The Essential Baker: The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices, and Other Ingredients

Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0764576453
Manufacturer: Wiley
Average Customer Review: (From 6 total reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
If you are a beginning baker, this book offers an accessible introduction to essential baking ingredients, equipment, and techniques as well as detailed, step-by-step recipes that make it easy to prepare even the trickiest baked goods. If you are already an accomplished baker, it offers many sophisticated and unusual recipes that will help you refine your knowledge and skills.

The book features a distinctive organization based on six key baking ingredients, from fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and chocolate to dairy products, spices and herbs, and coffee, tea, and liqueurs. Select an ingredient or flavor you love, and you’ll find many delicious ways to incorporate it into your baking.

Bloom’s recipes encompass every type of baking. You’ll find spectacular versions of familiar favorites - Cherry Pie, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, and Double Peanut Butter Cookies - as well as intriguing variations and extravagant indulgences, including Coconut Biscotti, Lemon Verbena and Walnut Tea Cake, and Dark Chocolate Creme Brulee. Her meticulous recipes specify essential gear, offer tips on streamlining the recipe and storing the finished dish, and provide advice on varying ingredients and adding panache.

With in-depth guidance on techniques and ingredients, 225 standout recipes, variations and embellishments for almost every dish, and 32 pages of striking full-color photographs, The Essential Baker is truly the only baking book you’ll ever need.

Customer Reviews

FABULOUS DESSERT BOOK–VERY EASY TO USE by Paula Kindler
I have a lot of cookbooks, mostly on desserts. When I saw this book I thought it was just another dessert cookbook with the same old recipes and pictures. Was I wrong. This is quickly becoming my favorite dessert cookbook mainly because it is so easy to use and it has such a wide variety of recipes. It’s arranged in such a logical way with recipes divided up by their primary ingredient. For example, I like tropical fruits so I just go to the tropical and exotic fruit section and all the recipes with tropical fruits are there. My favorite here is the Coconut Biscotti but that Pineapple Tarte Tatin is so, so yummy also. I like anything with chocolate and there is a big section with many recipes. The White Chocolate and Lemon Tart is to die for. Another thing so neat about this book is the way the recipes are laid out in a kind of table format which makes them so easy to follow. I am really happy with this book. I am thinking it may be the only dessert cookbook I will every need. I intend to make all of the over 250 recipes (and some of the variations too). I highly recommended this to all dessert bakers. It is really easy to use and there is something for everyone.

So helpful and reliable by Nancy, baker in Yardley
The directions, including shopping and other pre-preparation details, are very clear. The results of those recipes attempted so far have been excellent - and TASTY!

Disappointed by Wok King
The first three reviews all gave “The Essential Baker” top 5-star ratings and, frankly, I was impressed and ordered the book. However, my elation quickly turned to disappointment once I scanned the pages. The first 50 pages on baking essentials had brown text on a light brown background and the remainder of the book, the text remained brown on white rather than black on white. Moreover, the font style and small size in addition to the brown text made reading difficult for a senior citizen as myself. This difficulty was more pronounced since the ingredients listed on the left margin were in bold type whereas the instruction were not, thus I personally would find difficulty in using the book while trying to cook.

One thing the author mentions up front is that all her recipes use Extra-Large eggs and every recipe for making pie dough uses a food processor. Just be aware to adjust your thinking. The book is hefty with 220 pages devoted to fruits, 21 to vegetables, 48 to nuts and seeds, and 125 to chocolate, 29 to dairy, 45 to spices and herbs, and 50 to coffee, tea, and spirits. The way the recipes are formatted, as discussed in prevous comments, are unique and at times it takes three to four pages for a recipe such as Pumpkin Pie or Lemon Meringue Pie.

In comparing the recipe for Anise and Almond Biscotti (Carole Bloom vs Martha Stewart), for example, Bloom calls for 3 extra-large eggs and 3 extra large egg yolks, but no butter and Stewart calls for 4 large eggs and 4 tablespoons of butter (both use 2-1/4 and 2-1/2 cups of flour respectively. I would have to bake each recipe to determine which I preferred, but someone like Alton Brown (author of, “I’m Here Just for the Food”) could tell you the pros and cons of eggs vs butter.

If I had to choose an all round baking book, my choice would be, “The Dessert Bible” by Chrisopher Kimball who is also Publisher and Editor of Cooks Illustrated. His recipes include a feature that explains “what could go wrong” explaining things that could go awry whch I found helpful.

Bloom incorporates some innovative features in laying out her baking techniques and no doubt has many excellent recipes, but I downgraded the book primarily on “mechanical” features rather than content and the fact that I personally find the book difficult to use.

Unique & Delicious Recipes by BakingandBooks.com
“The Essential Baker: The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices and Other Ingredients” is a new book by Carole Bloom, who is a professional pastry chef and confectioner. As the title promises the contents include an impressive array of recipes that use everything from coffee & tea to vegetables & fruits as their main ingredients. More than this, however, Bloom’s recipes are unique, with a dash of sliced almonds adding both flavor and texture to banana muffins and pearl sugar enhancing the visual appeal of apple turnovers. I loved her recipes for coconut biscotti, jasmine tea cakes and spiced sugar coin cookies. Indeed, though I usually give away most of the goodies I bake, I couldn’t bring myself to share the biscotti with anyone other than my husband. On a few occasions I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the way a recipe turned out, but given my delight with other recipes I have to chalk this up to taste. One cannot expect every single recipe in a book to enthrall, after all, and modifications can always be made to suit your preferences.

Bloom’s instructions are clear and easy to follow, though the way ingredients are presented took some getting used to. Instead of listing ingredients before the recipe, as most cookbooks do, recipes are divided into stages with the ingredients for each stage listed beside the instructions. At first I didn’t like this aspect of the book, but as I continued to cook with it I realized that this arrangement a) forced me to read through the entire recipe before beginning, I’m a notorious improviser, and b) made it nearly impossible to become confused about which ingredient should be used where. Essential gear is listed along side the recipe, where helpful information is also included: storage tips, variations, and instructions for streamlining the baking process over more than one afternoon (i.e. How to begin cookies one day and finish them the next.) While I’m always appreciative of baking books that have photos for every recipe, the straightforward presentation of Bloom’s recipes made it easy to visualize the final result without an image. Photos for twenty recipes are collected in the center of the book, representing the various chapters, which include: fruit & vegetables; nuts & seeds; chocolate; dairy products (milk, cream, cheeses); spices & herbs; and coffee, tea, liqueurs & spirits. The first chapter is devoted entirely to baking techniques, language and an overview of essential baking gear.

Recipes range in difficulty from easy to challenging, so this may not be the best book for a novice baker. Yet those with baking experience and a curiosity for novel recipes may want to check it out. From Key Lime Squares and Raspberry-Blueberry Galettes to Pomegranate Butter Cookies and Triple Vanilla Souffle, there is something in this book to pique everyone’s interests.

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Tags: baking, baking by ingredients, baking with coffee and tea, baking with fruit, baking with herbs and spices, baking with nuts, chocolate, coffee, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, liqueur and spirits, nuts and seeds, spices and herbs, tea