Customer Reviews

Sweet!: From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener

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

 

 

I don't doubt that the recipes in this book result in tasty treats but the title is misleading - that is, the subtitle is misleading "From Agave to Turbinado, Home Baking with Every Kind of Natural Sugar and Sweetener." Yeah, I guess "granulated sugar" is "natural" so technically the subtitle is accurate, but I was looking for recipes that used _healthier_ alternatives to granulated sugar - like agave. The vast majority of recipes in this book include granulated sugar and/or brown sugar. Not at all what I was looking for - it's going back to Amazon.

Mani Niall obviously knows a lot about sweeteners. I got this book to learn more about a variety of sugars, how different sugars react in recipes, etc, and for this, the book is excellent.

However, at least one of the recipes is lacking a key ingredient in the ingredient list. His "Melt-in-Your-Mouth Chocolate Cake with Dulce de Leche" on page 82 sounds delicious. I wanted to make it, so I read the recipe, only to find that he didn't actually list ANY chocolate in the ingredient list. In the instructions, you are told to melt the chocolate and then combine it with the wet ingredients. This is a chocolate cake! Leaving out the chocolate (amount? type?) from the ingredient list is a glaring omission.

Also, in the same recipe, the reader is directed to a Dulce de Leche recipe found later in the book, on page 221. Page 221 contains, not Dulce de Leche, but Sugar Cone Ice Cream Bowls. Those sound tasty, but they're not helpful in making Dulce de Leche. Ultimately I had to look up the Dulce de Leche recipe in the index. Ah-ha! It's on page 204, nowhere near page 221.

These types of errors make it hard to recommend the book as more than a reference tool. If you can't trust the recipes to be correct, there's no point in buying it as a cookbook.

As an avid cookbook reader, healthy eater, and baking connoisseur, I confess, I am a cookbook skeptic, especially when it comes to baking. But "Sweet" delivered triplefold with down-to-earth clear recipes, seductive food photography, and the passionate writing of a true foodie and the deft of a sweetener guru. Academics and readerly types will praise the rich context he provides, such as "A Brief History of Sugar", which provides depth and context.

Unwilling to confine his recipes to the natural food sector of the grocery store and by no means keeping things in the white sugar family, the author navigates the entire sweetener spectrum by keenly choosing exactly the right sweetener for the job, whether molasses for a chewier snack or piloncillo for a more Mexican sweet.

Showcasing natural sweeteners and traditional sugars alike, "Sweet!" marries them tastefully, provocatively, and intriguingly while introducing readers to rarer ingredients with recipes like the Sorghum-glazed Sweet Potatoes or Orange and Fig Spelt Muffins. More common American favorite alternative sweeteners like applesauce represent in desserts like Applesauce Caramel Cake while agave nectar, the present day darling of alternative sweeteners figures heavily in recipes such as (dinner party guest fave) Hempseed-crusted Tofu with Agave-Mustard Sauce. My personal favorite? A flavor-hound's dream: Balsamic strawberry ice cream.

As a frequent dinner party hostess and head of a Bay Area cookbook club, I have already recommended this diverse, enchanting, Sweet(!) cookbook to friends and foodies of all eating preferences and levels of cooking talent.

Interesting book needed a proof reader to correct page reference #'s and find omissions in recipe list of ingredients.

With all due respect to C. Davis' review of my book, Sweet!, the subtitle clearly states both agave and turbinado, which technically are both sugars. This book represents a culmination of 25 years as a baker, travels to 4 continents, research, development, writing and testing of recipes over 4 years and is an homage to all things sweet. I traced the uses of sugars from the countries where sugar cane, palm sugar, honey, agave and maple syrup originate or have been cultivated and how each of these ethnic influences have contributed to our collective sweet tooth with recipes from banana upside down muffins to chai, agave chicken to panela ice cream. Southeast Asia, Central and South America, Hawaii, India...the list goes on.

Also, having written 2 previous books that call for extremely specific ingredients, this was my chance to write a more mainstream book that calls for ingredients easily found in most grocery stores and natural food stores. I build my case for organic and fair trade sugar in the first section of the book but do not call this out in each recipe as I did not want it to sound like the recipes would not work without them.

