Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make
by Alan Richardson
from Houghton Mifflin
Witty, one-of-a-kind imaginative cupcake designs using candies from the local convenience store.
America's favorite food photography team, responsible for the covers of America's top magazines, shows how to create funny, scary, and sophisticated masterpieces, using a zipper lock bag and common candies and snack items.With these easy-to-follow techniques, even the most kitchen-challenged cooks can
• raise a big-top circus cupcake tier for a kid's birthday
• plant candy vegetables on Oreo earth cupcakes for a garden party
• trot out a line of confectionery "pupcakes" for a dog fancier
• serve sausage and pepperoni pizza cupcakes for April Fool's Day
• bewitch trick-or-treaters with chilly ghost chocolate cupcakes
• create holidays on icing with turkey cupcake place cards, a white cupcake Christmas wreath, and Easter egg cupcakes
No baking skills or fancy pastry equipment is required. Spotting the familiar items in the hundreds of brilliant photos is at least half the fun.
The Cake Mix Doctor
by Anne Byrn
from Workman Publishing Company
Cake mixes are undoubtedly convenient, but do they produce good cakes? They can, says Anne Byrn, author of The Cake Mix Doctor, if you know how to tweak them. Doing this involves the addition of ingredients to enrich the mixes and flavorings to enhance and, in some cases, conceal questionable tastes. To prove her point, Byrn offers more than 175 recipes for mix-based cakes and other desserts, including formulas for frostings that, Byrn maintains, must be made from scratch. The results are convincing; readers interested in satisfying, dependable desserts prepared quickly and with little fuss should welcome the book.
Beginning with a useful discussion of cake mixes, their history and composition, and an outline of the mix-transformation battle plan, the book then presents the recipes in chapters such as "Chocolate Cakes," "Cake-Mix Classics," "Special Occasion Cakes," and "Incredible Bars and Comforting Cookies." Among the most successful offerings are Deeply Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting, Banana Cake with Quick Caramel Frosting, and Lemon Buttermilk Poppy Seed Cake. A chapter devoted to crumbles, crisps, cobblers, trifles, and even a dessert pizza shows how to use the mixes in innovative ways, and "Lighter Cakes" presents "healthier" offerings, such as Pear and Toasted Pecan Buttermilk Cake. With sidebars such as The Legendary Pillsbury Bake-Off and tips for success throughout ("Cinnamon is one of the great tools to use when doctoring up cake mixes," begins one), the book explores every aspect of cake-mix fixing while revealing the unexpected richness that the process can yield. --Arthur Boehm
The Cake Mix Doctor is in! And the prescription is simple: By doctoring up packaged cake mix with just the right extras--a touch of sweet butter here, cocoa powder there, or poppy seeds, vanilla yogurt, sherry, eggs, and grated lemon zest for the Charleston Poppy Seed Cake--even the least experienced baker can turn out luscious signature desserts, time after time. The proof is in the taste, and the taste never stops--from Toasted Coconut Sour Cream Cake to Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake; from a to-die-for Caramel Cake and a Holiday Yule Log to cheesecakes, coffee cakes, sheet cakes, pound cakes, bars, brownies, and those all-important frostings, here are 175 fast, foolproof recipes that will transform the art of home baking in America.
Who could believe these cakes came out of a box? Moist, tender, rich, deep, and complexly flavored, without a hint of artificiality, each cake stand up and delivers. But without any of the fuss of baking from scratch. Anne Byrn, an award-wining food writer and self-described purist, creates recipes that employ a cake mix's strengths---convenience, ease-of-use, dependability, and almost imperviousness to overbeating, underbeating, overbaking, and underbaking.
In addition to the recipes are the Cake Mix Doctor's Q&A's, extensive "Doctor Says" tips, lists--15 Beautiful Birthday Cakes, 15 Cakes That Will Cash in at a Bake Sale--and more, all illustrated in a full-color photographic insert.
CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch
by Warren Brown
from Stewart, Tabori & Chang
For Brown, love and baking are inseparable. After all, he abandoned an unrewarding career in law to do the work—baking cakes!—that he finds truly emotionally satisfying. Every page of CakeLove communicates that satisfaction, as well as Brown’s can-do approach to the art of baking. As he asserts, baking cakes isn’t a cakewalk, but it’s not rocket science, either—and getting it right isn’t nearly as hard as you think.
