Customer Reviews

Sweet Maria's Italian Desserts: Classic and Casual Recipes for Cookies, Cakes, Pastry, and Other Favorites

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

 

 

Make Delicious Italian Desserts at Home

In her latest cookbook, "Sweet Maria's Italian Desserts: Classic and Casual Recipes for Cookies, Cakes, Pastry, and Other Favorites," baker Maria Bruscino Sanchez offers traditional family recipes for the home baker. She demystifies the "handful of this and that" that one often finds with "old country" family recipes. Italian baking, like Italian cooking, is regional. Maria offers recipes from her Neapolitan and Abbruzzese heritage; from her Sicilian husband's heritage; and from her travels all over Italy. She shares updated traditional and contemporary recipes from her own Sweet Maria's Bakery in Waterbury, Connecticut, where Italian-Americans and others purchase desserts.

The recipes in this cookbook are easy to follow. Here you will find authentic Italian recipes for everything from cookies (including biscotti), cakes (including cheesecakes), pies and tarts, pastry (wonderful cannoli), sweet breads, frozen desserts, fruit desserts, and dessert sauces.

Of special interest are recipes for tiramisù (including savioardi--Italian ladyfingers), homemade limoncello, crostata di fico (fresh fig tart), millefoglie (thousand-layer apricot tart), biscotti di cioccolata con noci (chocolate hazlenut biscotti), and apricot-almond semi-freddo. For special occasions, such as St. Joseph's Day (March 19) and Easter, Maria tells how to make "Pane di Pasqua con Uovo" (Braided Easter Bread with Eggs). For Christmas, there are recipes for "Panettone" (Christmas Fruit Bread) and "Crostata di Natale" (Christmas Tart).

Sidebars occur throughout this cookbook that offer tips such as "How to Make an Italian Cookie Tray," "Bomboniere" (favors for Italian weddings and bridal showers), and "Al Dente." Another sidebar tells how ". . . Italian pastry chefs traveled with Catherine de Médici when she went to live in France . . . .who showed the French chefs some of their basic techniques for pastry making, which they then adapted to make some of their legendary sweets."

Highly recommended for authentic Italian dessert recipes!

Many of us past the age of 40 have difficulty with small print, especially in recipes with fractions. I will give the book to a friend who can read without a magnifying glass.

Some of her recipes do not contain salt, which can result
in a flat taste,regardless of other ingredients.
It would have been nice to have a few photos.

This is a varied collection of recipes with simple directions.

Do yourself a favor and skip the tiramisu recipe in this book - it is awful.
(I use a more authentic one from [...].)
I've only tried the tiramisu recipe in 'Sweet Maria's", but if the author can't get this classic right, how good can her other baked goods be?

I was disappointed to see that two desserts that my Italian mom made every year were not included. They are Struffoli (honey balls) and Pastiera di Grano (Easter Wheat Pie). My former landlord used to put in "his order" months before Christmas and Easter for them since he hated the bakery ones.

The butter listed did not indicate salted or unsalted, but according to the list of ingredients used in the beginning of the book, it did only list fresh unsalted butter. It would have been better to specifically list the correct ingredients since unfortunately, most people do not entirely read the preceding pages.

The lack of pictures was not really a problem for me, though it would have been nice to see some of the finished items.

I love this book, in fact I also bought the Cookie Tray one, the recipes are excellent.

Several weeks have passed, and still waiting for Amazon to ship the book that was listed as in stock and available