The Cake Bible

I've own an original 1988 copy since 1988. This is the only cake recipe book I use. I am not a professional cook, but I am experienced. My Mom also baked. Everyone is correct on their reviews. Recipes are not for the inexperienced or the cook that wants to learn how to bake. Not all, but many recipes require precise ingredient selection and measurement; you can't substitute. Rose explains in detail why she choses an ingredient instead of another; she tells you what one does that the other does not; she tells you why use Dutch Processed Cocoa instead of Chocolate and viceversa; she tells you why use sour cream instead of butter and viceversa; she tells you why use unsalted butter instead of regular butter; she tells you about baking powder types and quantities depending on your pan size. After near 15 years reading this book, I am able to substitute. I succesfully used semisweet chocolate chips in place of Dutch Processed Cocoa for her marvelous chocalte butter cake recipe. My 200 guests were happy.I've learned many good and impresive things the average cook admires when they come to my dining table. The best is the caramel cage; I make caramel cages for many uses; to hold fresh fruits, as a stand for a ball of cheese or freshly whipped flavored butter, as a garnish for a main entre, etc. I've made star shaped caramel cages, squares, buckets, cilinders, you name it. All it needs is sugar and water and aluminum foil, and those are present in any kitchen.The triple chocolate cake is the best chocolate cake you can desire. Rose is correct when she says, this is a triple orgasm, or a triple pressence of chocolate in its best representation; You bite into a moist-airy-grainy-spongy chocolate genoise cake that is layered with silky creamy chocolate ganache and then all covered with hard chocolate praline sheets. She chosed with exactitude the addition of Frangelico liquor and hazelnut praline. Let me tell you, making chocolate genoise cake is delicate and requires a large mixing bowls, this is a chocolate cake without baking powder so the resulting flavor is pure chocolate without the chemical disflavors that baking powder adds when it reacts against chocolate. You can't show off how you make your chocolate genoise, you can't have your dog or distracting family members in the kitchen when you are folding the yolk mixture into the egg white mixture. Yes, indeed out of 10 times making it, 3 times the genoise cake became flat, my fault.The mouseline butter cream is a master thesis on its own. I am glad somebody mentioned it in the reviews. It is an act of acrobatics and chemistry, plus a touch of magic. It is hard to believe and explain that a mix of egg whites, water, and sugar can blend with soft butter. It is hard to believe Rose when she says to not be alarmed that the mix will initially look like a puddle of unmixable butter floating like oil on water, and that your end result is the best bodied butter cream you can have (if you follow all her rules, yes RULES and not RECOMENDATIONS). You end up with a silky buttercream, that is light, not so sweet, not so greasy, and not so heavy, that will stand at room temperature for days or that will not loose its shape or body even after abusing it with food coloring or making extravagant cake pipings. And absolutelly, the addition of 3 oz of sweet liquor of your choice is a MUST. 3 oz is 3 shots of liquor, quite a lot. Before adding the sweet liquor, the mouseline butter cream tastes not so good (buttery and not so sweet) and in fact, the body is even better and silkier after adding the 3 oz of liquor. I am sure, if you choose not to add liquor, try find out how much sugar are in 3 oz of sweet liquor and how much water (less the alcohol evaporation), and you might be able to substitute by increasing the amount of sugar and water in the egg white mix. I do have one recomendation: if you are using the recipe Rose wrote with the liquor, make your butter cream 3 to 5 days before you use the buttercream, or frost your cake 12 to 24 hours. This will allow time for the alcohol to dissapear. Hey, and what is wrong to not use egg yolks in buttercream? It is healthier and you end up with the purest white possible butter cream.The same goes with all her recipes that call for adding syrup with liquor. She makes it a rule if you are baking before than 1 day in advance, then add liquor.In conclusion this is NOT a book for beginners or cooks that want to start baking. This is a book for the baker or for the cook the loves to read cookbooks. I indeed have ALL of Rose's books, and all share my same reviews: The Pastry Bible, The Bread Bible, Rose's Celebrations, etc.Rose is unique and her writing style is product of her own research.Good luck.

