The most luscious cakes you'll ever taste!
Rating:
5 / 5
Marcel Desaulniers is the most consistently amazing dessert cookbook author I've ever come across. Take, for example, Martha's Chocolate Freckles Fresh Blueberry Ice Cream Cake. It's based in a "Chocolate Freckles Cake," which is a non-chocolate cake with finely-chopped or grated chocolate mixed into the batter. A homemade blueberry ice cream fills the space between the layers - this is honestly one of the best ice creams I've ever had, with a tart flavor created by the sour cream, cream cheese, and lemon juice. The topping is sweetened, vanilla-flavored whipped cream, and further fresh blueberries are ringed around the top.Next we made Marcel's First Birthday Chocolate High and Fluffy-on-Top Cake. This is a chocolate cake with a vanilla frosting. It sounds so simple, but it's so delightful! This is truly the ultimate icing: sweet, not too buttery, and remarkably fluffy. I have never had such a fantastic icing before, and intend to use it on cake after cake in the future. You'll find everything in here from Chocolate Rocky Road, to Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake, Chocolate Caraway On-the-Rocks Trifles, Chocolate-Dipped Orange Fry Cakes with Coffee and Cream, Uncle Sam's in the Black Cake (with a toasted oatmeal raising topping), Chocolate Tender Passion, and much more! Each recipe comes with a gorgeous picture. The recipes are inventive and of consistently excellent quality; the directions are thorough without being labyrinthine. They're several pages long for each recipe, but I never feel lost. Marcel repeats the amounts of the ingredients in the instructions so you don't have to flip back and forth to the ingredient amounts. You'll probably not want to get this book unless you have a stand mixer--the key to many of these delights is loooong mixing times, sometimes of stiff batters. Other than that, however, Marcel tries to limit himself to common household equipment and time-scales. In short, if you like to cook and love chocolate cakes, buy this cookbook!
Talk About "Have Your Cake!"
Rating:
5 / 5
You won't find such creative stuff anywhere else, trust me, one who's a cookbook addict collector and searches many sources for great recipes. Marcel is truly creative and stand alone in his relentless search and publication of such collections, all geared not for restaurant or competition but for us home chefs. Ingredients, equipment and techniques are all tried and prepared with us in mind.This volume on cakes is divided into five groupings: Baby cakes, Mom's cakes, Celebration cakes, out-of-state cakes, and sky-high cakes, with the common theme of chocolate. This guy really knows how to get to my sweet tooth, with nuts and fruit and decadent chocolate. Try the likes of: "Chocolate Porto Enchantment Cake"; "Milk Chocolate Peach Pecan Upside Down Cake with Peach and Bourbon Ice Cream" or "Chocolate Mai Tai." Truly, there is too many good ones, but feast your tastebuds on: "Martha's Chocolate Frecles Fresh Blueberry Ice Cream Cake" "Chocolate Caraway On-The-Rock Trifles" "Chocolate Tender Passion" As with each of his cookbook offerings, there is the super photos, Chef's Touch section with its fascinating background and prep and serving tips, and section on sources, ingredients and techniques, one especially awesome here is a Table of differing chocolate melting times using both double broiler and microwave methods. This one does take the cake
Amazing!
Rating:
5 / 5
I love this book! I've already made several cakes from it and, although they are time consuming, the results are fabulous! The directions are easy to follow and the stories are the icing on the cake. I went out and got the other books as well, and I'd recommend all of them to any chocolate lover out there.
|