i've seen ppl talking about loving the cake bible. Who is it by?

Rose Levy Beranbaum. I'm gonna be her when I grow up.

She is a good baker. Her cake bible is difficult to follow--it's good that she has the formulas developed in several ways like cups and pounds etc. But recipe information is found in the ingredient chart, in the instructions and then you gotta look around in the margins for pertinent key info.

Her icings are said to be stellar. Her cakes are often described as dry, they seem to have a delicate balance

There is a lot of attitude in her book.

It's an ok read and you learn some theory but it falls far short of it's name. A Rose Bible yes, A Cake Bible no not so much.



Nick Maglieri has an excellent book called Perfect Cakes that I recommend for cakes.

I love Nick M. I have all his books. I'm going to marry him.

I was quite excited when I got an email from my local library telling me the Cake Bible was in stock, but when I checked it out I was fairly disappointed. I'm not a fan of the cake recipes, and didn't bother trying any of the icing ones, though I have heard good things about those.

I made her "perfect" pound cake recipe today and was very disappointed. It tasted VERY eggy. I also made her chocolate cake and did not love it either.

Good to know about the icings. I'll have to try those before putting the book back on the shelf.

It's a really good book for learning why things work the way they do, so if you're interested in developing your own recipes, or learning how to tweak the ones that you have, it's a good reference. I didn't have trouble with any of the recipes that I tried from it, I think, but I tend to use it more for reference, and for the icing and filling recipes.

I have to agree with the other posts. Several I have made have been dry, but her IMBC is the easiest and best. It is a good read, and her explanations of the science behind the cakes is important for any baker to know. The Cordon Rose Cheesecake, however, is THE BEST.

I have to second that Psssh!
I love the Cake Bible, and have never found her recipes dry. As someone said, the icings are awesome, but I use them mostly as a filling because her buttercream is amazing, but bright yellow!.
It's a great book for anyone dedicated to being a scratch baker, because it is a scientific journey through the world of baking. I actually read the book instead of just scanning the recipes like I normally would.
Also, she has a chart in the back for baking all different sizes of pans that is AMAZING. You will never waste batter again! There is so much love in her book, I'd kill to be half the baker she is.
Her new book, Heavenly Cakes, is coming out soon and you can bet I'll be first in line to buy it.

More reviews of the Cake Bible:

http://tinyurl.com/p4qrhl

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153136.The_Cake_Bible

You can pre-order Rose's Heavenly Cakes from Amazon for $26.37 with free shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471781738/?tag=cakecentral-20

HTH

She is a cool chick. She does have a great blog.

Reading the Cake Bible single handedly stopped me dead in my tracks from dong scratch cakes due to the heady attitude expressed in the snowstorm story.

Rose made her brother's wedding cake to be flown to Colorado and a big snow storm grounded her and hundreds of others. Her brother's friends then went together and bought a 'white hulking cake with insipid* cupid pillars'--something to that effect.

Her pissy attitude toward the back up cake and her brother's friends and the decorator who did a last minute cake are unexcusable to me. Further to print this for all time and eternity in a book called Bible was a sucker punch of rare proportion.

She is a cool chick. She does have a great blog. She turned me flat off to baking scratch. She hurt my feelings. Those hulking baroque numbers were all I knew--

I loved her book --I didn't see her point.

I didn't want to learn from someone who made such remarks about people who were nice to her brother, the decorator who jumped in last minute and to me the maker of hulking baroque numbers. She put me & all makers of hulking baroque numbers down in black & white.

Hey wanna really yuk it up? I had just become the proud owner of some of those ubiquitous cupid pillars!!! haha what a hick!! Jokes on me!!

So I'll be the first to admit it was small of me to let her hurt my feelings--that was a long time ago and that's the rest of the story.

Her book takes a lot of justifiable criticism from pastry chefs for the formulas. I'll post a link...

*Edited to exchange the word 'insipid' for ubiquitous--she said the cupids were insipid. From Merriam Webster:

I have a copy of it I never use.Hubby's Aunt gave it to me.Don't like the complicated formula's..

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=93197&hl=

She gets mixed reviews--some people love her stuff and there's critiques as well.

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=89924&hl=

^^^ This is an interesting thread about her baking powder theory.

Myself, I never caught on to her sifting theory and I think it was her thesis or something. She contends that sifting does not fully incorporate the ingredients. I always wondered who it was that thought that it did in the first place.

It just seemd to me like she was so proud of mythbusting something that wasn't a myth.

Sifting just aerates the powders sifted--you have to mix it to fully incorporate them. Simple.

Thanks for the link to pre-order her book, Jan.

en-passant: you made me laugh out loud with your comments. That's why I love this site. You get useful information and humor.