Pound cakes, butter cakes, sponge cakes, cupcakes. Glazes, frostings, fillings, meringues. Brown provides all the basics on ingredients, equipment, and techniques, as well as recipes for more than 50 cakes that range from the classic (Chocolate Butter Cake) to the adventurous (“Sassy,” a pound cake made with mango puree and cayenne pepper). The informative step-by-step shots make you want to run to the kitchen and start baking, and the scrumptious color photos of completed cakes look good enough to sink your teeth into.
Crazy About Cupcakes
by Krystina Castella
from Sterling
Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes
by Martha Stewart
from Clarkson Potter
Of all the decisions that go into planning a wedding, choosing the cake may be the sweetest. Much more than dessert, this beloved wedding symbol should be as special as the bride and groom themselves. Whether you imagine a majestic cake blooming with fresh flowers, a pristine fondant-covered masterpiece, or a homespun take on strawberry shortcake- or even if you don’t know where to begin- Martha Stewart’s Wedding Cakes will provide you with more than 100 delicious and inspiring ideas for timeless and beautiful confections that are perfect for every style of wedding.
Not just visually inspiring, these pages are filled with information you won’t find anywhere else. Martha Stewart and Wendy Kromer, the master baker and decorator who has been creating cakes for Martha Stewart Weddings for more than a decade, guide you through everything you need to consider when selecting a cake- and even how to bake and decorate one yourself. Novice and experienced bakers alike will find recipes and insiders’ techniques to create truly memorable wedding cakes.
You will learn:
Where to begin- how to decide what style and flavors are right for you, taking into account the season, location, and theme of the event
Buttercream or fondant? Ganache or meringue? Useful charts explain the delicious materials bakers use, so you can choose the ones that suit your taste and style
Creative ways to display your cake so it takes center stage at the reception
How to find and hire a baker, including questions to ask and contract considerations
Ideas for cutting costs without sacrificing quality or beauty
How to incorporate traditions from around the world
Everything you need to know about baking a cake yourself, with complete recipes as well as how-to decorating techniques with color photographs and reference charts
A treasury of inspiration, Martha Stewart’s Wedding Cakes will ensure that your cake, whether homemade or professionally baked, triple-tiered or a tower of cupcakes, embellished with fresh fruit or elaborate sugar roses, is every bit as magical as your big day.
The Confetti Cakes Cookbook: Spectacular Cookies, Cakes, and Cupcakes from New York City's Famed Bakery
by Elisa Strauss
from Little, Brown and Company
When a world-famous shoe designer walked into his surprise birthday party and saw the cake that was waiting for him--a Manolo stiletto perched alluringly next to a tissue-filled shoebox--it was his turn to ogle someone else's talent. The cake, created by Elisa Strauss of Confetti Cakes in New York City, was a sensation. Not only did everyone at the party want to know how it was made, they wanted to know how to create something as dazzling themselves.
This unique book contains projects for every skill level: from gorgeous, sugar-dusted heart cookies to delightful billiard-ball cupcakes, to sculpted cakes in the shape of wine bottles and Chinese takeout boxes, to the extravagantly beautiful, threetiered
embroidery cake showcased on Sex and the City. With delicious recipes, stunning creations for every occasion, suggestions for time-saving shortcuts, and hot tips for fabulous results, all illustrated with gorgeous photographs and easy-to follow diagrams, THE CONFETTI CAKES COOKBOOK is a must-have for the outrageously chic baker in all of us.
The Cake Bible
by Rose Levy Beranbaum
from William Morrow Cookbooks
Rose Levy Beranbaum is a kitchen chemist extraordinaire--this, after all, is the woman who wrote her master's thesis on the effects of sifting on the quality of yellow cake. In The Cake Bible, she explains the science behind types of leavening, the merits (or not) of sifting, melting chocolate, preheating ovens, and more. There are precise and detailed instructions for intricate wedding cakes as well as cakes that can be mixed and in the oven in five minutes. In addition, nutrition information is included with every recipe. Cake scientist Beranbaum doesn't forget the art, either; pencil drawings teach novice bakers how to create a garden full of flowers from royal icing and mushrooms from piped meringue. It's no wonder that the International Association of Culinary Professionals picked The Cake Bible as their cookbook of the year for 1988--this book has something to teach bakers at every level.
