's "The Professional Pastry Chef."
 |
Title: The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum ISBN: 0688044026 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 20 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg ISBN: 0471359262 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 21 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
 |
Title: Petits Fours, Chocolate, Frozen Desserts, and Sugar Work by Roland Bilheux, Alain Escoffier ISBN: 0470244100 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 19 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $80.00 |
 |
Title: Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme by Dorie Greenspan ISBN: 0316357413 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 20 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
 |
Title: Doughs, Batters, and Meringues by Roland Bilheux, Alain Escoffier ISBN: 0470244089 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 19 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $80.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
