Zosia's Reviews
9 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 9Sort by: Title 
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The Cake Bible
By Rose Levy Beranbaum
William Morrow Cookbooks - 1988
All-Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake : page 39
A delicious, versatile yellow cake that has good vanilla flavour and a lovely, moist crumb.
It was the first cake I baked from this book so the author’s 2-step method of mixing the batter was totally foreign to me. I now appreciate this method of beating dry ingredients with butter first, then beating eggs (yolks only in this recipe) and liquids in later; it’s faster, dirties fewer dishes and results in a tender cake every time!
As other reviewers have noted, the cake marries well with a number of different frosting flavours. My most recent pairing (pictured) was with the vanilla mousseline buttercream from the same book.
A fabulous, basic cake suitable for “all occasions”!
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Fruit Cloud Cream : page 264
Airy mounds of whipped cream that taste of fresh summer fruit.
This is simply whipped cream flavoured with sweetened fruit purée and stabilized with gelatin (I used agar agar). It’s excellent as a dessert topping or as a frosting when something lighter than a buttercream is desired.
I paired the strawberry version with the génoise au chocolat to make the Strawberry Maria.
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Génoise au Chocolat : page 129
Génoise cakes are the bane of my existence. I haven’t made too many attempts at this type of cake as my results have been hit and miss. Fortunately this one, using this recipe for the first time, was a hit.
I’ve learned from experience (and the few successful cakes of this type that I’ve made) that weighing the ingredients and keeping them warm are critical to a successful outcome. And though I’m not usually one to play with my food, using your fingers (immersed in the batter) is the best way to locate and dissolve those pesky flour clumps without over mixing the batter.
The cake has a very nice but not too assertive chocolate flavour and a light and delicate texture. It doesn’t contain much fat so must be syruped to stay moist. I used a syrup flavoured with orange liqueur; a chocolate syrup would intensify the chocolate flavour. This is the base cake for the Strawberry Maria.
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Mousseline Buttercream : page 244
It’s amazing to me that combining whipped butter and an Italian meringue (egg whites whipped with sugar and cream of tartar, to which a hot sugar syrup has been added) results in something this light, this silky, yet this creamy. This is a frosting I use often for its stability, its versatility and the ease with which one can work with it.
As with most of Rose’s recipes, if the detailed instructions provided are followed and ingredients measured accurately, success is assured.
The base recipe is not very sweet and the author provides instructions for a number of flavour variations, but really, the flavours that are possible are limited only by your imagination. I made the white chocolate variation for my most recent cake, the white velvet butter cake, also from The Cake Bible.
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Passion Curd : page 342
Perfectly sweet and tart and tasting like the fresh fruit, if not better, this curd has superseded lemon as my all-time favourite fruit spread/cake and pie filling.
The recipe is a basic curd recipe that involves cooking, but not allowing to boil, a mixture of passion fruit puree, egg yolks, sugar and butter until thickened. Passing the mixture through a strainer before cooling ensures removal of any cooked egg bits or passion fruit clumps and a perfectly smooth curd.
I’ve made this recipe a few times now, and I’ve learned from experience (and also a recommendation from the author’s blog) that weighing the ingredients yields a curd with the best consistency.
I used it most recently as a filling for a white velvet cake frosted with white chocolate mousseline buttercream, both recipes from The Cake Bible.
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Strawberry Maria : page 184
Moist chocolate cake with ethereal strawberry cream – the perfect birthday cake for my mother.
The components of the cake have been reviewed separately here and here. The chocolate génoise and the cloud cream were a wonderful match for each other both in flavour and texture. Neither component was intensely flavoured, either with chocolate or strawberry so one did not overshadow the other, but rather complemented the other perfectly. The overall texture was delicate and airy; the cake was a delicious ending to a special meal.
I made the optional filigree chocolate band which was easier than I thought it would be…..the most challenging part was finding a level stretch of counter that was long enough – kitchen table to the rescue!
Though consisting of a few elements, apart from the strawberry purée for the cloud cream which I made in advance, the components were made and the cake assembled within just a few hours, not nearly as arduous a task as some of the other cakes in this author’s books. I’d love to make this with raspberry next!
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Strawberry Purée and Sauce : page 338
This delicious purée/sauce really captures the essence of the summer fruit more so than any other recipe I’ve tried.
The method is a little more complicated than just puréeing the fruit but results in superior flavour. It involves straining the juice from defrosted fruit and reducing it to concentrate the flavour before adding it back into the puréed strawberries.
The resulting purée smells and tastes like juicy ripe berries and can be used to flavour whipped cream or buttercreams or can be sweetened and used as a sauce.
Easy and very versatile. I usually make a double batch and keep some in the freezer.
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Triple Chocolate Cake : page 201
This is a delicious, intensely flavoured showstopper of a chocolate cake that presents the main ingredient 3 different ways: a light, moist cake (syrupped with Frangelico), a smooth, creamy whipped ganache, and a crispy, crunchy chocolate praline shell.
I hesitated to make this cake as I'd neither made a chocolate genoise nor tempered chocolate before. My first genoise failed as I made a fatal error in the first step by overcooking the chocolate mixture. Do pay more attention to the visual description for doneness than the cooking time mentioned....I imagine quite a few factors affect how quickly the mixture cooks. Tempering the chocolate and wrapping the sheets around the cake created no problems - just a few raised eyebrows when I was caught blow drying the cake!
I used chocolate with a ~55% cacao content for the cake and chocolate sheets, and ~50% (I added some milk chocolate) for the ganache in deference to my family's preference for a slightly sweeter, less bitter chocolate and it was extremely well received.
As with most of the more elaborate cakes in this book, there are a few components that need to be made before assembling the cake, but most can be made ahead; in fact the entire cake can be made ahead and frozen.
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White Velvet Butter Cake : page 46
This delicious vanilla cake has a fine, velvety soft crumb, beautiful white appearance and good vanilla flavour; it's one of my favourites.
It’s made with basic ingredients and uses Rose’s 2-step method of mixing: the dry ingredients are beaten with butter and some milk; the remaining milk and the eggs are then added in 3 batches, beating briefly after each addition. The cake uses egg whites only, hence the lovely colour, but as whipping them is not required, whites that have a little yolk in them are okay. The batter is quite thick so chopped nuts, chocolate chips etc can be added and remain suspended while the cake bakes.
I chose to make this cake for my recent wedding anniversary, pairing it with passion fruit curd filling and white chocolate mousseline buttercream. This project was somewhat of an experiment for me and represented a lot of firsts, but I knew that the cake portion would turn out well as this is an extremely reliable recipe as long as you measure ingredients carefully and follow the detailed instructions.
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