Customer Reviews

Cake Bible The

5 star:		(76)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I wanted to love this book. Really, I did. I was willing to follow the instructions to a "T", and even take decorating lessons so I could stun my friends speechless with the wonder of my cakes. But I can't. Let me explain here that I am regarded (sorry to be immodest) as a fabulous home baker. That I'm a well-travelled European (from the Land o'Cakes--Scotland--no less), and know what good cakes should taste like. And that I was willing to invest the time, energy and money to make these cakes work. And they did. I just didn't like them. The reviewers who don't rave about this book are in the minority, but (for the most part), I think we're right. The buttercream tastes like...butter. The ganache frosting ( made with Lindt chocolate, no less) is heavy and off-putting. The cakes I have made are heavy and buttery without that wonderful buttery taste of good cakes (and I used a wonderful butter from Pennsylvania that's virtually indistiguishable from the fine Danish kind). Most recently, I tried the Chocolate Cloud roll cake, and it came out perfectly. But nobody wanted seconds. In short, it doesn't surprise me that Ms. Berenbaum is fascinated by the chemistry of baking. These are cakes made to icy physical perfection, but lacking the art that makes genuinely delicious confections. If you're into elaborately-decorated cakes that will amaze your friends, buy this book. If you're looking for cakes that dance on the tastebuds, this isn't it. One last comment, and a more positive one, is that the general advice she gives on measuring, mixing and baking is very good, and this (plus the gorgeous pictures) make the book a good buy, especially if you like to read cookbooks.

The cakes are very good. The All American Chocolate cake recipe turned out great first time. I like the use of weights as well as volumetric measurements in the recipes. Now for the not-so-good: the buttercream frosting recipes are just awful.

This weekend we made five batches of buttercream frosting following the recipe instructions exactly and each time the frosting came out tasting like whipped butter; greasy and overpowering and ruining the taste of the cake. We used unsalted Land-O-Lakes brand butter.

While the cake recipes are worthwhile, the frosting section is so wanting that I would consider looking further if you need a book that has good cake AND frosting recipes.

I got a copy of this book way back in 1989, and have sworn by the cakes featured in it since. My other books just sit around collecting dust, while the cover for this is now stained with metled chocolate, butter and batter; and it's falling apart at the seams.

This book has so me inspired that I now run a small home-baked cakes business, making extensive use of the recipes from the book.

I've baked the Sour Cream Coffee Cake countless times for parties and gatherings and have never failed to win raves. This is the only cake I've seen ladies going back for second helpings! Another must try is the Bittersweet Cocoa Genoise.

Rose's approach to baking is exactly how it should be, a science and not an art. Each and every ingredient used has a reason. Then you use your creativity after the cakes is baked to creat beautiful cakes. This is the only book I've come across that delves into the whys of doing things and how different ingredients interact with one another.

With every cake, on the sidebar, you will find information of how the cake will appear after baking--how tall the cake will be; whether it'll be flat, taller in the center; whether the sides move will move away from the sides of the pan after removing it from the oven. So just by visual inspection of the cake after it comes out from the oven, you'll know if you got it right. I've not had any disaster baking from this book.

Even after more than 10 years using the book, I still find new information everytime I read it.

The book is not for someone who wants to look at pictures of cakes; but HOW to bake the best cakes.

Just one comment, can you make future prints of this and your other books with stronger string bindings instead of perfect binding?

Rose, if you are reading this. Thank you!

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.

I have had mixed results with this book. The cakes that turned out well (downy yellow butter and golden almond, for example) were among the best cakes I've ever tasted. The ones that didn't, however (including the white spice pound cake and chocolate genoise) were dry and tasteless. I recommend this book for the intrepid experimenter: you will probably not like all the recipes in this book, but the ones that you like, you will love. The directions are extremely clear and detailed; I am an intermediate baker and I learned a lot from this book. Two words of advice: 1. Start checking your cakes a good 5-10 minutes before the suggested baking time; many of these cakes dry out in a heartbeat and are best just a touch underdone (and my oven temperature is perfect). 2. Berenbaum's buttercream is not for the faint of heart (4 sticks to frost one cake)! You might want to look elsewhere for buttercream recipes.