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 love this cake book! I just purchased this book and I like that it is so unique. She has a different way of making frosting (I suppose its just an old school recipe, but I like it). I bought this book with a gift card because I found the yellow butter cake recipes online and had good results. I wanted to have more of her recipes since everybody loved that yellow cake. I like her icing recipes; they are not too sweet as icing recipes often are. Her egg white frosting recipe is a practical way to use the egg whites left from the yellow cake. Some people today are understandably worried about using raw eggs, but I have heard of people pastarizing eggs at home, or if you are really worried, the egg whites you buy in the carton at at store are pastarized(I think her hot syrup should pastarize the yolks enough in her butter cream recipe though. However, she says that is not necessary for whites; I made it without pastarizing my eggs (since it was just whites) and nobody got sick, but I know some people might be a bit freaked out about that. If you are making it for a large croud of people you don't know well of course you would want to be extra careful. When I made the egg yolk butter cream I did pastarize the eggs, I put them in water and cooked them to sim and had good results. Just know most of her icing recipes call for eggs, for those who are worried about raw eggs, still you could pastarize them or buy pastarized eggs, or just use her cake recipe and use one of her frosting recipes not containing eggs or any basic frosting recipe, which might be less work. Although I do not celebrate Pasover, I love flourless cakes, so I was glad to see a flourless cake section; I have to try that! I did try her cheesecake recipe and it is so much better than the one of the back of the popular cheesecake brand that I've always used(even when using store brand) as it is creamier and has more flavor. They should put her cheesecake recipe on the back of a cream cheese box!All in all great book and different than other recipes that I have seen.I must also add, I often make her cheesecake recipe and it costs under five dollars to make and it makes a decent sized cheesecake! Probably could even cost less than three dollars if you are really a wise shopper and coupon clipper! I just made her cheesecake for Thanks Giving and it is had to cost less than five and I did not even have coupons, but got halfway decent sales; it costs even less when I have the coupons for some of the stuff, which I often do! It cost 13 dollars for a medium sized cheesecake in a store and that is way smaller than the cheesecake her's makes (and that is at one of the more affordable places!) With the economy being bad, saving money is a great idea! It too bad that she recieved a lot of bad reviews, but perhaps its because her book is wordy and big, and now days we do have the option of online recipes. Some of her recipes are online, but that was in fact what brought me to purchasing her book. I liked her all yolk yellow butter cake, so I wanted more of her recipes. It is wordy and I do know some people who I have shown the book, cause they were baking for an occassion, and they just dropped it down and said they would just look her recipes up online, as it was just easier, but if you really like her online recipes, I think you might want her book for more of a celection. Yes there are some recipes I would not touch, as they are not something I would like, but still a lof of them are nice!

I have a friend who makes insane cakes and I asked him what he used. He directed me to this book and I had to get it. The amount of pages in this book is insane. It looks and reads almost like a dictionary, a real old school cookbook. Only downfall are there are no pictures. However, the book is packed with information and recipes. It really will be the perfect companion for an avid baker.

This is the ultimate reference book. I paid rush charges to get it here for Thanksgiving and it was worth it. I agree with other reviewrs that the directions must be followed meticulously. If you know that going in, I think you will have success every time. I wish there was a table of contents for each chapter so thatyou'd know what recipes were included in each.I made the chocolate butter cake with the neoclassic chocolate buttercream icing. The flavor was excellent and both the cake and icing melted in your mouth. My icing was too thin for my tastes, but I was working in a warm kitchen and the icing is all butter with no shortening, which I was not used to. I found it difficult to work with and impossible to pipe. I don't know if it was because I didn't heat the corn syrup properly, or if my kitchen was too warm, or both. After chilling the icing, I was able to spread it on the cake, but I didn't feel comfortable piping it.With more practice I am confident I can master any recipe in this book. This book has recipes ranging from simple pound cake to elaborate showcase and wedding cakes. It is a technically difficult book, but it results in perfection. I would not recommed this book to a novice baker, but I think it is perfect for seasoned bakers looking for a challege and professionals.For errata: [...]

