Customer Reviews

Little Cakes: Classic Recipes for any Occasion

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

 

 

`Little Cakes' by professional writer and `cookbook archeologist' Susan Waggoner is a very pleasant discovery I am happy to recommend to all, especially occasional bakers who want to go just one step beyond the Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker packages to make cakes from scratch. In spite of the delightful watercolor illustrations dotting the dust jacket, I was expecting a weak effort on petit fours and other less than useful preparations. This especially in light of my recently having reviewed expert baker and baking writer Flo Braker's reissued `Sweet Miniatures'. I was very pleasantly surprised with what I found.

For starters `little cakes' in this book means primarily single layer cakes baked in an 8-inch square or round pan, with icing. There are plenty of recipes which can be adapted to two or three layers, and the author gives many suggestions for same, but the heart of the matter is cakes baked with a relatively small amount of batter for a relatively short time. Within those constraints, the variety of cakes presented in this delightful book is wide indeed. The basic types include silver cake, white cake, white chocolate cake, yellow cake, gold cake, genoise (French sponge cake), whipped cream cake, chocolate cakes, devils food cake, marble cakes, `German' chocolate cake, flourless chocolate cake, red velvet cake, pound cake, marble pound cake, butter pecan loaf, lemon pudding cake, orange cake, banana cake, grapefruit cake, pineapple upside-down cake, raisin spice cake, oatmeal cake, pumpkin cake, gingerbread, carrot cake, walnut cake, spice cakes, sandwich cakes, tea cakes, ginger buttons, petit fours, icebox cakes, ladyfingers, and cheesecakes. I will be happy to forgive the author for including cheesecake (a cheese custard pie) and other non-caky desserts such as trifles and tiramisu, as she has successfully created a highly accessible source of good recipes for quick reference when you do not want to wade through a 600 page tome to find something quick for a last minute baking need.

The litany of cake types above is multiplied by pairing each type of `crumb' with an appropriate icing, of which Ms. Waggoner gives several such as whipped creams, lady Baltimore frosting, white decorator icing, basic vanilla icing, basic chocolate frosting, lavish fudge frosting, chocolate ganache, white chocolate buttercream, white chocolate meringue, basic cream cheese frosting, grapefruit frosting, powdered sugar glaze, quick-set fondant, browned butter frosting, peanut butter frosting, penuche frosting, and caramel icing. On top of these are recipes for fillings and syrups for `kicking things up a notch' to borrow a phrase from someone.

While Ms. Waggoner does not have the professional baking credentials of Flo Braker or Nick Malgieri or Gayle Ortiz or Gail Gand, she is no slouch when it comes to starting one out with excellent advice on how to go about baking a good, simple cake. As far as I can tell, she touches all the right bases and gives absolutely no spurious advice. Some practical folk may object to her ward against using an oil spray from an aerosol can to lubricate a pan. I suggest those folk go and read the ingredients on those little cans and realize that the `no fat added' advertising claim is based on a fuzziness in the labeling law which says that if the amount is less than 1%, it can be deemed zero. The wrapper or a stub end of a stick of butter will give no more fat and probably be a lot healthier. A huzzah for Ms. Waggoner on this point.

For those of us who bake cakes only about three or four times a year, I still recommend Ms. Waggoner's book, as it is a very entertaining read for foodies as well as being an exceptionally good quick reference for a wide variety of basic cake types. The very short biography on the dust jacket says Ms. Waggoner enjoys rummaging through old magazines and newspapers for recipes. Well, she has really put all that rummaging to good use. Before the recipe for each major classic recipe, there is a little story on the source and age of the recipe and where it has been between the time it was created and its appearance in this little book. There are even some references to that greatest of pastry chefs Antonin Careme who is credited with the invention of the strawberry charlotte russe.

It is a small point for a book of such high quality recipes, technique, and stories, but the book is also exceptionally well designed to be both pleasant to read and easy to follow when you are doing recipes. The watercolor illustrations contribute little to the appreciation of the end result, but they succeed in being very decorative.

I compared some of Ms. Waggoner's recipes to my favorites and I will not give up my Nick Malgieri recipes for carrot cake or gingerbread and I will not stop referring to Rose Levy Beranbaum or Shirley Corriher for advice on what went wrong with my genoise, and I will definitely go to Maida Heatter when I want a seriously impressive production, but I will definitely turn to Ms. Waggoner the next time I need something I can make quickly from the pantry of a very short trip to the local grocery store.