If you only bake a cake occasionally, this book might seem complicated. But if you really want to learn how to make cakes, this book will teach you. I have used it almost exclusively since it came out 15 years ago and have become reknowned for my cakes.
There is a set of beautiful color photographs at the beginning and each entry has an introduction to help you choose if this the right cake for the occasion. (Other books list 3 different chocolate cakes with no comments: why pick one over another?) The layout of the book makes it easy to refer to while baking - unlike the unfriendly Martha Stewart baking book I recently received as a gift. Information is placed logically and consistently on the page; oven temperature, pan size, recommended adornments, storage time, etc. The instructions are precise, thorough and consistent; she'll often even describe how to correct if something goes wrong. Years ago, I would simply sit and read this book.
I have given this book to at least a half a dozen people over the years and am buying two more copies now. Even when I (rarely)use a recipe from somewhere else, I benefit from I've learned from Rose about ingredients and methods.
Not to pick on Martha Stewart, but I baked a cake recently from her book which included the cake, a filling and an icing: The information was hard to find on the page, the cake pans (recommended size) overflowed, I had at least 2 cups of extra filling and a cup and half of extra icing! The cake was tasty but the contrast between that sloppy experience and the incredible professionalism of The Cake Bible was striking.

If you want to learn how to make cakes, buy this book.

PS. If I could bake only one cake for the rest of my life it would probably be Bert Greene's Special Sponge Cake.

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?

why everyone has such high praise for this book. I am already a good cook-- and expected to become a better one....
I really wanted to love this book and was so excited when I got it. I spent a fair amount of money on proper pans, ingredients and decorating tips. But the recipes didn't work for me, the cakes were dry. The decorating section was too complex, the book had me jumping all over it to accomplish one cake, and finally I had to quit, just give up and start from scratch with a book that I love called Great Cakes, by Carole Walter.
The strangest part was that for the money, there are really only a few recipes in The Cake Bible.
The hardest part was that I thought the book was going to be user friendly-- but unlike charming books like Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, and The Way To Cook by Julia, this book never felt like a personal friend--. And in the end, after following recipes to the letter and spending a lot of time in the kitchen, I had nothing great tasting to show for it.
I know that almost everyone loves this book, and that we who have had a hard time with it are the minority. But I feel that the minority of the harsh reviews really care about good tasting cakes. The majority-- the great reviews care about how a cake looks. I would never sacrifice looks over taste and in the case of fondant with piped royal icing, Rose said that she would. (Trade looks for taste.) It's tempting. The white on white look achieved with fondant and piped icing is stunning. But to me, it tastes bad.
The woman who made my wedding cake had set ideas about cakes. She wanted a butter cake with layers of strawberries and whipped cream. Because of her needs, and because I never spoke up as much as I should have, I ended up with a frozen wedding cake-- the cook was so worried about the whipped cream running, the entire cake was frozen. It didn't bother her because the cake looked beautiful. But I was somewhat shocked-- microwaving my wedding cake wasn't what I had in mind while people were trying to have some cake and say goodbye to me on my wedding day.
So perhaps there are the looks people and the taste people and I put taste first. Of course I'd like to have both. And for that reason, The Cake Bible still has me scratching my head-- struggling for something nice to say, and needing to tell anyone who agrees about taste to check out some of the wonderful recipes on epicurious.com and books liker Great Cakes by Carole Walter. If I decide that I have been a harsh critic, or that I have done something wrong in following these recipes I will update this review.

We had purchased this book as a gift for Christmas and looked everywhere for the book. We looked everywhere for the book and were not able to find a store that had it in stock.We took a chance and low and behold there it was on your web site and to beat the band we were able to purchase it for a lower price than any of those that said they would order it in. Good show!!!!!!

"The Cake Bible" is an excellent resource for most of your cake baking needs.
I started taking cake decorating courses and have found that I and most of my friends and family are not fans of prepackaged boxed cake mixes.
This book has a ton of great recipes that are easy to follow and give you a great understanding as to why you do things in the way you the recipe tells you.
If you are at all interested in baking cakes or want some really good recipes to follow on the odd occasion that you might bake a cake, this is your book...