Customer Reviews

American Desserts: The Greatest Sweets on Earth

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This is a collection of "standard fare" american desserts -- Cherry pie, apple pie, lemon chiffon pie, key lime pie, chocolate chip cookies, etc.

You are not going to find strange overly complex recipes full of imposible ingredients here -- No fresh papaya juice biscotti, guava-mint-rum granitas or goat milk cheese here.

I am not convinced about some of the combinations in the cookbook -- I somehow cannot bring myself to try adding tomato juice to make devil's food cake.

Other recipes are just pure dessert heaven. The lemon chiffon pie is *wonderful.* The pineapple cake with macadamia nut topping wonderful. Cocoanut pie great.

Mostly, though, the recipes seem pretty good as a first pass at making a tasty dessert you will enjoy eating.

Wayne Harley Brachman is one of the very few culinary writers, along with Alton Brown, who brings humor to his presentation and makes his literary and TV appearances just a bit more enjoyable than those of his colleagues.
His new book of dessert recipes is based on the rather thin premise that America is the home of the world's greatest desserts. The only real connection between this premise and the rest of the book is that all the recipes, from apple pie on down, are past or present American classics. Many of these recipes have fallen into obscurity such as indian pudding, but all are `red, white, and blue'. I suppose one could be cynical about the tie-in between baking and flag-waving, but Brachman pulls it all off with great good humor and a good story behind every recipe.
The book covers pies and tarts; cobblers, buckles, pan dowdys, etc; cakes; puddings and custards; doughnuts; cookies, brownies, and bars; ice creams; and sauces. True to it's title, it covers no type of baking other than sweets and covers no species of desserts which are clearly associated with another nationality. No Sachertorts here! He may be stretching it a bit when he includes tarts, although I am very glad he did. It is the first time I have read that there is a definite difference between a tart dough and a conventional pie dough. The latter aspires to being light and flaky, since it has no need to support any weight and is typically kept in a pie pan while being cut and served. The former is built so it's vertical wall can stand alone without the support of a pan. While Wayne admits that tarts have a distinctly French accent, all the fillings are purely Yankee Doodle.
In spite of the light tone of the historical commentary, the pastry techniques described herein are rock solid. This book would not be out of place as a textbook for a course on dessert baking. A corollary of this is that there is no attempt to make this a book of easy recipes. Pie and tart doughs are not easy, but Brachman gives you all the steps plus some general techniques the professionals use to `divide and conquer' complicated work. This would also be a great book to start a young baker out on serious techniques with the aim of achieving professional results.
There are a modest number of photographs and all are useful. No fluff here. One may have wished to see just a few more to, for example, demonstrate the French tart method called fraisage. Having a Pennsylvania Dutch background, the only place I detected some lapse in the text was in the discussion of funnel cakes. The batter recipe does not fit my experience and Wayne has the batter dispensed using a piping bag. I'm sure that is how a New Yorker would do it, but in Lancaster County, they use a funnel. Nicht Wahr!.
A very worthy book, especially for the price, for the casual baker and the amateur baker who wishes to learn more basic techniques.

The best dessert cookbook ever created. The recipies are uncomplicated, flawless, and the most delicious I have ever tasted. This book is pure pleasure. From the day I got this book, my other dessert books have been demoted to collecting dust. Absolutely brilliant.