Customer Reviews

Cakes from Scratch in Half the Time: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake Cakes Forever

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

 

 

I love to bake cookies, pies, tarts, cheesecakes etc. but have always had lousy luck with cakes. I have tried a few from the famous Cake Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum) and from Gourmet and Bon Appetit, but while I know my way around a kitchen, I had concluded that cakes must not be my forte.

I read through Cakes From Scratch in Half the Time yesterday and baked my first cake last night (chocolate orange passion cake!). I was very impressed . Great texture and flavor. The whole thing was very easy - her methods are simple. She teaches you to assemble all the ingredients, bring the eggs to room temp by placing in hot tap water, soften the butter by placing on top of the preheating stove (or microwaving for a few seconds), and spray the pans with Baker's Joy (which Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen just confirmed works better than hand greasing and flouring of pans).

This is definitely not fussy cake-making. Most cakes are made in a single mixing bowl, so not a lot to wash. The keys are:
1. Good ingredients (cake flour, whole milk, unsalted butter, good whipping cream, bittersweet chocolate, etc.)
2. Good equipment (inexpensive aluminum light-colored cake pans)
3. Right process (add the ingredients in a particular order, don't overmix, and bake at 400).

I couldn't make the frosting because both Safeway and Whole Foods were completely out of powdered sugar. GO figure. But the cake was wonderful. I made an easy chocolate ganache from another cake in the book to frost it with. I am going to try it later this week for a birthday party with the intended frosting.

One minor nitpick so far - I think she oversimplifies the directions for melting chocolate. She says to put in the microwave on full power for 1 minute, but in my experience (in my microwave) that makes the chocolate sieze up. I have to do 50% power for a minute, then stirring after 30 second intervals until it melts. Trust your own experience there.

I am eager to try more of her cakes, but am hopeful I can get away from cake mixes forever now!

I have to agree with the "half the time" issue another reviewer raised - I don't think there was anything much about shortcuts or time-savers in this book, really. But, the recipes are fantastic! The cakes I've made from here have all been perfectly moist and airy - definitely the best cakes I've ever made.

One thing I really liked about this book, too, is the amount of variation in cake bases themselves. This isn't a book with a couple recipes for layer cakes, a couple jelly rolls, some ideas for putting together sponge cakes... it's just a bunch of variations on the standard, familiar butter cake. This means Eckhardt isn't repeating recipes that I already have on my shelves anyway, and that was really nice.

All in all, highly recommended!

Althought I promised myself I had plenty cookbooks - I HAD to buy this one, after flipping through the pages briefly. Spending time in Africa, box mixes are not an option. But, after baking the 'chocolate sweetheart cakes with soft centers' and the 'uber-chocolate cake' for guests - I'll have no trouble passing the packaged mixes from this point forward. I highly recomment this book for all cake lovers!

I'm surprised at the number of negative reviews about this book. First, let me say that I was never a baker. I was terrified of it because nothing ever came out right. I cook a lot but never baked. I picked up Ms. Eckhardt's book because even though the cumulative ratings were low (3.5), I use another cookbook of hers ("The High-Protein Cookbook) that's just excellent. Boy, was I in luck! The baking recipes are wonderful. So far, I've baked 4 cakes and they've all turned out wonderfully. I baked the chocolate orange passion cake for my birthday party (lots of oohs and aahs from guests), and plan on baking the coconut cake for a party I'm attending this Friday. I don't worry any more about being a bad baker because you can't go wrong if you follow her instructions.

I've become so addicted to baking now that I do it about twice a week! Go on. Get the book. You won't regret it! :-)

P.S.: Investing in an oven thermometer may be necessary. I bought one after my first cake took longer than it should have to bake. Turned out that my oven wasn't really heating up to the temperature it claimed to be.

I happened across this book at the library and I'm glad I found it there. If I'd found it on Amazon I would have bought it and been sorry later. The premise of her book is great in theory but not worth spending $20 for once you find out her "secret." The secret, you ask? Use a stand mixer to mix certain ingredients (which vary from recipe to recipe) and prep the other ingredients while the stand mixer is working its magic. She does acknowledge that if you don't have a stand mixer, you'll have to juggle the other stuff one-handed while you use your regular, old hand mixer to beat whatever it is you're supposed to be beating. I'm not that coordinated so I wasn't about to try to measure flour whilst wielding the mixer in my other hand. That cost one star off my rating.

