Customer Reviews

Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I love cake. I guess it makes sense to love a book about cake. It's a satisfying fix, and I would say the first half (just like the first bite) was the best part. I can admit I was able to personally relate to a lot of those cake-nocake-cake-nocake-CAKE!!!! scenarios.

The part I didn't enjoy was the middle, where the author spent way too many pages on the wedding cake competition and its contestants. I honestly would have preferred a shorter book than the obvious filler she stuffed in--I mean, outlining the wedding couple's honeymoon and the cakes they ate on it? Entire chapters devoted to the petty dramas between bakers? Please.

She revived herself a bit in the last part, with the outline of cakes (trashy or not) around America, providing a refreshingly ironic take on the "local food" craze.

But more cake erotica, please.

Everybody loves cake, whether it's the warm yellow fluffy insides, or the milk chocolate frosting your mom slathered all over the first birthday cake you can remember. There's something nostalgic and comforting about it, and that's what makes Miller's new book so gratifying.

Personally, I don't have a lot of great childhood memories, but I do remember the birthday cakes my mother made, and those are memories I hold dear. "Let Me Eat Cake" channeled me right back to those days, sneaking tastes of frosting from the chipped glass plate, taking awful pictures of the Union-Jack cake she made when I was a teenager obsessed with The Who. Miller's book follows a similar personal journey, and that's why I loved it. From her stories about her grandmother, to her own hilarious efforts to bake and decorate cakes, her love -- not just for cake but for all it represents -- is patently obvious.

This is what makes nonfiction so eminently readable: the writer's passion. Her quick-witted honesty and laugh-out-loud humor reminded me of Mary Roach's "Stiff," and I for one can't wait to see what Miller does next.

I really enjoyed the book for the most part, but found the abundant use of foul language disappointing. She could have had a hilarious book -- and it was -- without the bad language. I bought it to pass along to my daughter, who loves cake decorating, but I honestly don't think I will give it to her because I am embarrassed by the excessive foul language. I know you can't hardly get away from that these days, but come on! We don't need that!

Cake. The one word that can cause so much excitement when you hear it. No wonder I couldn't wait to read a book about the joys of cake. LET ME EAT CAKE by Leslie Miller was well worth the wait! You'll be laughing, crying, and learning more about cake than you ever thought possible. Leslie Miller knows her stuff and her book is really the icing on the...well you know!

I can't decide whether to pig out or to grunt like a baboon. I laughed at the funny parts, got serious at the serious, historical parts, and loved the sexy parts. "Leslie, my love, come to me; I want to be inside you," is about the funniest line I've read in a non-fiction tome. And a tome it is--dense with information, though fluffy with fun. How I hate a cliche--but still, it's a great read.

A wonderful celebration of family and food. I would venture to guess that everyone on the planet has at least one "cake memory" and you will bask in the glow of that memory while enjoying this book. Leslie Miller truly captures the essence of comfort food. I laughed out loud at her wit and cried reveling the memory of my grandmother's baking. You can't miss with this one!

In her debut book, Baltimore's Leslie F Miller, a self-proclaimed lover of cake, takes us on a wild ride concerning all things cake. Not a cookbook, but a love poem to cake, Let Me Eat Cake conveys Miller's intensely personal relationship to cake, from her earliest days baking (and eating) to her experiences with some famous bakers (including Duff Goldman and Warren Brown). Along the way she dishes some fabulously entertaining gossip, sets us straight on the origin of the expression "let them eat cake," and unravels the mysteries of The Today Show's wedding cake competition. The chapter in which she takes cake decorating classes is itself worth the price of the book - it delivers such acutely painful details of her attempts and failures at making buttercream roses that you will be cheering for her as though you were watching an Olympics competition. And then there's the recipe for her grandmother's sour cream pound cake......

This book was everything the title said it would be and much more. It was truly a celebration of cake. Leslie F. Miller went on a quest to introduce readers to not just her love of cake, but her true passion for it. And she taught us a thing or two about the history of the food and its traditions, as well.

We were brought into factories and cake boutiques, we went along when she attended decorating class and interviewed the Ace of Cakes, Duff Goldman. She shared recipes and also shared stories of baking cakes in her own kitchen, whether they were beautiful, or required a sign saying they were ugly but tasted good.

I found myself laughing often and smiling much throughout the book.

As the author states in her preface, "I set out to write a layered cake full of a little bit of this and that: some history for those who need to know, some folklore for flavor, some narrative. Every bite has a little bit of something, including nuts. And like cake, this book is light and fluffy."

It's a wonderful romp through the sweet land of pastry. I certainly could use a slice right now. And every time Ms. Miller mentioned running her finger along the edge of the cake down along the plate to swoop up a little of the frosting when nobody was looking, I have to admit I had the urge to run to the County Market down the street and see what they had on bakery shelves.

This wonderful book was written by the very creative and multitalented Leslie Miller. It is a funny, educational, and plain old wonderful read. I both laughed out loud and snorted coffee out my nose while reading the book. I learned a ton about cake and enjoyed myself doing it. Miller is an amazing story teller.

You can't go wrong with this book.

I received the book as a gift and decided to read it before my 3 daughters came for Xmas. I'm glad I did, as the foul language was a real turn-off. The author had a humorous way of writing, similar to Erma Bombeck. However, Erma, though hilarious, was never crass. I threw the book away, as I also have a 12 yr old granddaughter. by Mom and Gran