Customer Reviews

Book of Tarts: Form, Function, and Flavor at the City Bakery

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

New York Times Aug 18. Food Section featured a splendid summer picnic menu. All recipes were included except Maury Rubin's Blueberry-Coconut Tarts. New Yorkers get them at City Bakery. What's a Bostonian to do? Get Maury's book which does have this recipe and many more. Best of all, he gives very easy to follow directions on making the dough. Many of the tarts are made with fresh fruit. The color photos of each tart are very helpful and inspirational to me. Love this book.

After flipping through the pages of this book, I was on a mission like a thing posessed in search of flan rings, which the author lists as a "must have" to make his tarts. The tarts are so visually appealing, I had to find out for myself if they tasted anywhere near as good as they looked. I found four flan rings- at a rediculous $9 per four-inch ring. I couldn't see buying eight, which is the number that one recipe of pastry makes. But the results were worth it!! I tried two recipes. The first was a fully baked tart shell filled with ricotta cheese and topped with fresh berries. The second was a tart baked with almond cream and fresh cherries (my substitution for plum slices which the recipe called for). The cherry tarts looked like something I'd buy from a pastry shop- just gorgeous. The shells have a great short-bread like flavor and a much nicer crumb than many tart recipes. However, what they make up for in flavor, they lack somewhat in durability. They are somewhat fragile. Mr. Rubin's instructions are excellent, and though the first time through takes time and patience, it was not difficult. Anyone comfortable with pastry should have no trouble with the shells. The down side is the practicality. If you need many tarts at one time, the flan rings are expensive. I was able to fashion rings out of foil and shape the tarts with a foil ring inside a stainless steal ring. Once the pastry is shaped and trimmed, just slip the stainless steal ring off and the foil will hold perfectly fine for baking. The pastry dough handles easily, but the sharp rims of traditional tart pans will cut through it and ruin it before you have a chance to shape it.

I was told that the best tart dough recipe could be found in this book and was happy to discover this to be completely and utterly true. Yes, the pastry is fragile, but, my god, it's delicious -- buttery (but not greasy), flaky, slightly sweet. No more thick, heavy, greasy crusts from other cookbooks!

The recipes for the various tarts are wonderful and unique and the pictures beautiful. But, the bottom line is, you should buy this book for the pastry recipe alone.

This book, althought not the easiest recipes to prepare, certainly it has the most delicious. Maury's lemon curd and tart shells are the only recipes I ever use when I want a show stopping, delectable dessert for my restaurant or home entertaining. Please, Maury, come out with volumn 2.

Karen Barker in her excellent new "American Desserts" book recommends this one highly, and it does not let one down for finding and purchasing it.

One can tell that Rubin enjoys his art, and is very proficient at it. His humor and talent show from his culinary acknowledged beginnings of Pop-tarts, then from ABC Sports to cookbook reading in libraries! This book is lively and informative and creative and great eating tarts!

Applying all his French learning with his creative touch led to City Bakery fame. His desire for quality and seasonal menus breathed life into his enterprise and this resultant cookbook. How neat that he has shared all that work and development with us who like to whip up a tart every now and then. This work will greatly aid!

What is neat is that his goal of making simplistic tart recipes so that new employees could achieve the high quality he wanted is achieved for us home pastry types. Here they are seasonally offered after a just unbelievable primer on Tarts 101. Ingredients, equipment, then tart dough recipes and procedures, as well as decorating and chocolate tips. One can see why the likes of Barker likes this one!

The creativity displayed here in recipe design and photo of most makes this one a real keeper/user! Feast your tartloving eyes on the likes of: Champagne Peach Tart with Vanilla Sugar; Ricotta Cheese Tart with Summer Fruits/Flowers; Lime Cream in A Candied Ginger Crust; Sake-Spiked Plum Tart with Ginger; Zinfandel-Marinated Cherries with Cocoa; Square Pear Peg Tart; Grapes with Hazelnuts; Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee Tart; White Chocolate Cream with Raspberry in a Hazelnut Crust.

Sources are included as well.

I recently purchased this classic and have been totally impressed with the quality of the pastry, the clear directions, and the creativity Maury shows. I've made the lemon tart with berries and the chocolate tart infused with Ethiopian coffee beans. Both tarts were way better than anything I've had from a bakery. However on a recent trip to NYC I tried the tarts from City Bakery and the Payard bakery (Francois Payard, his book is Simply Sensational Desserts), and found that I preferred the Payard crust slightly. Comparing the recipes, the two key differences are that Francois uses more sugar and less butter. His crust comes out slightly sweeter and more chewy, with a more cookie-like taste. I plan to continue using his pastry recipe but want to applaud Maury Rubin for the creativity of his fillings most of which I have not tried -- but I certainly plan to! Kudos Maury! And thank you for sharing.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best pastry book ever written for the home cook, I probably have close to 50 dessert cookbooks and I will go to this one every time I want a dessert that tastes as good as it looks, the Lemon Tarts are better than any pastry shop I have ever been to as is the Lime Tarts, it took me a few trys to get the technique down for the shells, but now I can do it by memory and they turn out great every time, light, flaky and delicious, the rings to make the pastry are worth the small investment.

It was worth all the wait and the money. When I bought it second hand I thought it probably had some damage on some pages but the book came in excellent conditions. And the recipes and stories that it has are all very interesting. I haven't tried making the tarts but I will eventually. I'm very happy with this book.

I purchased this book over 10 years ago, read it and put it aside. Probably because at that time I did not have the tart rings that are recommended. I recently took it off the shelf after being disappointed with recent purchases of baking books.
I prepared a couple of recipes and they were fantastic. The crust for the tart was so tender and delicious they are addictive.
I started out with the basic tart dough and fresh fruit. Next I will try the chocolate tart dough with dark and white chocolate.
If you are an avid baker and you can find this book it is certainly worth having.