The Cake Bible

That book is truly my bible. The charts in the back are invaluable. I quit doing yellow vs white a long time ago, though. I now do a "vanilla" which uses the whole egg. I will tell my brides that if they simply MUST have white cake that I will do it....just has to be special ordered.

All of her cakes will stand up under fondant, no problem.

I don't recall reading the pineapple puree recipe, so not sure about using it as a filling, but I can check and get back to you.

The other book I rely on is Shirley Corriher's Cookwise. There is a section on baking that has formulas for cakes and I've used that to make my own recipes, and to adjust others.

For piping...haven't found a great book yet. I can't afford the Lambeth book. I'm starting to believe that you just need to practice obsessively. I did take one class from Toba Garrett a few years ago, and found that I was doing everything right. (Shock almost killed me) Although, the Sugar Art collection from Nick Lodge is a good series (3 books) it covers much more than simple piping...collars, runouts, figures, bunches of stuff.

I just needed to practice, practice, practice!

Have you seen Rose's blog? There is good info there, too. Her new book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, has a few new recipes in it, including a killer caramel flavored cake. Aside from the key decorators, if I could meet someone in the culinary world, it would be her. Although to be fair, she has added to the hip measurement currently filling out my jeans. Maybe it would even out if I counted up the money she's earned me by teaching me to bake!

Toba's books are good for piping. Roland Winbeckler also has good books for buttercream. I also have a lot of the old Wilton books which are really good too. I have one which has a break down of every tip and what it does. I have all these old tip sets so it's nice to see what does what.

For baking, I also have Heavenly Cakes by Rose. Bakewise I've heard is good, although I don't own it yet (buying it at the end of this month). Also, Warren Brown's book is very good.

The White Velvet cake is good from TCB, as well as the All Occasion Downey cake. I make my own modifications, but the originals are good too.

Annie

I bought Rose's Heavenly Cakes and loved it so much I went back to Amazon and bought The Cake Bible. I seriously couldn't bake a cake from scratch until I started using Rose's recipes (and my husband is a cake mix snob, I guess I probably am also). Now, I will not use any other cake recipes. They come out perfect every time.

Now, if I could just figure out how to magically adjust the leavening for every one of Rose's cakes to make larger tiers come out just as perfect, I'd be golden!

Allie

Allie,

A lot of Rose's most popular cakes are in Heavenly Cakes with the leavening adjusted. Give it another look and see if you can find what you're looking for.

Annie