Highly recommended to all foodies, occasional bakers, and readers in general.

I love this book. I've made several recipes from this cookbook, and have really been pleased. What impresses me most is that these recipes hold up well when you substitute ingredients, don't exactly measure precisely, or take half of one recipe and combine it with another. The author did her research well, so if you read through a couple of recipes, you can replicate almost anything that you'll find in a fancy cake shop at home with what you have in your cupboard. And the best part? Most recipes make exactly 12 cupcakes - perfect for a midnight snack, and so much better than from-a-box. Yum!

I love this book because everything I have made turned out very good. It is a splendid idea because nobody gets sick of the cake before it is all gone. I am buying these books as gifts for my friends to enjoy, because this is what I would like as a gift.

The classic recipes and more of little cakes are a delite
for dieters. Most use one eight or nine inch round cake
pan or smaller loaf-sized pan for pound cakes. Just enough
cake to satisfy my sweeth tooth.

I, like some other reviewers, wanted good recipes for not a lot of cake. The book delivers here. But I wish the baking times/temps. had been better worked out. The pound cakes baked in small pans took 38 minutes, not 25 to 30 as stated. I have a mercury oven thermometer, and I am experienced, which is why I was able to make the adjustments in the recipe times. That recipe gave a temp. of 325 degrees, but 350 would have been better, but I didn't know this in advance. After 28 minutes, I put it up to 350 for 10 more minutes. But it was delicious.

The author did not advise that layer cake pans once came 1 1/4 iches deep, and then 1 1/2 inches deep. In order to make the Everyday Yellow Cake, it is essential to have an 8-inch pan which is 2 inches deep; otherwise you will have a mess on your hands. Someone making this for the first time, with an old pan, would not know this. By the way, Everyday Yellow Cake was delicious, but again, the baking time was off and I had to add extra time.

But a very good book with delicious recipes but be prepared to make time/temp adjustments.

Earlier this month, my parents were coming to visit to celebrate my mom's birthday. I'd recently moved and for some reason couldn't find my 9x13 cake pan or my round ones. Just when I'd given up baking her a birthday cake, there was a knock at the door: the mailman, with my copy of "Little Cakes"! Luckily, the one cake pan I'd been able to find was my 8" square pan, perfect for just about any of these lovely cake recipes! In no time at all, and not even needing a trip to the store, I whipped out a fudge marble cake and had it all ready by the time people started to arrive. The best thing about this book is that the small cakes don't take forever to use up. I haven't even had it for two weeks yet and have made three recipes out of it, all of which have been huge hits (and using only my lone cake pan! The others, sadly, have been sucked into one of those mysterious black holes that open up when one moves. C'est la vie) I'd recommend it to anyone, and I love the recipes in the back for frostings, fillings, and decorating ideas. It's already earned its place on my cookbook rack as a "first line of defense" (yes, not only do I have a bookcase devoted solely to cookbooks, I have them organized by priority, I'm a food geek)

The lack of photos in favor of illustrations give it the feel of a coffeetable book, one that you could simply flip through for pleasure. Beautifully done

Not too long ago, one of the "country"-themed magazines ran a piece on little cakes that was essentially a photo spread. The cakes pictured did indeed look appealing. Too bad the instructions boiled down to "look for sweet little pans and adapt your favorite recipes to suit, or make a bunch of cupcakes with the leftover batter." Thanks a lot. If I wanted that much cake around the house, I'd just bake a regular cake. And I have no desire to monkey around trying to cut standard recipes in half. I bought this book sight unseen and was pleased to find actual little-cake recipes, which the author seems to have been at pains to test for reliability. I especially like the fact that she doesn't mince words with the instructions: if she thinks something should be done a certain way and not another way, she says so! She is also generous with small-batch frosting recipes. Maybe I was spoiled by that magazine photo spread, but I do wish there were photographs rather than supposedly cute drawings, which don't show much of anything. Also, too many of the recipes are for a boring single-layer square or round cake. To me, that undercuts the "whimsy" of a small cake. (Could be why there are no photographs.) I guess I could experiment with interesting molds, as the author suggests in passing, but that just takes me back to "adaptation" territory. These quibbles aside, I'm more than satisfied with the book, which delivers what it promises.