Customer Reviews

500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I just got this book today, and even though I haven't made any of the cupcakes yet, I wanted to post this review to make you aware of a few things when you're thinking of whether to buy this book. First, the majority of the recipes require self-rising flour. I don't know about you, but hardly any of the recipes in my other cookbooks require self-rising flour so either I have to buy it or convert these recipes when I use my all purpose flour, which is slightly annoying. Second, two chapters are muffin recipes. He considers muffins to be a subset of cupcakes. I consider cupcakes and muffins to be two different things. Finally, as noted in the editor's description of the book, each recipe has 3 variations (like changing the type of fruit or extract or type of chips from the main recipe). I'm assuming he's counting the variations towards the 500 total. That doesn't bother me, but maybe it matters to you. Knowing all that, I think I still would have bought this book since it's relatively inexpensive, although I would have thought about it longer. The reason why I would have still bought it is because there are many color pictures of the cupcakes, and there are a wide variety of recipes. We'll see how the recipes work when I have a chance to try them.

Yesterday I received my long awaited copy of 500 Cupcakes (billed as "The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need") from Amazon. Now, 500 cupcakes is a lot, and I figured a fair amount of them would be variations on each other (ie. base recipes with several variations) but what I didn't expect was that many of the "cupcakes" would be in fact, muffins.

This is not a "what makes a cupcake a cupcake and not a muffin" issue but there were actually a few chapters devoted to muffin recipes. Dozens of them. Which is well and good, I enjoy a good muffin but I was expecting a cupcake book.

Another bit of oddness was how many of the actual cupcake recipes were savory. To me, this makes several of them, in actuality, muffins. These were in addition to all of the actual muffin recipes.

There were also few icing recipes and many of the cupcakes were not supposed to be iced. Which raises the question: when a cupcake is a flavor like rhubarb and you are not icing it, is it a cupcake or a muffin?


Now, there were some good points, all of the recipes are fairly easy and contain few unusual or hard to find ingredients. There were also a few cupcake recipes for those with dietary concerns, for example, vegan or gluten free.

All in all, it is an affordable book ($10) with lots of ideas for cupcakes and muffins. Just don't buy it thinking you will end up with 500 different cupcake recipes.

Beware of other reviews! Notice that many are only excited to *begin* trying recipes, very few actually have tried them.

I saw this book at Barnes & Noble and had been baking cupcakes for the local farmer's markets. This seemed like a wonderful idea... 500 cupcake recipes, interesting flavors, many seemed like they'd be wonderful.

However, when I got home with the book, I noticed that nearly every recipe excluded milk, water, buttermilk, etc. There were not enough liquids to make the mix into a (cup)cake batter. Instead, it was the consistency of a cookie dough, much too thick for your basic cake batter. Nonetheless, I persisted, thinking that the author knew what they were writing about. The cupcakes (2 different types) turned out so dry that you had to have a drink or you'd choke on them.

Honestly, I think most readers of this "compendium" would agree that the basic vanilla recipe has been altered in many ways. It is obvious that the flawed vanilla recipe was copied and pasted into every other recipe, but the original was flawed, and thus so were all the rest. Please don't buy this book. I am rarely displeased in a purchase and I actually ended up taking this book back to B&N. Instead, try 125 Best Cupcake Recipes or Crazy About Cupcakes. I've tried about 10 total recipes from both and all have worked out beautifully with repeat customers at the farmer's markets. Happy Baking!

My husband bought this as a gift for me since I LOVE CUPCAKES! I have never baked anything that didn't come from a box, so I was excited to try it. We have tried a few of the recipes and the only suggestion I have is to use cake flour instead of the flours they recommend. When we followed the recipes exactly, the cupcakes didn't seem to be as fluffy as boxed cakes. However, once someone told me to try the cake flour, it made a huge difference. I recommend this book because of the varieties and its is cute too :) PS: I don't like the 500 Cookies book as much.

I was so excited to get this book, and I was very disappointed. So far, I have made 4 different recipes, and they have all come out so dry that they had to be thrown out! The pictures aren't big enough, and there aren't enough to begin with. All it has is one ingredient variations to make it "count" as another of the 500 recipes....Oh...and they aren't all cupcakes....most are muffins....

I followed AT LEAST 4 recipes in this book (to the "T"!!) and they ALL came out absolutely disgusting. I'm not exaggerating -- my parents happened to be visiting and I, being the baking fanatic I am, bought this book and immediately began baking them this and that. As polite as they'd try to be, we all agreed that these "THINGS" were simply inedible! This has got to be one of the worst cookbooks on the market. Don't waste your time, energy, money, or ingredients on this one!

There really aren't "500 recipes" in this book -- a lot of recipes they say "take the base and change it slightly" to get a new flavor, which is fine. But then there's an entire chapter on "special occasion" cupcakes for birthdays, Christmas, etc. that all use the same base cupcake recipe, but uses different color frostings and somehow that makes it a "different" cupcake to add to the total.

I also take issue with "the only cupcake compendium you'll ever need" bit. The recipes are good, but they are also geared toward the beginning baker -- simple but dummyproof. Other cookbooks I own have a lot more work and sometimes unsuccesful, but there's a huge difference in taste.

Still, it's recommended -- you can't go wrong with the Chocolate Mud cupakes, and dozens of the recipes are surefire winners. This book is definitely more about making quick and beautiful cupcakes than getting the perfect recipe. I'm glad I own it, but I think most cake lovers will graduate on to bigger and better recipes kind of quickly.

Am I the only one that thinks that the recipes in this book are just way off? I have tried three of the recipes and followed the recipes explicitly. The recipes call for virtually no liquids, so the batters come out to a thick, goopy consistency. The cupcakes are far too dense and chewy. Cakes should be light and moist and spongey. Just by skimming over each recipe, I can tell that the batters are all much too thick.

I give this book 3 stars because I think it has truly great recipe ideas (as far as the different flavors and kinds of cupcakes), the format of the book is very user-friendly, the recipes are concise and easy to follow, and the pictures are great. The recipes and flavors sound delicious and will put you in the right direction, but you'll definitely end up having to adjust each recipe in order to get the right consistency in the batter/cake.

I bought this book, and hoped to have 500 different recipies for cupcakes, instead you have about half recipies with different icings.
When I decided to make awesome vanilla cupacakes (the easiest cupcake), well the result was a dry, mealie, terrible cupcake. The worst thing is that, this recipie is the one that gets repeated several times.
So I do not recommend this book. You are better off getting reciepies from friends, and family.

I too, was like most others thinking.. omg the only cupcake book I will EVER need! BIG FAT JOKE! The cupcakes do not taste good! They are mediocre at best

This book, while having many varieties does not have 500 completely different recipes. The cupcake recipes are mostly all the same with some minor changes, adding chocolate, or vanilla.

The book should really advertise as 500 frostings, because that is the only thing that consistently changes.