baking

The Recipe-Chocolate Cake to Live For and Ultimate Chocolate Frosting are worth the price of this book! I can cook but have not been successful with desserts. Until now! Fran's clear recipes and sense of humor have transformed me into the queen of dairy-free desserts (According to my happy family and friends). I think she must teach great classes and wish I was closer to NYC. What amazes me is that I have to fight to save pieces of these desserts for my vegan friends. EVERYONE LOVES THESE DESSERTS. I want to make every recipe. I am a chocolate person but love the blueberry slump as much. The format of the book is smart. THe beginning seems like a private class in natural foods, with so much information about healthy ingredients and how to use them and WHY and charts. I think beginners and more advanced bakers can use this book-it is like a terrific reference book with delcious recipes. She points out the recipes are easily varied. I doubled the orange cake (Tropical Fruit Gateau), split the layer in half, filled and frosted it with Chocolate and now it is a much requested birthday cake. I can't beleive how professional it looked. I am ordering onther copy for myself and definately will send this book out when a gift is needed. If I sound excited, it is because I am. Did I mention that the recipes are easy and many can be made and frozen? I can find only one negative and that is I want to see more books by Fran like this one. Yes I recommend this book.

This is the best dessert book I ever used. It's clear and well organized with a lot of information but isn't overwhelming. The author has made baking without milk and eggs VERY simple and easy. I am a mom and my kids like desserts that taste good. Me too. I want us to stay away from dairy and eggs and junk but not feel deprived. I have tried many of these recipes -- they WORK and seem to be pretty forgiving -- a good thing because I am a new at baking and make a few goofs... The brownies and chocolate cake are beyond delicious. I made the lemon cake and vanilla cakes several times for parties. They make great cupcakes for kids parties too; iced with the chocolate peanut butter filling from another recipe. The recipes are easy to use in different ways. My friends didn't even ask how I made these without milk, butter, eggs, because they couldn't tell. Hope Fran writes another book because I'm working my way through all the recipes in this one fast.

I must admit that I bought this book with great expectations after reading the positive reviews. After trying a couple of the recipes, I was greatly disappointed. The carrot cake was just average tasting, more like cinnamon bread, and I noticed that the most important spice was left out for some reason. Anyway, I thought I would make it up for the bland taste, with the suggested lemon glaze. Big mistake!! The cake became soggy and the flavor of the glaze had a strong lemon flavor, very much like cough syrup. At that point, I tried to scrape off the glaze to save some of the cake, but it was too late, the glaze had already soaked into it. My next step was to discard the entire cake.
I would think that if a recipe calls for good quality expensive ingredients, the least an author can do, is to make sure it tastes good. I believe that is a reasonable expectation on my part. I was very upset that this expensive cake ended up in the garbage. This is one book that I will not be using anytime soon.