The Cake Bible

i made hundreds of wedding cakes for a living. i slaved on thousands of cheesecakes, millions of layer cakes, and boatloads of brownies. If only i had been able to escape to the island of sanity and reason that is Rose Levy Berenbaum! I have had this book since the very day it was first published, and voraciously read every word, as if it were a novel, before baking a single cupcake. The extensive use of scientific knowledge and experimentation is a stroke of genius, since anyone who has done any baking to speak of knows quite well that it is science, not an art. Thank you to Rose for making the building of a wedding cake so darn simple. Thank you also for using weights AND measures in your recipes. Weight is so much more exact (don't forget, it's a SCIENCE!)Her innovative straw technique has saved my posterior many, many times. Her buttercream recipes are flawless. this is a real baker's book. This book may confuse the run of the mill idiot, but I just ordered my second copy. I need to have it everywhere I go!

Let's face it. I like cookbooks. I don't buy many cookbooks anymore unless I run into one that is fantastic. This book explains the WHYs of cake and frosting chemistry while allowing the reader to turn out fantastic product. There aren't many cookbooks that I will curl up with on the sofa to read, however the Cake Bible has found itself being read on the sofa.

The photography is good and the recipes are clearly written. I like the fact that she includes "normal" sized cakes that most home bakers would make and then goes on to the showy wedding cakes.

Frankly the book was well thought out and executed. My only gripe is that in the recipe sections, the editors did not reference the page that the picture is on (all of the pictures are in the front of the book).

I made a wedding cake for my brother and sister-in-laws wedding based on recipes from the book. The white cake in the wedding cake section is fantastic. Even better is the Cream Cheese White Chocolate Buttercream--so marvelous that I wax poetically thinking about it. I made all of the rolled fondant from scatch using her recipe (better tasting than the packaged product and much more cost effective). And the crowning achievement were the marzipan roses--I even amazed myself with those (although it did take me two or three roses to get the hang of it).

I highly recommend this book (like you couldn't tell already). It ranks right up there with David Page Coffin's book SHIRTMAKING and Elizabeth Zimmerman's KNITTER'S ALMANAC (both are curl up with them on the sofa books).

Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Cake Bible" has justifiably become a classic in the many years since its original publication in 1988. Aside from bearing the seal of approval of the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals, which awarded the book its "Cookbook of the Year" prize in 1988), take a look at the fact that this book is still not only in print--it's in print in hardcover! That says a great deal about the value and information the book provides.

I can attest personally to the fact that the recipes WORK. This is the number one test for any cookbook, yet it's astonishing to me how many recipes DON'T work--either because of unclear or poorly worded directions, or because of lack of thorough testing on the part of the author. I have never yet made anything from this book with which I was disappointed, and have made a number of recipes which have entered the hallowed pantheon of family favorites. Beranbaum's White Velvet Butter Cake has become a de rigeur choice for birthday, confirmation, and other special occasion cakes--it's a fine-crumbed, velvety, melt-in-your-mouth cake that's like the best wedding cake or petit four you've ever put in your mouth. And the Neoclassic Buttercream gives you a meltingly delicious frosting that's the color of cheesecake--richly ivory and silken smooth.

Beranbaum is a companionable writer--her essay on "My Brother's Wedding Cake, or the Snowstorm of 1983" has become something of a Murphy's Law baking classic--and she's a learned and intelligent teacher. This book was the first to introduce me to the novel idea of weighing ingredients, rather than measuring them by volume. The result is much greater accuracy, which in turn gives you a much higher chance of turning out stellar baking results. I bought a scale shortly after receiving this book as a gift for my birthday in 1989, and have never looked back. In fact, when I wrote my own culinary newsletter from 1993 to 2000, I usually did all the recipes giving both weights AND measures, trying to encourage my readers to try the weighing method. Once you try it, you'll never go back.

The photography is gorgeous (although I have always wished there were more of it!). The cakes fairly gleam with rich color--you can practically taste them just looking at the photographs (check out especially the handsome Strawberry Maria, named for editor Maria Guarnaschelli, and the dramatically decorated Art Deco cake).

In addition to the cake and icing recipes, there is worthy advice on everything from tempering chocolate to creating three-dimensional cake decorations to unusual sources for cake and cake-decorating supplies. The bottom line is that any home cook can create gorgeous, sumptuous, outstandingly delicious cakes from Beranbaum's book--and isn't that what a cake bible should be all about?

I'm not an experienced baker and although I don't mind baking, I will admit that I like eating cake more than I do baking it. However the recipes from The Cake Bible have brought me so many rave reviews that I look forward to making them. For a special occasion several years ago I made a three-tiered Golden Genoise with a raspberry buttercream and marzipan roses, and there are people who still marvel about it. I've also made the Black Forest cake, the Triple Chocolate cake, and the Cordon Rose Cream cheesecake with great success. The coffeecake and the blueberry buttermilk pancakes are now family classics, and for my own birthday I always make the Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter cake with a Milk Chocolate buttercream. These are real cakes, similar to great ones I've had in Vienna, London, and New York, that rely on the flavor of the ingredients rather than the overwhelming sweetness prevalent in the typical American cakes. Most of them do use a lot of butter and eggs, and there's no margarine, powdered icing sugar, or artificial flavourings in these, so be forewarned. I find them no more difficult than recipes from any other book, but the end result is light-years ahead. The fancier versions of the decorated cakes can be intimidating since my manual dexterity is somewhere below that of a dyslexic orangutan's, but even if my decorations aren't picture perfect they have a kind of funky charm, and still taste good. In any case, unless it's for a special event, it's not necessary to make them fancy. The recipes have been constructed from scratch so that the ingredients and techniques make perfect sense chemically, rather than having been recopied from existing ones. It's difficult to look at other cake recipes now.

This book was recommended by the instructor of a cake baking class I took at a local culinary academy. If the instructor, a professional baker for more than 35 years, could learn from this book, I figured I could too. And I have learned from the exacting directions, thorough explanations, and personal anecdotes provided with each recipe. She provides instructions to make basic cakes in any size from 6" layers to 18" layers by multiplying a base recipe to produce any size cake you need. I've never seen this in any other cookbook, and is by itself worth the price of the book. I have had perfect results from the butter cake recipes (even chocolate cakes which I had never had much success with before), and the method of mixing is so much easier than the standard way that most cookbooks describe. Weights are provided for all recipes, adding convenience and much easier clean-up. Since I bought this book, I haven't even looked at any of the other cake books I have. There just isn't any need for them.