Customer Reviews

Cupcakes: Luscious bakeshop favorites from your home kitchen

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have a lot of dessert cookbooks already including a few specifically on cupcakes (500 Cupcakes; Cupcakes from the Cake Doctor) so I wasn't looking for another. But once I flipped thru Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski, I knew I wanted it. It is organized intuitively and has many beautiful, full-page photos. Best of all, it includes recipes for tasty creations I had not imagined such as chai & honey cupcakes with honey whipped cream, grapefruit & buttermilk cupcakes, lime meringue cupcakes, banana caramel cupcakes, hazelnut- brown butter cupcakes, and MANY more.

Chapters include All About Cupcakes (baking basics); Basic Cupcakes (vanilla, chocolate, yellow, mocha, gingerbread, etc.); Fruit & Nut Cupcakes (triple berry, lemon blueberry crunch, sour cherry-almond, rum raisin, banana caramel, etc.); Chocolate Cupcakes (black forest, mexican chocolate, red velvet, black & white, etc.); Special Occasion Cupcakes (tres leches, tiramisu, jumbo malted chocolate chip, Christmas peppermint, Easter egg nest, etc.); Frostings, Fillings & Finishes (buttercream, cream cheese with variations, meringue, marshmallow, vanilla glaze, caramel drizzle, etc.), and Creative Cupcaking (2 pages of additional suggestions for combining cupcakes, frostings and garnishes).

30 finished cupcakes are pictured in full page color photos. Additional smaller color photos are included in the All About Cupcakes chapter to demonstrate techniques as well as garnishes.

Since this book covers the basics as well as many original creations, it would be an excellent gift for a beginning baker or someone with more baking experience.

I can't wait to start baking!

My review is based on the the 3 recipes I've tried so far. The frostings in particular were 5 stars in taste & texture, probably from all the butter. The Malt- flavored buttercream was so exceptional I was sampling the last bits off the spatula. The cakes, on other hand while tasty, were all a little dry & disappointing--I'm going to try them again later with some modifications.
If you're into easy & simple, the ones I made weren't and used a lot of utencils, pots and bowls when, maybe the cupcake or frosting could have been put together with fewer if you thought about what you are doing.
I plan to try out a couple more, but watch the moisture content, so they don't come out dry.

If you like making cupcakes this book is great. There are many variations and ideas and this book is simple for a new baker. The ingredients are available in any grocery store and the directions are easy to follow. The mixes and frostings do require a lot of beating and I would suggest a good stand mixer opposed to a hand mixer. This book will inspire you to make your own combinations.
For the folks that found the cake recipes dry, they are probably overbaking. I bake ALL cupcakes at 350 for 16-18 minutes (as soon as a toothpick comes out clean). Not the 20+ minutes suggested in the book.

Not only are the cupcakes beautiful to look at. they're also absolutely delicious. The recipes are clear and easy to follow. Even though the cupcakes look fantastically elegant, they're not hard to make. Highly highly recommend this cookbook. FYI, Ms. Kaldunski did much of the work on Martha Stewart's baking book too. I'll buy any cookbook she writes.

I am an experienced home baker, and was excited to try some new cupcake recipes. The author's connection with Martha Stewart led me to believe the recipes would lead to a wonderful product...So far, I have tried only 2 recipes in this book, but will not waste my time on any more. Not when there are other wonderful (and rather foolproof) cupcake recipes like Ina Garten's coconut cupcake recipe. The chocolate cupcake, which the author promises will be soft and moist, is neither, even when one reduces the baking time and does not overmix the batter. The Tres Leches recipe also is disappointing, but for different reasons. I am suspicious as to whether the recipes in this book have been thoroughly tested.

I received this book as a gift. I have tried 3 recipes so far and am not terribly impressed. The frosting is VERY good. The cupcakes themselves, however, just don't quite measure up. All of the cupcakes I've made have been a little too dense and not the soft texture that one usually likes in a cake. I'd say they're a touch on the dry side, though not terribly so; just a little too dense and heavy. The flavors, however, have been quite good. I am not a beginner baker, and have made lots of great cake recipes from other books, and since it's the same problem each time, I have to fault the book. If it weren't for the fact that I bake a lot and have therefore made a lot of superior cakes, I would probably be satisfied with this book due to it's many good points, but the recipes just don't measure up as written.

The variety of recipes in this book made me choose it over some other cupcake cookbooks -- and I'm glad I made that decision. So far I've made four cupcakes and three of the frostings and I'm happy with the results. The cupcakes all turned out so moist and delicious. And the frostings were the perfect match.

The buttercream is a meringue style and I've had the best results with it of any of the similar buttercream recipes I've tried. I think my husband would love it if I just used the Gooey Chocolate Glaze on every cupcake I made, but there are too many others to try still.

I can definitely see using this as my go-to cupcake cookbook!

This was my first cupcake cook book, and after getting married and having wonderful friends and family that gave me some fun kitchen items, I wanted to get started using them, so I thought what better way than making cupcakes?! I had borrowed recipes from other cup cake cookbooks in the past and really enjoyed the results. I flipped through this book in the store, looked at the recipes and all the different kinds of cup cakes I could make and decided this was the one I wanted to try out.
The first cupcake I made was the cherry almond. FANTASTIC - it was hard to keep from picking one up every time I went into the kitchen. My husband had a few ideas for improvement (he wanted them bigger and fluffier) but over all we were very pleased with the results.
Then I made a few more batches trying out different recipes. I tried the Rose Water, Red Velvet and Mini Strawberry Cheesecake. None of them came out 'fluffy and big', they seemed dry (regardless of how much time I took off of the ideal cooking time given in the book). The rose water tasted just like that, rose water - I followed the directions but maybe should have cut how much rose water I added to the recipe. It was over powering, didn't taste like a cupcake, and after two bites I threw the rest away. Being from the south, Red Velvet cup cake didn't taste like red velvet cake either. It seemed rather dry, limited in flavor, and compact (for lack of better word). Even the cream cheese frosting on top was bad, in fact the one cup cake I ate, I had to scrap off the frosting and eat the cup cake plain. The mini Strawberry was also a disappointment in many of the same ways listed for the red velvet.
Overall it, it was easy to follow directions, but a waste of ingredients, I would truly consider some other fine cup cake books out there before laying money down on this one.

My boyfriend bought me this book as a Christmas gift(he chose it because it had the best pictures out of all the books he had looked at). What a great book! I have tried nearly every recipe and each and every one was so moist and delicious! I always get a lot of compliments when I use these recipes. The other thing that I really enjoy about this book is each recipe only makes twelve cupcakes. It's the perfect amount if you just want to practice (and not have to throw away a bunch of cupcakes if they don't turn out right). This is a must-have for the cupcake lover!

This is a great book filled with tons of recipes for cakes and different frostings/buttercreams. All have a lovely photo so you get to see what they should look like at the end. I have tried out several of the recipes and got rave reviews from all of them.