Customer Reviews

Little Cakes from the Whimsical Bakehouse: Cupcakes, Small Cakes, Muffins, and Other Mini Treats

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, as this book's title indicates, this is a book about little desserts. From cupcakes to muffins to small cakes. Dessert in miniature, which is pretty trendy right now. So if you're looking for a repeat of their first book, you'll find it here, only in miniature form.

The corn muffin recipe was delicious, and their decorations are phenomenal.

Just to give you an idea of the recipes offered, here's a selection. . .

Anytime Little Cakes & Muffins. .

Corn Muffins, Blueberry Muffins, Zucchini Muffins, Banana Muffins, Whole Wheat Blackberry Muffins, Oatmeal Muffins, Pumpkin Muffins, Coffee Chocolate Chip Muffins, Almond Coffee Cakes, Blueberry Crumb Cakes. .

Special Occasion Little Cakes

Strawberry Shortcakes, Raspberry Cheesecakes (miniature, of course), Falling leaves (melted candy painted to look like leaves!), Pumpkin spice cheesecakes, Matt's upside-down cakes (they look soooo delicious!), Nostalgic nibbles and Devilish delights (basically their nod to the twinkie and a chocolate counterpart), Make a wish cupcakes (their interpretation of their "mini" cake from their first book, only in cupcake form), halloween cupcakes, Pate a Choux nests and Pastry Cream, Wild Meringues, and Dulce De Leche, and more!

There are even 3-d Apple bushel cakes (the actual cupcake looks like a bushel of apples - so cute!), Flower pots (the actual pot is candy coating!), and there are directions on how to make your cupcakes look like several different flowers (gorgeous!), and then there's the 3-d Christmas trees, & the much desired Tiered mini cakes (one's a dragon - it's gorgeous, another one has a Paisley design, and the final cake is decorated in beautiful Lilacs.

And all of the frosting and filling recipes they suggest using are here, plus the cake batters. I think you'll find their books inspiring, easy to use, and fun to look at over and over again.

Also, the recipe for Kaye's buttercream is in here (it is out of this world!) and it's scaled down from the version in their first book, to make half a recipe.

I can't stress this enough, this is a miniature bakery book - think cupcakes, mini muffins, muffins, and single portion desserts. If that interests you, then you're going to absolutely love this book!

As a sidenote, as anyone who owns any of their three cookbooks can tell you, the photos are fabulous! You never have to guess what your dessert is going to look like, and the templates are included in the back of the book.

Just buy it!

Having just gotten this gem, it's another winner from the mother-daughter team of Kaye and Liv Hansen! Not finished with giving us unique and artistic big-people cakes, they have created little-people cakes, aka cupcakes and their equally delicious and tasty friends, the muffins.

GETTING STARTED

As usual, the book has all those bright neon colors that get you thinking outside the realm of the frosting standards. To help you get started, they have the first section, aptly named "Getting Started". It covers all the specifics of what equipment and supplies you would need to make all the stuff in this book; every template is included as well. One of the most appreciated sections within this book is the chart of cake pans, sizes, and batter capacity needed; cupcakes are always a plural adventure, and for this, you need to know what you're working with. Plus there is the color chart to help you make every wild, bright, and wonderful color you want, plus icing color standards. Kaye and Liv include all sorts of tips on baking (how not to overmix certain batters, adjusting your timetable to meet your timeline, etc.) as well as tips on fillings, icings, piping (from simple to detailed), and the actual recipes themselves.

I need to really emphasize the lesson they give you in "The Chocolate Method". If you've ever seen edible designs and wondered how they are made, this section alone was worth the price of the book. It seems so simple once you get it, but until a really great baker tells you how, it can seem too much to attempt.

ANYTINE LITTLE CAKES & MUFFINS

The best recipes for muffins: blueberry, zucchini, banana, whole wheat blackberry, oatmeal, pumpkin, and coffee chocolate chip. Then there are the cakes: almond coffee, blueberry crumb, coffee pecan pound cakes, and plum kuchens.