I took off half of a star for the lack of pictures in the book. Yes, I realize not all cookbooks have pictures and I am perfectly capable of cooking without having pictures as signposts to tell me if I'm following the directions. What I don't like, however, is the abundance of white space. Most of the recipes take up two pages, but use only 1/2 of the second page, leaving 1/2 to 3/4 of the page blank. There is enough room in the book for each cake to have its own picture, if only for those people who buy cookbooks for the food porn inside.

The other half star got cut for the ridiculous vocabulary she uses. As I'm reading about cakes, I shouldn't have to reach for the dictionary. The word that got me? "Peripatetic." There are four college degrees amongst the members of my household (including an English degree) and none of us knew the meaning of the fancy word she chose to use to mean "on foot," rather than use something as mundane like "ambulatory," or even "mobile." As an aside, the word she chose has a closer meaning to "vagrant" or "migratory" than "on foot."

But, other than those three gripes, the book has several good ideas. With her encouragement I was able to make my first cake from scratch (a basic yellow cake with whipped cream icing and strawberries) and it turned out quite lovely. I also made the spicy corn cupcakes and they were a hit as well. I will make several more cakes before I return the book to the library (and probably even check it out again) but for the cost I can't justify the purchase.

If you're thinking about getting this as a gift for someone who loves cakes (and has a stand mixer already), they'll probably be happy. Just don't buy it for yourself without looking at a copy at your local library or bookstore first.

I first picked up this book in a store and was intrigued by what I read. It sounded like Linda West Eckhardt had come up with a foolproof way to make the perfect cake. I was especially excited about the cakes coming out level. She claims her method will bake a cake that is perfectly level with no dome on top where it has risen in the middle. She states that "layers are disk-like as Frisbees." So, I decided to check this book out from the library to give it a test run before buying it.

Well, I bake cakes often and like always, I followed the directions to a T for her Clasic Yellow Cake. I used the commercial-grade aluminum pans she recommends and made certain my oven was set to exactly 400 degrees -- I even used an oven thermometer to assure it was really at 400 as she stresses the importance of this temperature. I then carefully followed her extremely specific mixing instructions.

So, imagine my dismay when I pulled my cake layers out of the oven 15 minutes later and saw that not only had my cakes risen in the middle, but they had risen a lot! I had big domes in the middle of each cake. Now, it is definitely possible I made a mistake, but I felt that I followed the directions with a meticulous attention to detail.

The reason I've rated this 3 stars is that even though I was disappointed that the cakes did not come out the way the author claimed, there was basically nothing wrong with them. They looked like your average cake and tasted pretty good as well (though nothing out of the ordinary.)

This book is also pretty to look through with some lovely photographs. The directions are clear and easy to follow.

I baked a vanilla cake and a chocolate cake. The vanilla cake came out light and fluffy. The chocolate cake came out dense and rich-too rich for this chocolate lover. The chocolate cake didn't even call for flour. hmmmm This is an excellent book and the title holds true to its intentions.

I was searching for a cake with marshmallows for my son's Birthday, the Mississippi Mud Sheet Cake was a huge hit!

I made the Praline Pound Fudge Cake and the Lemon Loaf Cake soaked with Lemon Syrup for Holiday Gifts! Both Delicious!

She's right about the ingredients. Everyone asked what type of flour I used to make the Praline Pound Cake, the texture was incredible!

After baking two recipes from the book, I was very displeased with cake results - both were complete failures. It makes me wonder if the book was written without adequate pre-baking of published recipes. A total waste of money.

The big secret? Get some of the prep done while the mixer is running. And use shiney pans and put the oven up to 400. If you read the title carefully, it says, "recipes that will change the way you BAKE cakes forever", and on the back cover, the description is, ". . ."cakes that BAKE in half the time". Not that take half the time to make, from start to finish, but BAKE in half the time. It's not that the recipes are bad, it's just that there are much better cake books out there, and the whole premise of the book could be summed up in 2 sentences and the rest is a waste, meaning that this book is one big rip-off.