Customer Reviews

Great Good Desserts Naturally: Secrets of Sensational Sin-Free Sweets

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I recently purchased a copy of Great Good Desserts Naturally! by Fran Costigan. I am a strict vegetarian and try to cook and bake using only natural ingredients. This book has great recipes that taste as if they have been made the traditional way with eggs, butter, and sugar. I have made the double fudge brownies with great success, and my skeptical husband even thought they were excellent. I also made the cornbread recipe, which is moister than any of the traditional recipes I have made. This recipe can be turned into cornmeal pancakes or corn muffins as well.

In the book, the author gives several tips about whole food ingredients as well as how to subsitute traditional ingredients with natural alternatives. She discusses appropriate baking utensils and techniques that make this book suitable for novice bakers in addition to experienced ones. She also tells how to modify recipes (e.g. making cupcakes from a cake recipe), and she provides information on how to present the desserts (frosting ideas for cakes, sauce ideas, fillings for cookies). The book contains recipes for cakes, frostings, cookies, frozen desserts, sauces, and more. I would recommend it as an easy way to have healthier snacks and sweets in your diet.

At last, a delightful new cookbook for people who want to indulge a sweet tooth, while striving towards being healthy. Fran Costigan's informative book is packed with recipes which include no butter, no refined sugar, no milk nor eggs, and are cholesterol free. Each recipe is written simply enough for a newcomer in the kitchen, and carefully tested to be totally fool proof. I love the author's lively notes, which makes the book ideal for bathtub reading. The book includes all my favorite traditional desserts; flaky pastry pies, yummy lemony custard sauce, fruit crumbles, outrageous chocolate sauce - even double fudge brownies (but all made healthily), as well as a new collection of contemporary, hip desserts, including lemon-lime tofu cream, carob cake, and "this is not my mother's pumpkin pie". This is a must-buy for anyone wanting to be healthy and happy at the same time!

The Recipe-Chocolate Cake to Live For and Ultimate Chocolate Frosting are worth the price of this book! I can cook but have not been successful with desserts. Until now! Fran's clear recipes and sense of humor have transformed me into the queen of dairy-free desserts (According to my happy family and friends). I think she must teach great classes and wish I was closer to NYC. What amazes me is that I have to fight to save pieces of these desserts for my vegan friends. EVERYONE LOVES THESE DESSERTS. I want to make every recipe. I am a chocolate person but love the blueberry slump as much. The format of the book is smart. THe beginning seems like a private class in natural foods, with so much information about healthy ingredients and how to use them and WHY and charts. I think beginners and more advanced bakers can use this book-it is like a terrific reference book with delcious recipes. She points out the recipes are easily varied. I doubled the orange cake (Tropical Fruit Gateau), split the layer in half, filled and frosted it with Chocolate and now it is a much requested birthday cake. I can't beleive how professional it looked. I am ordering onther copy for myself and definately will send this book out when a gift is needed. If I sound excited, it is because I am. Did I mention that the recipes are easy and many can be made and frozen? I can find only one negative and that is I want to see more books by Fran like this one. Yes I recommend this book.

This is the best dessert book I ever used. It's clear and well organized with a lot of information but isn't overwhelming. The author has made baking without milk and eggs VERY simple and easy. I am a mom and my kids like desserts that taste good. Me too. I want us to stay away from dairy and eggs and junk but not feel deprived. I have tried many of these recipes -- they WORK and seem to be pretty forgiving -- a good thing because I am a new at baking and make a few goofs... The brownies and chocolate cake are beyond delicious. I made the lemon cake and vanilla cakes several times for parties. They make great cupcakes for kids parties too; iced with the chocolate peanut butter filling from another recipe. The recipes are easy to use in different ways. My friends didn't even ask how I made these without milk, butter, eggs, because they couldn't tell. Hope Fran writes another book because I'm working my way through all the recipes in this one fast.

Fran has really broken some important ground here and offered helpful tips for substitutions and alternatives to the nutritionally pathetic traditional method of dessert making. DO NOT come to this with the expectation of everything tasting like grandma made it -- vegan baking cannot taste exactly like double fudge cake with butter cream icing, nor should it have to. It is tasty in its own way, and once you get used to it, other desserts are overwhelming and unappealing.

