Best All-around Dessert Cookbook

[pumpkingrl]

Any suggestions for one that is essential???

Thanks.

[Feliz]

Its old but Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques...

[shroomgirl]

"Le Notre Pastries" or
"In the Sweet Kitchen"
I actually use Joy of Cookings proportions and adapt the standard recipes more than any other cookbook....
Cookiewise I still go back to Maida Heatter's
I use Wolfgang Puck's early cookbook for frangipane and caramel...basic shtuff
And in a manilla envelop in the base of my recipe armoire I have a couple hundred pages from a Home Ec dessert cookbook that has all of the old timey cakes, pies, candies etc....and numerous variations of almost all of them. Now that was a reference book for desserts.

[pumpkingrl]

thanks for the suggestions. will check them out.

[Artameates]

the dessert bible sounds promising...

[chrose]

Originally Posted by pumpkingrl

Any suggestions for one that is essential???

Thanks.

They're all essential But I found that "professional Baking" by Wayne Gisslen, "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum and "Cocolat" by Alice Medrich to be quite helpful.

[Headless Chicken]

I second profesisonal baking

And if you like flashy looking presentations and exotic looking desserts...look up Wild Sweets. The couple that wrote this one up are in charge of the Canadian world pastry team.

[holden]

Some of the stuff in 'Desserts: A Lifelong Passion' by Michel Roux blows my mind. There's a sweet ravioli with caramel bananas and passionfruit sauce that I'd kill my Grandma to get at. Basics are good too.

[Yvonne]

Then I would recommend the recipes from Southern Heritage Cakes Cookbook and Southern Heritage Pies and Pastries Cookbook, because they seem to be very well-honed, and declared worthy by frequent transmittal.

Martha Stewart put out two speciality magazines during the Christmas season, Holiday Baking and Holiday Cookies, that obliderated my need to refer to any others.

However, my sweet palate often longs for Southeast Asian desserts, of coconut milk, sweet beans, black sticky rice and giant tapioca. That book, dedicated to the sweet stewed pumpkin and fried taro, eludes me still.