All Cakes Considered [Hardcover]

Melissa Gray (Author), Annabelle Breakey (Photographer), Stephen Voss (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2009

Melissa Gray is National Public Radio's Cake Lady. Every Monday she brings a cake to the office for her colleagues at NPR to enjoy. Hundreds of Mondays (and cakes) later, Melissa has lots of cake-making tips to share. With more than 50 recipes for the cakes that have been dreamed of and drooled over for a lifetimeincluding Brown Sugar Pound Cake, Peppermint and Chocolate Rum Marble Cake, Lord and Lady Baltimore Cakes, Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake, and Honey Buttercream and Apricot Jam CakeAll Cakes Considered is an essential addition to every baker's library.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Turning the offices of National Public Radio into a sugar-dusted gastrolab, NPR producer Gray (of the news program All Things Considered) spent a year testing cake recipes on coworkers to find the most satisfying among them. The result is this eclectic but cohesive cookbook, with a gentle learning curve especially useful for novices. An untrained pastry chef herself, Gray begins with a basic, lemon-glazed sour cream pound cake (which she calls the "Man Catcher") that introduces several key baking techniques: creaming the butter and sugar, incorporating eggs, beating batter, and lining the pan. She increases the skill level gradually as she goes, moving on to bundt, layer, and fruit cakes, followed by trickier temptations like angel food cake and the spicy, molasses-rich Appalachian Stack Cake. Each recipe comes with the story of its origin, reception, and variants. Readers will spot many bold-faced culinary names like Paula Deen and Ina Garten, but also obscure sources like out-of-print cookbooks, local publications, and small-town prizewinners. A handful of no-cake recipes includes cowboy cookies, butterscotch bars, and sinful fried pies. The instructional tone and homespun quality are signature NPR ingredients; fans of the network will find this cookbook a useful and companionable tool for family eating, potlucks, and easy entertaining.

About the Author

Melissa Gray is a producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Annabelle Breakey is a San Francisco-based photographer.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (October 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811867811
• ISBN-13: 978-0811867818
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful enough for the coffee table but practical enough for the kitchen, October 25, 2009

By 

Gwendolyn Dawson "Literary License" (Houston, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Cakes Considered (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

All Cakes Considered is all you need to progress from a beginning baker to an impressive one. Gray starts with a simple recipe for Sour Cream Pound Cake (a cake she calls "The Man Catcher"). She deconstructs the recipe and explains each step in great detail, down to how to properly center a cake in the oven and how to prepare the pan so your cake won't stick.

The recipes then progress in order of increasing complexity, finishing with a cake Gray dubs "The Liberace of Layer Cakes." With seven layers and a chocolate ganache frosting, the cake certainly deserves a spot on the stage. Along the way, Gray introduces each new technique with simple instructions that are easy to follow, so it's easy to pick up difficult techniques.

I'm a fairly experienced baker, but instead of jumping to the more difficult recipes, I decided to follow Gray's advice and to bake the cakes in order of difficulty. I started with the Man Catcher and diligently followed all of Gray's instructions, some of which were very different from my usual baking habits. The cake turned out better than any pound cake I've ever made in the past, so I'm impressed. I'm looking forward to working my way through this entire book.

Interesting anecdotes are interspersed with the recipes. You can skip them if you're only wanting to bake the cakes, but I liked reading about the origins of the Gray's recipes and the other interesting tidbits. Gray's witty, plain-spoken style is confidence-inspiring and fun to read. On top of great recipes and fun-to-read instructions, this cookbook is well designed. The attractive color scheme and the large pictures are inviting. The thick pages rest easily in the open position and stay open on the counter as you're cooking. All in all, this is one of those perfect cookbooks that's beautiful enough for the coffee table but practical enough for the kitchen.

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best Suited for Beginning Bakers and NPR Junkies, October 26, 2009

By 

S. D. Fischer (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: All Cakes Considered (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

The author deserves credit for presenting the basics of baking in a slightly different way than in the dozens of other baking cookbooks I have read. She starts with a recipe - the Man Catcher Sour Cream Pound Cake - and provides the requisite baking steps and tips within the recipe (starting with reading the recipe, preheating the oven, preparing the pan, etc). After beginning bakers have one cake successfully under their belts, they can move on to learn about the different types of flours, sweeteners, fat, leaveners, etc. There are small color photos of some procedures such as separating eggs, cutting cakes into horizontal layers, and marbling batter in a cake pan.

The cakes get more difficult as you progress through the book. The author highlights the new tips throughout the book (including how to plump fruit, toast nuts, and separate eggs).

