Cupcakes! [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Elinor Klivans (Author), France Ruffenach (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2005

What's short and sweet and cute as a button? Cupcakes! And everyone loves 'em! Trusted favorites at picnics, potlucks, and bake sales, cupcakes go equally well at relaxed and informal gatherings or at elegant parties. Here are 50 scrumptious ways to bring smiles and those nostalgic memories back faster than a kid can lick the batter off a beater. Try a Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcake—they go from mixing bowl to oven to one happy taker in less than an hour. Who needs a peanut butter cup when there's a peanut butter cupcake in the house? Ethereal Lemon Angel Cupcakes soar even higher when served with some fresh seasonal fruit. With tips and techniques for perfect cupcake-making, basic "head-start" recipes, and gorgeous photographs, it's time to get out the baking pans and join the cupcake craze. These diminutive cakes may be small but they stand tall in the world of sweets.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lush, larger-than-life photographs are just the icing on the cupcake that is this delightful contribution to the canon of confectionary cookbooks. Klivans' recipes range from cute Lemon Poppy Seed Butterfly Cupcakes to clever Chocolate-Covered Brownie Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes, which are baked in an ice-cream cone. When tested, the bakery-worthy Sticky Fig Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Glaze looked just like the photograph and the flavor was excellent; fragrant lemon zest, crunchy fig seeds and the sticky syrup glaze (from the result of an unusually slow baking technique) reveal a carefully developed recipe. Unlike several other cupcake books, Klivans' recipes are easy to follow and produce excellent results. Succinct and useful, the first chapter covers the basics: supplies, ingredients and mixing techniques. Other little details, like chapter introductions designed to look like cupcakes, the pastel Fifties color scheme and the use of vintage fabrics in the photographs, make the book a pleasure to browse.
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Review

Lush, larger-than-life photographs are just the icing on the cupcake that is this delightful contribution to the canon of confectionary cookbooks. Klivans' recipes range from cute Lemon Poppy Seed Butterfly Cupcakes to clever Chocolate-Covered Brownie Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes, which are baked in an ice-cream cone. When tested, the bakery-worthy Sticky Fig Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Glaze looked just like the photograph and the flavor was excellent; fragrant lemon zest, crunchy fig seeds and the sticky syrup glaze (from the result of an unusually slow baking technique) reveal a carefully developed recipe. Unlike several other cupcake books, Klivans' recipes are easy to follow and produce excellent results. Succinct and useful, the first chapter covers the basics: supplies, ingredients and mixing techniques. Other little details, like chapter introductions designed to look like cupcakes, the pastel Fifties color scheme and the use of vintage fabrics in the photographs, make the book a pleasure to browse. -Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (April 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811845451
• ASIN: B000LRYP44
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #696,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elinor Klivans is a notable cookbook author and food writer who has published articles for Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Pleasures, and the Washington Post, among others. A former pastry chef, she is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and lives in Camden, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could have been great., June 25, 2006

By 

tachi1 "tachi1" (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cupcakes! (Paperback)

Someone (author? editor? photographer? all three?) isn't clear on the concept that this is a COOKBOOK. Granted, due to budgetary restraints, some cookbooks can't photograph every recipe. Problem is, that this one could have. We have full-page artistic illustrations of mixing bowls, piping tubes, beaters, 2 pages of empty cupcake pans, and 3 full pages showing paper cupcake liners. We have one page showing three (unidentified) cupcakes with two of them out of focus. If all those full pages that were dedicated to artistic fulfillment and depth of field exercises, had instead each shown 2 or 3 cupcakes each, every recipe in the book could have been presented. Captioning would have been nice, too. One cannot assume that everyone knows what a "vanilla cheesecake crunch top cupcake" looks like, but I think that it should be safe to assume that everybody knows what a paper cupcake liner looks like!

80 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pictures pictures - we want the pictures!, June 14, 2005

By 

a claire mccardell fan (midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cupcakes! (Paperback)

So many cookbooks are photo-oriented, only to make the book better looking. You see props and garnishes that are never mentioned or described, leaving you to wonder "if that flower is a sugar-coated pansy or porcelain" or "Was that cake stand vintage?"... that sort of thing. Well, this book is textually detailed down to the last dot so the lack of a photo for each recipe is a sad omission. You will want to make the cupcakes, sure, but only the ones with pictures because you have no clue how the other ones should look. If one is going to describe how to roll gumdrops out and curl them into tiny flowers, show a picture please. What's there looks gorgeous in this book but what is missing is missing in the biggest way.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars use different recipes!!!, January 2, 2007

By 

G. Garcia (Pasadena, Ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cupcakes! (Paperback)

I bake all the time, and have even taken a couple of courses; but the recipes in this book are all flawed! None of the cupcakes baked accordingly, so use this book as an inspiration and not a cookbook. FYI: Martha Stewart Baking Handbook and The Joy of Baking have great yellow and chocolate cake recipes that work all the time.