Ideas keep coming and I can’t resist trying different things.

Rose Levy Beranbaum is the award-winning author of nine cookbooks, including The Cake Bible, the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook of the Year for 1988. She also won a James Beard Foundation Award in 1998 for Rose’s Christmas Cookies, and her most recent book, The Bread Bible, was an IACP and James Beard Foundation nominee and was listed as one of the Top Ten Books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly and Food & Wine. She is a contributing editor to Food Arts magazine and writes regularly for the Washington Post, Fine Cooking, Reader’s Digest, and Bride’s. Her popular blog, realbakingwithrose.com, has created an international community of bakers.

Her most recent book is Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. This is a beautiful book, loaded with photographs and Rose’s usual comprehensive, detailed instructions on every step of the baking and decorating process. Rose shows you how to create everything from Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake, Golden Lemon Almond Cake, and Devil’s Food Cake with Midnight Ganache to Orange-Glow Chiffon Layer Cake, Mud Turtle Cupcakes, and Deep Chocolate Passion Wedding Cake.

Find Rose’s books on Cookbooker.

1.    What was the first cookbook you owned?

A James Beard paperback – the one with him sitting before a plate of choucroute garnie [The James Beard Cookbook]. I remember thinking anyone that fat and happy must love food and be a good cook. I never dreamt that someday I would be taking his classes!

2.    What cookbook would you say had the greatest impression on you?

The Joy of Cooking – my second cookbook.

3.    What do you think about the new wave of artisan bread books (Peter Reinhart, Jim Lahey etc)?

I adore baking bread and am thrilled that there is such an interest in home bread baking and such excellent guides coming forth with great books that enable home bakers to make breads equal to, or sometimes even better than bakery breads.

4.    My wife gave me Rose’s Heavenly Cakes for Christmas this year. I’m going to bake my first cake from it soon – is there one in particular you’d suggest as representing the book particularly well?

There are so many cakes in this book that I love and must have again but the one that is my top favorite is the Golden Lemon Almond. [Recipe here: http://www.finecooking.com/item/11646/a-sneak-peek-roses-heavenly-cakes]

5.    You’ve published nine cookbooks now, including three ‘bibles’. In many ways you’ve written the book on bread, pies, pastry and cakes. Is there anything left for you to tackle? I get the sense that you’re not someone who’s comfortable resting on her laurels.

How true – I’m supposed to be catching up with all I’ve neglected during the final years of putting my most recent book together, but instead I’m already working on the next one. Ideas keep coming and I can’t resist trying different things. My next book will have to include recipes from all of the above, including cookies, as I have many new recipes since those books were written.

6. I’m curious if you find it hard to finish – to let go of a cookbook, to stop testing and tweaking?

Exactly! It’s always hard to let it go, no matter how long I’ve worked on it.

7.  Have you found that the Internet has changed the way you create your books? I’m impressed by your website and thinking in particular about the community of testers and fans that often develop.

Yes – in many ways. I get invaluable feedback plus requests for specific recipes or techniques and the best part is that I can do things like “outcakes” where I post the extra things such as photos that didn’t make it in, youtube or DVD demos, etc. It’s changed everything and made multi-level education possible.