"If you ever bake a cake, this book will become your partner in the kitchen."-- from the foreword by Maida Heatter
This is the classic cake cookbook that enables anyone to make delicious, exquisite cakes. As a writer for food magazines, women's magazines, and newspapers, including The New York Times, Rose Levy Beranbaum's trademark is her ability to reduce the most complex techniques to easy-to-follow recipes. Rose makes baking a joy. This is the definitive work on cakes by the country's top cake baker.
The Cake Bible shows how to:
Mix a buttery, tender layer cake in under five minutes with perfect results every time
Make the most fabulous chocolate cake you ever imagined with just three ingredients
Find recipes for every major type of cake, from pancakes to four-tiered wedding cakes
Make cakes with less sugar but maximum flavor and texture
Make many low- to no- cholesterol, low-saturated-fat recipes
Cakes to Inspire and Desire
by Lindy Smith
from David & Charles
*Written by a popular and experienced cake designer
*Range of techniques and skill levels ensures broad appeal
*Lindy's other best-selling titles include Celebrate with a Cake (28,000 copies sold) and Party Animal Cakes (20,000 copies sold)
Readers will discover a collection of 15 truly inspirational and deceptively simple celebratory cakes, each with a modern and distinctive finish. Lavish colour photographs display a unique variety of traditional and contemporary styles from florals and frills to stripes and beadwork. Each cake is accompanied by exquisite mini-cakes to put a creative twist on the main theme, or to make as an alternative when time is short. Chapters are divided by shape, showing how a simple square or round design can be the basis for the most desirable of cakes.
Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations
by Nancie McDermott
from Chronicle Books
Taste the chocolatey goodness of Mississippi Mud or marvel at the extravagant elegance of the Lady Baltimore and there will be no doubt that Southerners know how to bake a cake. Here are 65 recipes for some of the most delicious ever. Jam cakes and jelly rolls; humble pear bread and peanut cake; whole chapters on both chocolate and coconut cakes each moist and delicious forkful represents the spirit of the South. A Baking 101 section offers the cake basics, some finishing touches (that means frosting and lots of it!), and the how-to's of storing each lovely concoction so that the last slice tastes as fresh and delightful as the first.
Cakes to Dream On: A Master Class in Decorating
by Colette Peters
from Wiley
Colette peters, the celebrated queen of the confectionary arts, unveils an inspiring resource for serious home bakers, professional chefs, and aficionados of Colette's incredible edible architecture. The ingenious cake decorator - whose miraculous and luscious concoctions have appeared everywhere from White House Christmases to royal weddings - presents a master class in cake design and decoration, alongside an all-new selection of her own cake designs. With Cakes to Dream On, Colette's inspired creations can now be rendered into show-stopping cakes of your own.
Cakes to Dream On reveals the secrets to fashioning gorgeous and utterly distinctive cakes for all occasions - whether it's an opulent marriage reception (the majestic Ivory Wedding Cake) or a fanciful children's party (the whimsical Homage to Dr. Seuss). Colette presents designs for cake architecture ranging from the imperial splendor of Dolce de Medici, to the elegant grace of Bride's Vintage Cameo, to the topsy-turvy daydream of Mad Tea Party.
Colette begins with the foundations: she illuminates step by step the process of constructing a multitiered cake, from determining serving sizes and choosing appropriate cake pans to making fillings, and ultimately stacking layers so they don't tumble off the table. Cakes to Dream On also discloses insider tricks of the trade: Colette's easy-to-follow instructions in techniques such as sugarwork, gumpaste, brush embroidery, and piping will help readers recreate the spectacular effects of this singular confectioner's toolbox.
Bakers - and their enthusiastic audiences - will discover that these sensual masterpieces tantalize the palate as much as they do the eye. Colette's cake recipes include the Coco-Loco Cake, an alluring marriage of coconut and coffee; the Meringue Buttercream and its luscious lemon, raspberry, and mocha variants; and the ambrosial caramel-tinged Heavenly White Cake.
As breathtaking as Colette's cake works appear, her clear explanations of technique are meant to stimulate readers' creative instincts and give them ideas for crafting their own distinctive confections. With more than 150 dazzling full-color photographs illustrating both processes and finished presentations, and more detailed instruction than ever before, Cakes to Dream On will inspire readers to create their own mouthwatering masterpieces. Colette's master class is truly a launchpad for cake lovers' own confectionary visions.
+++