Before you read further, however, know that I am not sold on the 0% refined sugar routine because I don't like everything to taste like maple syrup and barley malt, and would rather not spend an arm and a leg to purchase these items over plain old sugar. Fran refers to everything that does not have white sugar as "sugar-free" which is very misleading, inaccurate, and confusing if you don't know what she's referring to. For example, "sugar-free lemonade" (which I thought must just be frozen lemon juice and water?) actually meant organic lemonade sweetened with juices. If the viscosity of the syrup she calls for is necessary, then I will use it, but I ration them out so as not to break the bank.

If you share this mindset, don't dismay -- it is easy to tweak the recipes to allow for some refined sugar. I was seriously impressed with the boston creme pie/cake, which I fed to many dairy-eating carnivores that didn't know it was vegan (and my husband went crazy over it). I was disappointed that the only sugar cookie recipe was wheat-free and nearly inedible (I threw the remainder away after I served them, and vowed never to make something out of here for others without trying it first!). Brownies were amazing, oatmeal cookies were very good (and I tried those using no white sugar), chocolate sauce/glaze made me want to sing and dance.

The "great" recipes in this book are reason enough to buy it, but the good information about successfully baking using the prescribed methods is invaluable (minus the scientific claims and warnings that are presented without reference to any empirically valid source, yet printed as fact).

It is not the most professionally made book (several typos and not aesthetically pleasing), but that doesn't matter to me as long as it's useful. Buy it, peruse it carefully, adapt the techniques, and then use that as a springboard for fashioning your own great good desserts!

Finally, a well-tested cookbook! (And a chef who actually gives away her secrets!) This is one of the best cookbooks I have ever used. Every recipe I've done has worked perfectly. Her instructions are detailed and if you follow them, they will work. She also gives all the essential information on the unusual ingredients so anyone who isn't used to using tofu or agar in desserts will be able to with no problem. (She doesn't talk your ear off, either -- just gets to the point!) As a professional chef I find most vegan/vegetarian cookbooks to be unreliable, so I make up my own variations. But this book is for REAL. Delicious desserts that NO ONE will guess are healthy! The double chocolate brownies are my favorite. One thing I've noticed though is, the ultimate chocolate frosting will set quicker if you cook it with the kuzu a few more minutes than she says. The only other thing I should mention is, there are more steps involved in these than your average baking recipes. You'll need a blender AND a food processor to get the best results on some of them -- but if you're like me and you love dessert but not the junk, it'll be worth it!

Although I am not a vegan, I do try to limit my dairy. However, dessert is my major weakness. This book is nothing short of fabulous. It taught me how to make healthier desserts, make appropriate subs., etc. She explains all of the uncommon ingredients for those we are new to vegan desserts. I have made a ton of recipes from this book and have not been dissapointed by any! I highly recommend this book.

This book is brilliant. Of my myriad vegan cookbooks, it's recipes are consistently the best and most thoughtfully presented. Every single recipe I have tried has been mouthwateringly good. Fran (if I may use her name so informally, which only feels natural since I use her cookbook so much) leaves out no details when it comes to baking delectable desserts and provides tons of background information on healthy sugar substitutes and the like. I have made many of these desserts for my family and peers and they too have been shocked that there are no animal products or refined sugars in them. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to vegans and non-vegans alike. I am delighted each time I get the opportunity to make something from it.

Yummy deserts and lots of chocolate (in sauces, brownies, cakes and cream for inside the cakes) in this cookbook along with important tips on using natural baking ingredients and cookware so the recipes turn out mighty tasty! I much appreciate the well communicated insider's knowledge on how to best use whole wheat flour, kuzu, tofu, arrowroot, maple syrup , rice sweetener and other natural ingredients.

The results of the recipes in this book are so delicious that I had to fight to keep servings available for my vegan friends. NO ONE KNEW these were healthy desserts. Finally, I am able to stop explaining and finally I am able to make easy, delicious everytime treats. I especially like the introduction to ingredients and the step by step instructions which are written in a very easy to manage format. In fact, I love the format of this book. I want to marry this author. Thanks Fran.