SPECIAL OCCASION LITTLE CAKES

Raspberry cheesecakes, pumpkin spice cheesecakes, Matt's little pineapple upside-down cakes, and one of the best ever....TWINKIES and DEVIL DOGS (the delicious way they used to taste)!!! Also, Devil's Food cake, caramel cake, the Big Bang cake (chocolate and caramel on a Pistachio Ganache Truffle cake (mercy!), cream puff nests, pate a choux nests (custard puffs), "ice cream" cupcakes (cake batter cones w/ ice cream on top) along with the ice cream recipe and the topping shell for the ice cream.

THE FUN CUPCAKES

Make-A-Wish cupcakes (the ones on the front cover)

Halloween cupcakes

Mini Acorn cupcakes

Chocolate Coconut cupcakes with German Chocolate Icing

Wild Meringues cupcakes (animal print look made with chocolate---grrrr!!!)

Little Present cupcakes (cute little "gifts" with a chocolate bow)

Valentine cupcakes

Caramel Popcorn cupcakes

Construction cupcakes (this presentation used "the Chocolate Method" of designs to place on a sea of chocolate cupcakes; a definite boy's dream!)

Bumblebee cupcakes

Spider and Ladybug cupcakes

Shark cupcakes

Beach Pail cupcakes (soooooo adorable and sooo real-looking!)

Flower Power cupcakes (gorgeous floral masterpieces that looked like a real garden of dahlias, poppies, daisies, etc)

"A Rose is a Rose" bouquet of cupcakes (very, very clever!)

Basket cupcakes

Hat cupcakes (witches, fedoras, baseball caps, etc)

A Bushel of Apples (literally a cupcake that looks like a apple bushel!)

Flower Pot cupcakes

Christmas Tree cupcakes

and........the Grand Finale...................

Tiered Mini-Cakes (3 basic designs to work from and they are gorgeous!)

These would be great ways of spending time with family and friends, and the delicious joy that these will bring will be sooo worth it!! Thanks to Kaye and Liv!

I really want to give this book 4 and 1/2 stars. The technical information was comprehensive and easy to follow. I was also pleasantly surprised with the number of icing recipes provided - 3 kinds of buttercream, fudge icing, peanut butter, whipped cream and 3 kinds of glaze - as well as the fillings and cake recipes. The authors have phenomenal ideas for beautiful little cakes.

There are a few recipes that use shaped pans (ice cream cones, rose, heart) which can be costly. They do provide alternatives if the user doesn't have the pans. I do not like the book's size. It's only 8" x 9 1/2" and the print is smaller than many of my other cookbooks. However, the content is so good that I can overlook both issues.

It is a great book and I would definitely buy it again.

I haven't made the designs yet from this book, but I have used several of the cupcake recipes. They are delicious! Those of you afraid to try scratch, need this book. They aren't much harder than a mix and come out very moist. The house buttercream is also an amazing noncrusting frosting. Very tasty and easy to smooth. Highly recommend.

Hi everyone I am a baker in new york went to school in london and have just about every book on baking a few weeks ago came across little cakes from the whimsical bakehouse all I can say is this book is wonderful every recipe in the book came out great and is very easy to understand putting together the recipes was to say the least a breeze not much can go wrong with this book I would recommend buying this book I plan on buying all her books and visting her bakehouse happy baking all

Antoinette

From brooklyn

The cover of this book doesn't do it justice. The cakes on the cover are cute but fairly plain. But what you find in the book is several good recipes -- and some _adorable_ little cakes, from simple and plain to quite fancy -- from little corn muffins to an iced shark cake (shaped like a shark jumping out of the water) to elegant little fondant-decorated cakes. Some of the cakes are geared toward kids, but some of them are quite elegant and appropriate for adults. I hope the publisher will add the "search inside" feature and give folks a better glimpse of what this little gem of a book contains.