There are some very tempting recipes such as the Dark Chocolate Peppermint Pattie Cake, Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting, and Stephen Pyle's Heaven and Hell Cake (which includes angel food cake, peanut butter mousse, devil's food cake and chocolate ganache).

As you may notice in the list below, not all of the 49 cake recipes are original. The author reprints recipes from Paula Deen's tv shows, Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, Carole Walter's Great Cakes: Over 250 Recipes to Bake, Share, and Enjoy, Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! Ideas and Recipes for Easy Parties That Are Really Fun, Emeril Lagasse's Emeril's Potluck: Comfort Food with a Kicked-Up Attitude, Sheila Lukins' U.S.A. Cookbook and Cat Cora's Cooking From the Hip: Fast, Easy, Phenomenal Meals. That seems like a lot of reprinted recipes (especially for those of us who own the cookbooks in which those recipes originally appeared). Beginning bakers who are not familiar with these master bakers may appreciate this introduction to their work.

Cake recipes include:
* The Man Catcher Sour Cream Pound Cake (with six variations)
* Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
* Missy G's Sweet Potato Pound Cake
* Key Lime Cake
* Procrastinatin' Drunken Monkey Banana Bread
* Barefoot Contessa's Sour Cream Coffee Cake
* Argroves Manor Coffee Cake
* Miss Saigon Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake
* Dorie Greenspan's Swedish Visiting Cake
* Dorie Greenspan's Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes
* Gingerbread
* ATF Gingerbread
* Chocolate Pound Cake
* Mary Carole Battle's Mother's Wacky Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting
* Cocoa Bread with Stewed Yard Peaches
* Tunnel of Fudge Cake
* Butter Rum Cake
* The Naughty Senator (peppermint and chocolate rum marble cake)
* Paula Deen's Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake
* Coffee Spice Cake
* Spanish Meringue Cake
* Honey Spice Cake with Rum Glaze
* Holiday Honey Cake
* Araby Spice Cake
* Black Walnut Cake
* Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting
* Fresh Apple Cake
* Paula Deen's Grandgirl's Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia
* Peach Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
* Faux Fruitcake
* Martha Washington's Great Cake
* Aunt Di's Bittersweet-Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake
* Whipped Cream Cake
* Honey Buttercream and Apricot Jam Cake
* Coconut/Not Coconut Cake
* Alma's Italian Cream Cake
* Sour Cream Spice Cake with Orange Butter Frosting
* Devil's Food Cake with Quick Fudge Icing and Raspberry Jam
* Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake
* Triple Chocolate Orange Passion Cake
* German's Chocolate Cake
* Angel Food Cake
* Chocolate Angel Food Cake
* Lady Baltimore Cake
* Lord Baltimore Cake
* Lane Cake
* Appalachian Stack Cake
* Graham Cracker Cake
* Dark Chocolate Peppermint Pattie Cake
* Stephen Pyle's Heaven and Hell Cake

I found it odd (and not in a welcome way) that the author included a chapter of what to bake when you're tired of cake (including Cowboy Cookies, Peanut Butter Fingers, Oatmeal Cherry Cookies, Salty Oatmeal Cookies, Chewy Butterscotch Bars and Fried Pies). Call me crazy, but I think most people who buy All Cakes Considered really want cake recipes.

The review which states that each recipe is accompanied by a photo is definitely incorrect. There are only photos of 22 finished cakes (this count includes two photos of unidentified cakes at the beginning of chapters). The finished cakes are styled nicely and the full page color photos are beautiful. I just want more of them!

While I appreciate the value of NPR, I got this book for the cake recipes, not the inside gossip of NPR. I would have preferred more cake recipes, and photos of cake, than a discussion of who at NPR prefers which types of cake (chocolate versus coconut) and a two page spread with six photos of the author taking a cake on the D.C. Metro.

112 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Greatly Overrated, November 22, 2009

By 

Scott Maxwell (New York USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: All Cakes Considered (Hardcover)

I bought this book based on all the exceptionally positive reviews and have been sorely disappointed. It has numerous errors both baking and editorial, some serious, some not so, but altogether resulting in a sloppy effort that even a folksy tone and some good photographs can't disguise. I am particularly surprised that anyone thinks this is a cookbook for beginners. Ironically, the author's complaint about old, inherited recipes is that they aren't clear enough, which is exactly the problem with hers. Here are just a few examples of many:

Most cookbooks begin with a discussion of basic materials and techniques, most of which sound virtually the same because they impart the same basic information, except for Gray's, which is more about being cute than being right. The section on pans revolves around bundt pans, with no mention of the layer cake and springform pans shown in the photo on the opposite page, both of which are used later in the book. The implication is that her not particularly helpful advice in this chapter applies to all pans, which it certainly does not.

