Rose’s Heavenly Pies Is the Best Cookbook for the Avid Baker.
Welcome to Cookbook of the Week. In this series, I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While searching for a specific recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has its own magic.
It’s been a tough week. Some people do yoga to relieve anxiety, others go shopping, donate to helpful organizations , or talk with friends. When I can’t help myself, I usually go to the kitchen to bake. To get some extra encouragement, I ditched the new cookbooks and ran to my old favorites. This week’s pick is Rose’s Heavenly Cakes , a stunning collection of cake recipes from the one and only Rose Levy Beranbaum.
As you may know, I have spent most of my professional career in cake decorating. I always eat something savory for breakfast, but I am a dessert lover to the core. Cakes have always been an edible form of creative expression for me. I love making a dessert that can fill the belly, but I think it’s equally important that it looks truly irresistible, whether for a wedding or for yourself. Cakes symbolize something special, and I needed something especially comforting: a good cake should practically transport you to a Miyazaki film. So I opened Rose’s Heavenly Pies , a book I bought at my first job in New York when Barack Obama was president, and the future felt fresh.
Rose’s heavenly cakes at first sight
Rose Levy Beranbaum is legendary when it comes to hands-on baking and cake design. She is one of the first (if not the first) to widely use the reverse creaming method, an alternative method of making cake batter in which fat is mixed with flour before adding any liquid ingredients. While her recipes are a mixed bag when it comes to difficulty level, each one is a solid winner. In my experience with cookbooks, this is a truly rare quality.
Beranbaum is no stranger when it comes to writing cookbooks. Although Rose’s Heavenly Cakes was first published in 2009, she has already written six others. The first of these was The Cake Bible , which won the Cookbook of the Year award. Her first cookbook won the “Cookbook of the Damn Year” award. Rose’s Heavenly Cakes arrived 20 years later, with new baked goods and improvements to some of the core recipes from her “Cake Bible.” Suffice it to say that her recipes can be trusted.
An excellent cookbook for the avid pastry chef.
There is one particular aspect of this cookbook that I find invaluable: she writes from the perspective of a working professional writing for other professionals. This doesn’t mean this book is only for you if you own a bakery. Rather, it’s for serious bakers who don’t screw up. If you have questions like: “How many pounds or ounces of the finished dough so I can decide if I need to double the recipe?” – he’s there. Most cake recipes recommend dividing the batter equally into two nine-inch pans. Have you tried looking at this? It stinks. Rose shows how many ounces fit in each pan.
Plus, each recipe is written in a clear, easy-to-read chart. The table shows ingredients, measurements by volume, and conversion of measurements to weight in ounces and grams (if applicable). For the first time, the whole world, both measuring cup slingers and kitchen scales, can be happy.
If you prefer simple, one-sentence cake recipes with lots of colorful photographs, this cookbook will either bore you or overwhelm you. However, if you let it, it will also impress you.
Recipes You Can Expect
Rose’s Heavenly Cakes offers a nice selection of cakes such as sponges, cheesecakes and cakes for individual serving. I wouldn’t call this an exhaustive list of all the classic dishes (something like America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook might help you with that), but it is a mix and match. It feels like Beranbaum has handpicked some of her favorite classics, like Tiramisu, German chocolate cake, and yellow butter muffins, and added her favorite new items and newest creations, like Pink Red Velvet Pudding Cake. with sticky toffee and Southern (Manhattan) coconut cake with silk meringue buttercream.
Although the recipe steps are well organized and in bold, be sure to read them in their entirety. Most recipes are quite long as they involve steps for making the cake batter followed by frosting, syrups or toppings presented in a separate recipe with its own steps. Then she will tell you how she composed it.
The dish I cooked this week
As I mentioned earlier, the comfort food was ok. This time I was baking with only myself in mind, so I chose a cake just for me: Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake with Silk Meringue Buttercream. Beranbaum writes in the caption that the typical Southern seven-minute frosting is too sweet for her, so she modified the recipe to suit her Northern tastes. I fully support the elegant lightness of all meringue buttercreams. Although I have never made this silk buttercream, I loved this cake.
The first ingredient is six egg whites. Whenever I see this, I think, “Wow, I guess I should beat and add egg whites.” Well, I’m glad I read the first few steps before turning the page, because much to my surprise, I didn’t. Egg whites are whipped with coconut milk without any special processing. It actually required less special steps than most cake batters I’m used to. After one last spin in the mixer, I had a moist, wavy coconut cake batter.
Beranbaum’s recipe calls for baking the dough in two nine-inch pans to make a pretty decent layer cake. I divided it into three six-inch pans and saved the two baked cake layers for another time (wrapped and frozen). There was one for me. I didn’t cut the rounded top to make it flat like I would for a gift or event. I simply split it in half and filled it with a shiny, yolk-enriched coconut glaze. Thicker layer than usual. I covered the domed top layer with an additional layer and used the tip of the star to add a special decorative touch around the edges. I left the sides open and finished with a coconut ribbon wreath. The cake was ready. It was (and still is) perfect. The reverse cremation method made it possible to obtain an even and dense crumb texture that easily dissolves on the tongue. The coconut flavor is rich and subtle, not cloying or sun-kissed. This was exactly what I needed – to lose myself for a while. A little reminder that I am still capable of achievement and worthy of good things.
How to buy
One of the best things about old books is that you can buy them used for a very reasonable price. Considering it’s a hardcover and filled with cake recipes from a living cake legend, the $18 is well worth it. If this is a gift or a used item that isn’t your thing, buy a new one here . Of Beranbaum’s other books, I suggest The Cake Bible , which has just been updated and reissued for its 35th anniversary.