Cooksbakesbooks' Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
The Cake Bible
By Rose Levy Beranbaum
William Morrow Cookbooks - 1988
Before I had this book, I could not bake a cake from scratch. Now I can use recipes other than in this book, and use Rose Levy Beranbaum's techniques to make excellent cakes. That said, I do use cake recipes from other books, but The Cake Bible is my standby.
My son's classmates invariably have birthday parties where the parents buy cakes from the grocery store. I do not have the nerve to rush up to them and say, "You could have had an actually -good- cake for the party if you had taken a few minutes to bake one yourself--it's not hard!" It really isn't difficult, and that's in large part to Ms. Beranbaum's applying the results of her painstaking research, and her excellent way of explaining how to combine everything.
I would recommend every single recipe I have tried, though I have three favorites that I would recommend especially: the Buttermilk Country Cake, the Cordon Rose Banana Cake and the Cordon Rose Cream Cheesecake. I can't bestow enough superlatives on those, and you can see separate recipe reviews for each of those.
One nice touch is that you can correspond with the author, who is on both Twitter (@flourrose) and Facebook.