She dismisses "teflon" because the coating isn't stable, but I'm not sure "teflon" pans are even sold any more, at least not those of yore whose coating scraped off with the most minor touch of a metal instrument. Nonstick pans these days (such as those in the photo) are incredibly durable and the choice of many professional bakers. The cheap "Baker's Secret" nonstick pans sold in grocery stores are even recommended by Marcel Desaulniers, author of Death by Chocolate, one of the best bakers around. When it comes to layer cake pans, some experienced bakers prefer the nonstick ones (which tend to be costly) because the dark coating adds a slight browning to the cake and makes it "sturdier" if that's the right word. Some prefer the your basic uncoated aluminum pans, which come in a wide variety of sizes and are the standard (and relatively cheap) pan used in bakeries everywhere. The choice is not about price but preference. She also fails to mention that one of the real secrets to making good-looking layer cakes is to choose pans with straight sides, which because they can't be stacked are a pain to store, but keep the sides of the cake flat. Springform pans bring yet another set of choices.

Most cookbooks also include discussions of ingredients, which again all sound very similar except for Gray's. Under "Eggs" she wastes a paragraph on why one shouldn't crack an egg on the edge of a mixing bowl with the mixer running, which could be handled in one sentence. And I don't think her alternative is much better, particularly for beginners--cracking eggs too "gently" just squashes the sides, and you can still get eggshell into the batter. To avoid the problem all together, really careful bakers crack their eggs into a separate bowl and slop them in approximately one a time. (The important part is to add them gradually not precisely.) While she mentions later in the the book that eggs should be room temperature, she fails to alert her readers that instead of putting them on the counter and waiting for an hour, they can drop them in warm water, which will get them up to room temperature right quick (sorry her tone is contagious). And in the butter section, she suggests cutting the butter into tablespoons AFTER it has come to room temperature. Doing this right when it comes out of the refrigerator speeds up the process considerably. Most egregiously, her suggestion to measure the dry ingredients in the one-minute intervals between adding the eggs (using a timer no less--Is this Beat the Clock with eggs?) violates one of the few basics of all cooking and baking--have all your ingredients measured and ready before starting. Making sure you have the right ingredients (e.g., baking powder not soda) in the right amounts is far more important than the precise time you beat between adding eggs.

One of the things that caught my eye first, was Gray's suggestion throughout the book to use 8-inch and 9-inch pans interchangeably, especially after all the talk about pan volume in the bundt pan section section. An 8-inch x1.5 inch round pan holds 4 cups, while a 9-inch x 1.5 inch pan holds 6 cups. Therefore 2, 8-inch pans hold 8 cups, while 2, 9-inch pans hold 12 cups. Every other baking book I've seen suggests using 2, 9-inch (12 cups) or 3! 8-inch pans (12 cups). Having a "wee" oven that can only hold two pans doesn't change the laws of physics. The batter for a 2 layer, 9-inch pan will not fit into 2, 8-inch pans. And if her solution to the problem is to fill the 8-inch pans correctly and discard the extra then shouldn't she say exactly how full you can fill a pan for the cake not to overflow as it rises? And then there is the difference in baking times, which she never mentions.

As Gray notes, few ovens heat to exactly the time on it says on the gauge. But instead of "getting to know whether your oven is fast or slow" (this isn't a date for gosh sakes!) simply heat your oven with a thermometer inside instead of a cake and see what happens. If your oven is larger than "wee," you might consider putting the thermometer in each of the four corners as well as the center. By doing this I discovered that my oven is about 25 degrees "slow" so I've put a piece of tape alongside the the gauge indicating where 350 degrees really is--just to make sure I don't forget. I also discovered that the front right and back left corners are even "slower," so when I have two layers, I position them along a left to right diagonal (this sounds more complicated that it is) and no longer have to guess about anything.

As I mentioned at the beginning the best thing you can do for any baker at any skill level is to be as specific as possible. In the "Heaven or Hell" cake, is it processed or natural peanut butter, salted or unsalted? They are not the same. The shortening and sugar in Skippy will change the flavor, and natural peanut butter just doesn't work in some recipes. It's also more important to be helpful and correct than humorous(?) and wrong. It's the frosting and filling not the cake part (especially angel food) that makes the whole thing "rich." Halving the cake and thereby doubling the proportion of frosting will not save lives: It will actually make it twice as rich and twice as likely to cause a sugar coma.

And it's French buttercream that has the egg yolks. Swiss is the one with just egg whites and the one you WANT. Dorie Greenspan did not make this mistake, and the publisher should not have let it go uncorrected.

I could go on... but then I'd be writing a book!

Loving NPR is no reason to buy this book.