Notes about Recipes in this book

• Vanilla buttermilk pound cake with bourbon soaking glaze

  • mamacrumbcake on May 06, 2017

    This is a really good cake! It's not hard to make—basically a pound cake with two tweaks: making the vanilla sugar and the vanilla bourbon glaze. It is very fragrant with vanilla, and the bourbon complements it beautifully! When the glaze cools, it makes a slightly crackly, sugary crunch which is a perfect foil for the tender cake. The cake itself is so good that I can see myself skipping the glaze if I were making it for home. The recipe says the cake needs to bake for an hour but mine needed an hour and 15 minutes.

• Raspberry-mint pâtes de fruits

  • sdeathe on August 19, 2020

    Delicious! Intense raspberry flavour, mint is quite subtle and could be increased to your taste. Easy to do and a great way to use up the last of the raspberry harvest.

• Blueberry cornmeal scones

  • chawkins on June 05, 2016

    Love these. The cornmeal added texture and a bit of sweetness. I used frozen blueberries, quarter cup more than the recipe asked for and the scones were bursting with blueberry goodness.

• Extra-crumbly blueberry muffins

  • chawkins on December 13, 2015

    These were great. The crumb of the muffin was tender and the topping slightly crunchy. Not super sweet. A great taste of summer for this balmy 70 degree December day. I used frozen blueberries.

  • stockholm28 on July 02, 2016

    These were very good and with the crumb topping they are like a good coffee cake.

• Vanilla sponge roll with strawberries and cream filling

  • chawkins on March 04, 2016

    Perfect sponge sheet that rolls like a dream, you don't even have to pre-roll it right out of the oven. It was cooled as a flat sheet cake and then rolled when completely cooled. First time I used vanilla paste, so much better than the extract. The filling is a bit skimpy for my taste, I prefer to have more strawberries in my roll.

  • chawkins on July 15, 2018

    Made this again. The sponge cake is lovely again. For the filling, I used one and a half cups of halved strawberries that I macerated with only 1 T of sugar, I laid the strawberries out to cover about the lower 2/3 of the cake and there were ample of strawberries for me this way.

• French strawberries and cream cake

  • chawkins on March 31, 2016

    The cake tasted good and looked impressive before being cut. However,it is a failure for me. First of all, the cake pulled away from the side of the pan and tested done, after resting in the pan for 15 min. I had trouble inverting it out to cool on the rack. After some coaxing, it came out, I saw that the center of the bottom was still wet and stuck, so it went back to the oven for 5 more min. Then, when making the filling, after adding the cream, it was supposed to be whipped to a soft peak, but I could only get it to a soft pile, no peak. As a result, the filling was not firm enough, so when applying pressure from the top as you cut into the cake, the wall of berries started to bow out, that was after chilling for 7 hrs. Also, you need a baking sheet, a food processor, a stand mixer whose bowl and whisk need to be washed & dried twice, 4 bowls(yolk batter, butter, gelatin & berries), 2 pans(to cook syrup & pastry cream), a 9" round cake pan and an 8 1/2" springform pan for assembly.

• Apple crisp with pecan-oat topping

  • chawkins on February 21, 2018

    Very good crisp. I went with the weight measurement and used 8 honey crisp apples, dark raisins for the filling and walnuts for the topping. Filled a 7x11 dish to the brim and yet had no overflow during baking.

• Jacquy Pfeiffer's French apple cake

  • Jane on November 01, 2015

    This was very easy to make and really delicious. I don't have a tarte tatin pan or 9" cast iron skillet so I made it in a regular 9" springform pan and it was fine. Maybe it didn't have the crisp edges but it still tasted great. I served it with Salty caramel ice cream from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream - a lovely combination.

• Orange-kissed ricotta cheesecake bars

  • chawkins on February 18, 2016

    Rich and creamy and slighty citrusy. I used low fat ricotta, cream cheese and sour cream and it is still quite rich. Could not wait four hours, so served only after three and a half hour of refrigeration, it was fine. There was no wobbiness at the end of the specified baking time, so the specified time was spot on.

• Ganache-filled peanut butter cookies

  • sdeathe on October 02, 2025

    First, these cookies taste delicious. I had problems with the construction of them, however. The recipe says to roll the dough out to !/8" thick; I found that the stated 12-15 minutes at 325°resulted in burnt cookies and that 9 minutes was fine. The cookies darken as they cool. If you cool the ganache in the fridge "about 3 Hours" you end up with a very firm product that is impossible to spread on fragile cookies of 1/8". So many broke! If I placed some ganache on the bottom cookie and pressed down gently, the top cookie broke. If I made these again, I would test the ganache for spreadability to ensure it was usable without damaging the cookies. The ganache softened somewhat over time, but not enough to make a significant difference to the continuing destruction. If I made these again, I would definitely roll out to 1/4" thickness. I suspect that this may be what was intended as I got over 40 sandwich cookies, and the recipe stated it makes 28 sandwich cookies.

• Chocolate-caramel-almond tart with fleur de sel

  • Jane on October 04, 2015

    Wonderful dessert and really not hard to put together. Pastry is very straightforward and can be prepared ahead. Then a layer of almonds & caramel which chills then topped with a chocolate ganache. I was a bit too impatient with the caramel as it wasn't darkening quickly enough (I was using organic cane sugar which didn't caramelize as quickly as white granulated). So that layer was a bit runnier than it should have been. I doubled the chocolate truffle layer as I wanted more chocolate. The whole tart was devoured by 8 people though it could stretch to 12 if no-one had seconds.

  • JoanN on October 26, 2015

    Pastry is a dream to roll out and holds up very well. Tart is very sweet and very rich; John said it tasted like a chocolate turtle and he was right. Caramel layer gets runny if allowed to warm up; better to serve it chilled when the caramel is still a little chewy. I substituted sliced almonds for slivered because it's what I had, but slivered would probably add a bit more of a welcome crunch.

  • Jane on February 12, 2017

    I made this for the second time. It's a great dessert. This time I sprinkled the top with fleur de sel. I didn't like that the little dots of salt marred the glossy sheen of the ganache topping. Interestingly, although the recipe says to do this, the recipe photo in the book shows no trace of the salt.

• Love-struck chocolate cake with white chocolate-coconut filling

  • nutrica6 on July 08, 2025

    This cake is a real project, but was fun to make and turned out great. The cake itself is rich and moist. The white chocolate coconut ganache did not thicken up as much as I thought it would in the fridge but was the perfect texture after whipping it. The glaze was a little too thick so was hard to evenly spread on the cake, which wasn't the prettiest but still tasted amazing.

• Baking Bites

  The book defines nine classic flavors and devotes a chapter to each: Vanilla, Berries, Apple, Citrus, Sweet Cheese, Nuts, Caramel, Coffee and Chocolate.

  Full review

• Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum

  Full review