Customer Reviews

All Cakes Considered

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I LOVE making cakes. Oh wait, I LOVE decorating them. Baking and I generally don't mix well. My cakes fall, bake unevenly, stick to the pans. Even the box mixes which are simple and hard to mess up. I compensate with a lot of frosting.

The first chapter of this book talks briefly about Melissa Gray's journey of cake making, the many books purchased, the many failures. It sounded like my own experience. She was witty and sarcastic and funny. This is the first cake book that has recipes and a story and instructions that didn't bore me.

She takes you through a simple pound cake insisting that you not skip ahead and do the pound cake first so you can understand all the techniques. The great part is that she explains the "technical" in layman terms. And with pictures. That was the most helpful.
That first cake is called the Man-catcher. It is a sour cream pound cake, and I had all the ingredients already in my pantry. I was only hesitant about the fact that she did it in a tube pan. Nothing makes me want to run faster than tube or bundt pans. My cakes historically have always stuck to those. NOT THIS TIME!

And the cake turned out fantastic. Moist with a golden crustiness on the outside. And that was without any frosting added. The best part of this particular cake is that I can freeze it.....since I have no workplace to fawn it off on!

Update:

I am downgrading my rating to 4 stars. I have now made the Brown Sugar Pound Cake, the Sweet Potato Pound Cake and the Key Lime Cake. THey were all decent but not great. I still think it is a great book for a beginner to learn some of the methodology.

I am precisely the target audience for this cookbook: a beginning baker who is also an NPR fan. I have been using the book exactly as Gray suggests, starting with the first recipe and working my way through. I'm about halfway through, as I write this review.

I have followed the instructions carefully, and all the cakes but one have come out beautifully. I have enjoyed working with this book. I like Gray's thorough explanations of techniques, and her friendly and supportive tone. I have learned to separate eggs, fold ingredients, marble batter, make icing, line a pan with parchment, to take my time beating in the ingredients, to use unsalted butter, and many other things I had no idea of before.

I read the one-star review of this book, which is very complete and obviously written by a person who really knows about baking. However, it is not important to me as a beginning baker that she told me to cut the butter after it reached room temperature. I was capable of working out on my own that I could cut up the butter first, not being a moron. I read with some consternation that Gray had confused French buttercream with Swiss, but, you know, I just can't get that worked up about it, as along as the cakes are successful, which they have been.

I have three suggestions for parts that could be improved: when Gray had us make the switch from 10" tube pans to 8" and 9" pans, I was at a loss, because she had not explained about acquiring or working with those kinds of pans. A friend helped me sort that out. Also, I made the Tunnel of Fudge cake without nuts, since my kids do not like nuts. Turns out the nuts are mandatory, because they are part of the chemical process that makes the inside stay moist (I learned this from going to the Pillsbury website, which originated the recipe, after the cake didn't work). There was no mention in the Gray book that the nuts were mandatory. Finally, I wish the book had a picture of each cake. As a beginning baker, it is hard for me to visualize what a successful cake would look like, and a photo of each would have been helpful.

After I finish my course through this book and start using other cookbooks, no doubt I will discover some better techniques or realize some mistakes in her recipes that I had previously been unaware of, but for now this book is meeting my needs very well.

The first thing I noted about this book was the "Man Catcher" Recipe. It's the first recipe, and she breaks it up with side notes on the "how tos" of cake baking. She has a nice break down, but boy was I glad that was the set up of only that recipe as it was a little hard to follow if what you want is just to make the darned cake.
I tend to go through new cookbooks, skimming them as I go and tagging recipes that catch my eye for future baking purposes. There are definitely tagged recipes in this book - but not as much as you would think. I was also kind of upset to find two of Dorie Greenspan's cake recipes in here, as I *own* the original book they came from (Baking: From My Home to Yours, a book you absolutely need to own if you enjoy baking even a little. This is one of the few books that I can honestly say I would have paid the full retail value of $40 for and it would have been worth every penny). None of these recipes - as far as I can tell - are original. There's nothing new here and that's fine, though a bit redundant if you have been baking for awhile.
What this book would be good for is if someone wanted to progressively build upon their cake baking skills. Most of the ingredients are either easily found or on hand in a well stocked kitchen, your biggest investment will be in the pans. She also does have some useful random tidbits on choosing cake pans and things like freezing bananas (which I thought everyone knew, but I suppose not everyone's mother made banana bread as often as mine). In the end, this is a good book with some decent recipes that will help you bake a solid cake (or ten). It's just not a particularly creative or different cook book to complement your baking cookbook collection.