There are many cake cookbooks available, but I am not comfortable with recommending any of them. The Cake Bible by Beranbaum is the only one I can recommend without reservation, as the recipes and techniques all work. On the whole, I like this book quite a bit and use it fairly often as a reference.The author has done wedding cakes professionally for many years, and this cookbook is a compendium of tried and true recipes that she has used. This is both good and bad. These are baking recipes that are battle tested and ones that you can rely upon, especially on special occassions. On the other hand, it is a very personal collection of production recipes, and you will not find several common cake types because she has not done them in her professional experience.Several recipe types, such as butter cakes, genoise, and buttercreams, are very different from the usual ones that you will find in other baking books. This is because they are a record of the author's efforts, and not just a mechanical recapitulation of standard patissierie recipes. The procedures at first seemed to be unnecessarily finicky, and had a few extra steps that did not seem to be necessary. On the other hand, I had no problems with any of the ones I tried. The procedures are often unique; while the results were not better than standard recipes, they can, in some cases, be slightly easier to execute than standard recipes, which are more prone to failure by the home baker.The arrangement of the cakes chapter is particularly useful. It assumes that you will work methodically through the chapter, baking each cake as you go, and not just pick out recipes at random. It lists pound cakes first, and ends up with genoise-type cakes, which makes more sense than the usual order, which is the other way around; foam-based cakes are the most difficult.Interestingly, only the first 160 pages of this 550 page book relates to cakes. 60 pages go to showcase cakes, 200 pages to decoration, fillings and frostings, 50 pages to ingredients and equipment, and 70 pages for professionals (including extensive insturctions of wedding cakes; I cannot vouch for this section, since I have never made a wedding cake).There are some criticisms, but they are mostly ones of omission. Many of the page references are wrong. I object to the suggestion of leaving eggs and chocolate in a warm oven overnight to get them to the proper temperature. Cornstarch is substituted for part of the flour in genoise, but this was not any better than just straight flour. The instructions for waffles are for an old-fashioned, stove top iron and not an electric one. The instructions for making the rose trellis are incomplete. The table of contents need to be more detailed. The chapter subheadings in Part III are used inconsistently. The flavor-cake-filling-frosting combinations the author suggests are not the classic ones; you will need another patissierie book if you need the traditional ones. On the positive side, all the wedding cakes described have pictures. There are several different recipes for chocolate genoise (including one without added butter), one of my favorites. There is also an old fashioned mayonnaise cake. The 2 pancake recipes are ones with whipped egg whites, but none with the plain old baking powder.The only reservation I have is that this book is not all that friendly or instructive for beginners. For them, I would suggest that you bake some cakes from the first 150 page section and ignore the rest of the book until you become more advanced, making sure that you go through this section in order rather than skipping around.

This book explains in great detail the ins and outs of pie and pastry baking. It's not just one recipe after another, like other books, but it explains why you should use a particular type of flour, the importance of room or refrigerator temperatures, measurements by weight rather than volume, etc., all to create a superior product. If you don't want to take the time to study this book, don't bother buying it, but you will loose out on baking knowledge that once learned will stay with you.I tried the rhubarb and strawberry tart and it came out perfect! The recipe was time consuming because I had to refer back and forth to several different sections in the book to make the tart, but it was well worth it. The bottom of the crust never became soggy, just as promised in the book, if one followed all the steps. This is fine baking, the type I'm used to experience in Europe where flavor is paramount and not sweetness, so typical of American baking. I also finally was able to make a gelatin glaze that has escaped me in the past.The tart tasted so good, I wanted to make something else right away but was dissuaded by the amount of work that went into it. That's just as well because I would otherwise be eating too much desert. The book has given me confidence in creating great deserts.EMK

Essential cookbook. Any serious chef should own a copy.

très bien

Great book as expected for second hand. Very useful to have on hand as a base to most cakes even if you were starting a bakery. Warning for those expecting pictures, the book has minimal illustrations few pictures. I believe author has some recipes online in video to follow along, but they are well explained in the book. Very professional.

This is the best book I ever bought! Rose gives such a good explanation to every single detail important to make fantastic cakes and fillings. The base formulas help you to make the size cakes you want. Clear charts are always present true this book, to calculate yourself what you want to make.Every recipe is detailed and clear. The theoretic information is such a great value to understand the why's and the how's of cake making and baking. Rose even mentioned the 'cups', 'ounce' and 'metric', so where ever you live, you can use this book. I couldn't miss this book any longer, I would put it under my pillow to sleep with. I can imagine that for a home baker (hobby) it would seem difficult at first sight, but if you take some time to read it again and again, it such a pleasure to learn all about it. As a professional baker in Belgium, I learned alot about cakes bacause of this fantastic book. In our schools here, we do not learn much about all those kinds of cake and fillings. It really is a must have if you are a baker, cake decorator, and you want to serve quality cake to your clients! I tried alot recipes yet, and they all turned out great like they were supposed to be. (not like some books were you make the recipe and the result is a disaster according to the nice pictures next to the recipe) This book does not have lots of modern pictures, but that gives me trust that it is a professional book and not for selling the pictures only. Thank you Rose!!!

Amazing book for a baker.. Everything is soooooo very detailed, and nothing fancy item plays only with few ingredients. Have it in grams, cups and US measurements which helps Indian bakers a lot. On a whole this product is worth buying. It includes even frosting recipes.. Just loved this book

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