So for all of you home bakers and professional pastry chefs, there are many books all about cake or pie or puddings, but-- this is the only single-subject book that traces the history of the SWEET ingredient that all cookbooks and recipes have in common- and conveys in simple, easy to make recipes, the uses that indigenous people have made of sugar. These once exotic sweeteners are easier to find than ever. Plus I include mail order and websites to make them easier to find.

Bake on!

I wouldn't have any problem at all with this cookbook if it weren't for the false advertising in the way it is presented to buyers, that is, that it is somehow going to be helpful to health-conscious cooks. In general, it is extremely well done in that it is filled with gorgeous photos, and there are plenty of interesting dessert recipes. However, I find it impossible to believe that most people wouldn't purchase this book, as I did, assuming it is going to provide recipes filled entirely with healthier alternatives to white and brown sugar because the back of the book bills it this way: "An essential guide for home cooks curious to experiment with dozens of traditional and alternative natural sugars and sweeteners."

When I got this book and explored its contents cover to cover, it seemed to me as if all the recipes are in fact not geared toward health-conscious home bakers, but almost entirely toward professional pastry chefs who are into taste and presentation above all, with the health of their customers running a distant second.

I did find the opening section giving a short history of various types of sweeteners to be usefully informative. It explains what the various sweeteners are, where you get them, and how they are best used in cooking. However, because this isn't a book aimed to the health conscious, these descriptions include little about how the various sugars affect your health. For example, there is only one brief sentence about high-fructose corn syrup, to the effect that "nutritionists claim [it is] one of the main culprits in obesity." And the author mentions nothing under coconut palm sugar about research claims that it has a low glycemic index.

One exotic, healthy sweetener I was particularly interested in from the description provided is yacon syrup. He mentions that this is a sweetener that raw foods advocates approve of and that it's vegan. He says he doesn't use it to cook with, though, because it is so expensive, so he didn't provide any recipes using this sweetener. He only uses very small amounts poured over uncooked desserts, such as sorbets or raw fruit.

He provides an extensive discussion of various types of flours and how they affect the end result of baking, but nothing about which are better for the health.

He loves to use lots of butter, heavy cream and eggs--which add tons of calories to anything he offers in this book as a recipe. He gives very little information on different types of fats other than to state in one brief sentence that shortening is a problem ingredient because it "has come under scrutiny for its high amount of trans fats," with no explanation as to why trans fats are bad. He does indicate that palm oil and coconut oil, which solidify at room temperature without hydrogenation, have been found to be healthy saturated fats--though he doesn't go into details as to why they are healthy, such as coconut oil's help for thyroid conditions and Alzheimer's. Nor does he use either of them in any of his recipes.

He doesn't give breakdown within any of his recipes for calories or grams of protein, carbohydrates or fat.

All in all, if you enjoy creating fancy desserts and you don't care about calories or health, then you might enjoy this cookbook.

I reached my rating this way:
Writing and book design: 5 stars
Recipes as fancy, gourmet desserts: 5 stars
Using alternative sugars as a creative exercise: 5 stars
Creating a false impression this cookbook is for the health conscious: 2
Final score: 4

This book has fantastic recipes... but only if you decide to make one that actually has the complete list of ingredients and all the steps.
there are tons of mistakes! somebody forgot to check for those 'details': for example, the "Melt-in-Your-Mouth Chocolate Cake" on page 82 is missing the chocolate in the list of ingredients, so you have no clue what type of chocolate to use, or the amount.
Nonetheless, I have made several recipes (making up missing ingredients or following the recipe) and they were really good. I like the intro where Niall explains everything about sugar (and I mean, EVERYTHING).

Mani has done it again with more natural recipes. To get closer to nature is healthier for us and Mani gives us even more recipes in his latest book, Sweet!

I have all of Mani's books. This one is particularly informative. Mani's insight comes from years of experience in all kinds of sugars and natural sweeteners, and it shows. His personal notes gives the book a conversational tone - like he's sitting across the table from you discussing baking with you. But it's not long and involved - just to the point.

All I can say is YUM.