I'm a fairly experienced baker but I've always had drama when using Bundt pans. This book has been a godsend as I'm now five cakes in and 4 out of 5 have turned out wonderfully, partly due to Melissa's clear and precise directions. I don't know what errors others have noticed in this book but I have to say that its been right on the money for the cakes I've made so far. Not only that, they are, in the words of my cake taster/husband, probably the best cakes I've EVER made for him!

I strongly recommend this book; I've jumped around a bit in the order of cakes she shares and may never have the nerve to try the "fancy-pantsy" cakes towards the back of the book but even if I never go beyond the ones I've already baked, the book is worth the price! Full disclosure: My Mom bought this book for me so, in order to pay her back, I suppose I owe her at least a couple of cakes!

I was really drawn to this cake cookbook. As an avid, experienced home baker, I found it thoughtful, beautiful and full of intriguing recipes. I have made several cakes so far and have a few issues. First, 8" and 9" pans really are not completely inter-changable. I made her German's Chocolate Cake recipe with disappointing results. It turns out that the cake portion follows the recipe on the back of the Baker's German's chocolate box. The box recommends using 3 9" pans. I should have followed this. I used 2 8" pans with nearly overflowing, deflated results. Not too big of a deal, but note worthy. The biggest challenge came with the pecan coconut filling. Really vague directions, "stir til thickened," -- how thick, how long? My end result, after putting it in the freezer to thicken, was a runny mess. I hope the cake is not soggy. Bummer. Also the Key Lime Cake. This was delicious but called for 1/2 cup of key lime juice, which she claims is about 4 limes. 4 limes yielded me about 1 Tbsp of juice. And the Black Walnut Cake -- who knew black walnuts would be so hard to find? OK, enough ranting ... just be careful and take this book with a grain of salt.

All Cakes Considered is like a cake bible, with a vast selection of cake recipes ranging from sheet cakes to layer cakes to tube cakes and bundt cakes. Dessert cakes, birthday cakes, and coffee cakes are included. There is also a chapter called "Break from Cakes" with several cookie recipes and one for fried fruit pies. And last but definitely not least the first 25 pages provide exhaustive guidance that will give confidence to even the most novice of bakers, including very clear, easy to understand descriptions on the steps in cake baking, information about different baking equipment, and ingredients with what they do. Melissa is a great guide and teacher, and will hold your hand through the whole experience of baking. She also provides stories and insights throughout the book that are very entertaining to read. She really makes you feel like she's right there in the kitchen with you, helping you along and chatting it up with you while you bake. The book itself is of extremely high quality with a thick, heavy hardcover, nice dustjacket, high quality paper, and gorgeous mouth-watering full color photographs throughout. One of my favorite recipes is a tube cake called "The Naughty Senator" that has a beautiful marbled pale green and brown color and tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Another of my favorite recipes is "Cowboy Cookies", where you choose 1 1/2 cups of your favorite mixed morsels (chocolate or other chips, nuts, candy, dried fruit - whatever you want!) and follow a base cookie recipe that adapts well to whatever morsels you throw at it - the possibilities are endless and customizable by you. Another notable recipe is "Martha Washington's Great Cake", which comes from a modern adaptation of Martha's original recipe and is one Founding Fathers fans will get a kick out of. There's also a Paula Deen cake included, "Paula Deen's Grandgirl's Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia". Most of the recipes in the book are fairly simple to complete, and Melissa's clear instructions make them even easier. There are a few challenging recipes for the more adventurous, but most bakers will have little problem with the majority of them. This is a great book for novice or experienced bakers who want a helpful and entertaining companion providing great insight during their cake (and other) baking endeavors.

I have been baking for a very long time and I was excited to get this cookbook as a present. However, I have had more problems with this book than any other cookbook! For starters, there are very few pictures. I think that a cookbook filled with cakes should have a picture for every cake since you can't always tell what the finished product should look like just by reading the recipe. Over half of the recipes DON'T have pictures and I could consider this a big negative. Other problems with the book are some of the "helpful" tips that Gray includes. Cut butter into tablespoons AFTER it comes to room temperature?? If you cut it into tablespoons while it's still cold it's A) easier and less messy to cut and B) it will warm up faster.

I have also had problems with every single cake I've made out of this. The Heaven and Hell cake was a big mess as the chocolate cake was far too crumbly to be used in a layer cake. Other cakes have turned out too dry, too messy, or just too bland. I have followed every recipe I've made word and word and my oven is the correct temperature. I have never had this many problems with other cookbooks. This is a nice book but I think it works better as a coffee table book than a cookbook.