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| The Cake Book! |
It was quite a cheap buy, only $13 or thereabouts at Book Depository which was really cheap because had I chosen to buy it from the main website itself, shipping the book from London, or where ever this book originated from, all the way to Singapore would cost me close to $40, bloody ridiculous, and even more so because none of the recipes I have tried in it worked.
Well, I would say it didn't work, they came out looking like how they did in the photos in the recipe book, but they tasted anything but tasty, which was extremely disappointing because I have never bought recipe books EVER because I really never did see the point when I could find recipes online, but I decided to give this one a chance because I have watched the videos made by the writer and it always ends up looking really good, so I decided to show her a bit of support and get one. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations at all or got even anywhere close to it.... and to think I waited 3 weeks for the book to arrive at my door steps, 3 weeks I spend using old recipes from my own bakery to try to tide myself over until I manage to get new "yummy recipes" from this book, only to realize I was going to end up wasting a ton of baking ingredients and money when I actually do attempt the recipes.
I have gone to the videos the writer films and uploads on her Youtube page and read the comments people are leaving on her channel, saying how they have made the cakes and it came out delicious... I can't help but think those people probably never did make the cakes and are just trying to kiss ass or maybe they did but they just have extremely low expectations of how a decent cake should taste like, normally when someone bakes for the first time and the bakes come out looking fine, even if it taste like flour and is hard as rocks, they are not gonna deem it as a failure because as long as it looks fine, it's a success for them as a first try, I'm pretty sure I was like that when I first started as well, and then I actually recovered from my delusion and ended up focusing on the taste and texture, and decided that it would be alright to start throwing things away when they don't live up to my taste bud's expectation without sparing a thought for the poor starving kids in Africa.
So far I have made the salted caramel sauce recipe, which I found a bit odd when I first watched the video of her making it because she doesn't add any butter into the caramel, normally salted caramel sauce has butter added into it but she doesn't. It came out fine but it was a little lacking, probably because there's no butter. I went to check the comments to see if anyone would ask about the lack of butter, no one did.
Made chocolate ganache, that one was fine, but for some reason it kept splitting after I leave it out at room temperature, probably my own fault and the fact that Singapore has such an atrociously warm weather. So it's really only fine if it's not out of the fridge for more than 10 minutes, otherwise it just becomes a splitting chocolate mess of a ganache.
And now on to the cupcake recipes themselves, the star recipes of the book, it's called The Cake Book after all. I had made 2 flavours prior to getting the book by watching the Youtube videos and made another 2 flavours after getting the book.... all using expensive french butter as she recommended in her videos. She uses Lescure but since Singapore didn't sell any, I went ahead and got President Brand, the next best thing because it's fucking expensive.
The only flavour that actually worked sadly was the vanilla cupcakes, wouldn't go as far as to say it's the best vanilla cupcake I have ever made, it's decent, taste like the ones I made using the recipe from Magnolia Bakery, but I won't be making them again, just gonna stick to the one I have been baking at work for 5 months at the bakery.
The flavours I tried that didn't come out so well. Chocolate, Red Velvet and Cookies And Cream.
The chocolate cupcakes just reeked of vegetable oil when I tasted it, it didn't really rise the first time I made it, the inside was literally a solid blob of chocolate batter, had to almost double the amount of baking soda to get the cake to rise when I made it the second time, thinking I messed something up the first time I did it, and it did rise, but even then, the texture was extremely doughy... probably because there's only half a teaspoon of baking soda in there, the only rising agent in the whole recipe, for a batter that's enough to make 12 cupcakes. The oil tasting part I can't really blame the recipe though because every time I make a recipe that calls for oil instead of butter, it always taste like vegetable oil, which is why I will never ever use vegetable oil for baking again.
Red Velvet was the real disappointment. It came out looking exactly as it did in the picture, flat top and the texture looked the same. The taste was horrible though, it tasted nothing like a red velvet, I couldn't taste any vanilla, there was no hint of cocoa at all, the cake texture itself was extremely weird, it's like the cake was made of a cleaning sponge because that's how it felt in my mouth, it was like eating a cleaning sponge. It was very soft though, which was the only redeeming factor about it, but the taste was just horrible, so really, that redemption is invalid.
Before I actually got her book, I did try making one of her recipes called the Oreo Cupcake, that one was disappointing as well, so I probably should have gotten the hint then... and I ended up getting a stomachache after eating it. I know that because I had it twice on 2 different occasion and had 2 trips to the toilet with a horrible stomachache afterwards. Probably something expired, but the taste was very generic, the buttercream did not taste like oreo buttercream, the cupcake just tasted like the vanilla cupcake recipe even though there's malt and cocoa in it, couldn't taste those.
For presentation, this book gets an B+. It's has a lot of nice pictures of cupcakes and overall a very nice book to own, but the instructions inside could have been better. Instead of having step by step instructions like a regular recipe book would...
Step 1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees
Step 2. Beat Sugar and Butter until light and fluffy.
Step 3. Add in your eggs and beat after each addition.
Step 4. When mixture is well combined, pour in milk and mix well....
....this one has the instructions written in paragraphs, so it goes like...
Before you begin, you will want to heat up your oven to 200 degree celcius, and in a large mixing bowl, throw in your butter and sugar, make sure to mix the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Grab your eggs and pop it into the butter and sugar mixture one at a time until fully incorporated. Oh, so it seems you can't absorb that much information at once and have to go cream your butter and sugar, well go ahead, I will still be here when you are done... oh so you are back? Can't find the line you last read? Well that's too bad, guess you are gonna have to start from the beginning to find it.
For the recipe itself, the cupcakes obviously didn't work for me so I'm gonna have to give it a D-. The buttercream recipe works and the vanilla cake recipe works, salted caramel came out as it was intended and it did taste like salted caramel, but without the buttery flavor. So there are recipes that do work, but majority of them just don't work for me and as such, I can't give it a passing mark.
So overall I would rate this book C, if that's how the average works out.
....because most of the recipes I have tried don't really work and even if they do work, it really doesn't taste good, her instructions are very confusing, she list her ingredients without stating which is wet and which is dry, and ask you to mix all the dry ingredients together without specifying which are the wet ones and which are the dry ones, the main problem I have with that is most bakers see sugar as a wet ingredient, but she sees it as a dry ingredient, and she doesn't put salt as part of the ingredient list in the book and only states it in the instruction, so much for having a proper mise en place.
I don't normally refer to the instructions when I bake because roughly have an idea how to prepare a cake, so when I made the chocolate cupcake the first time round, I actually double checked all the ingredients with the ingredient list, only to realize after mixing everything, portioning the batter and baking it in the oven that I have missed out the salt that was never listed in the ingredients list in the first place but only stated in the preparation instructions section.
So only buy this book if you want to look at fancy pictures, or stay in London because for all I know, it might be something in London that makes those recipes work, you could also buy this book for some ideas and inspirations with cupcake flavors.
It's because of this damn book, I actually got into a bad mood. Failed 3 to 4 baking recipes in a row within 2 days and wasted so much money buying the ingredients, now every time I watch her Youtube video, I feel a bit of resentment, I trusted her and her recipes and they failed me so miserably.
Great looking book, not so great recipes.
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