This is a great recipe book and cupcake decorating book.

It is a wonderful continuation of their original with lots of small cupcake ideas, muffins, etc. I actually love it more than "hello, Cupcakes!" because I feel like this one is a little more adult oriented. There are some wonderful ideas that I cannot wait to try on kids in the future in "Little Cakes" but it also covers a lot of muffin recipes and more adult mixes to make beautiful cupcakes.

It gives great decorating ideas, recipes and how to "fill" a cupcake - which I never would have thought of! Delicious!

For the reviews that are complaining about this book:

1) If you are looking for just completely cutesy (sometimes inedible by adults because there is so much icing) cupcake ideas then you should get "hello cupcakes" - very adorable, usually a little complicated to put together and tons of icing/candy. However, if you want something a little more artistic to make in a more classical "cake decorating" way - and still look and taste great - I think "Little Cakes" is the better option. Don't get me wrong - I think both books are great. I just think I'm more likely to use "Hello Cupcakes" for kids and "Little Cakes" for adults.

2) Some people have commented that the instructions aren't very good. Its true that I have found a few recipes that forget a small step or so (for example, remove the cupcake wrapper in the popcorn boxes) but its all really simple little steps that wouldn't be a big deal if you forgot, and if you read through the recipe ahead of time you would realize it was missing. Almost all recipe books miss steps here and there - this is actually one of the more complete books I've read.

3) Some people have commented that it doesn't explain how to do the decorations. I attribute this to the fact that this is sort of a "sequel" to The Whimsical Cakehouse. The Whimsical Cakehouse has an entire section on how to do every type of decoration (from writing to shells to flowers) in pretty elaborate detail. I think when they wrote "Little Cakes" they chose not to reinvent the wheel - so certain things (like the chocolate method and basic decorations) are just touched on because they presume you have already read the original. Having read the original first and being very new to cake decorating I had NO problem with the decorations.

I highly encourage anyone to buy this book - the recipes are just so creative and fun! Its not fondant and perfection like some cake decorating books but they sure are cute and sooo tasty!

I have several books on cupcakes, and so far this is by far and away the best one. I've made quite of few different recipes from this book, including both cupcakes, muffins, crumb cake, and pineapple upside down cake, and they all came out fabulous. Whenever I decide to try a recipe out from scratch, I know this book will not do me wrong. I've tried another book, "Hello Cupcake" where their red-velvet cupcakes were so hard they bounced off my floor. Whereas the "Little Cakes" book has not failed me yet!

The recipes are very simple, even a group of children could make the red-velvets with minimal adult help. The decorating techniques are definitely a little more professional than I'm used to using, but so far they've worked out well for me. I do appreciate that the Hansens don't dumb down their recipes, but make them feasible for anyone to make them, and have them come out looking as professional as they do!

I suggest this book for any cupcake or muffin fanatic - it has a lot of really wonderful recipes and adorable decorating ideas!

I am a fan of the Hansen's "Whimsical bakehouse" cookbook. I've made cakes from that book and when I saw this book I had to have it. Cupcakes seems to be the trend now so I decide to give it a try.

I've enclosed photos on the first cupcakes I made. The flower cupcakes with the red velvet and lemon coconut recipes. They were a hit! The cakes tasted great and I love their butter cream. Most people find frosting too sweet but their version is the right balance between sweetness and creaminess.

At first I didn't think I could make them as the flowers looked difficult. Plus this book did not have the "how to" photos like their cake book did so I had to read the instructions carefully.

I give this book 4 stars instead of 5 because you do have to have some basic baking knowledge/skills to follow the recipes both baking and decorating. Beginners might have a hard time trying to follow the decorating techniques. My advice is to start with the basics and work your way up to the more difficult cakes.

I had high hopes for this book but was disappointed. Half of the book is muffin recipes. I was looking for more decorating instruction. There are no step by step pictures of techniques.