World Class Cakes by Roger Pizey

My rating: 4 of 5 spoons
gggg

A feast for the eyes and the palette!! While definitely not for the beginning baker, this is a great cookbook full of recipes for amazing cakes. The book is divided into sections that start with Sponges & Layer Cakes and end with Celebration Cakes. Each recipe starts with a small blurb about the cake and its history. Several of the recipes have a page beside it titled "Where to Eat Cake..." and a location that gives multiple great places to find local baking. There are lots of pictures throughout the book, which is a big plus. It's always nice to know what the finished product is supposed to look like when you're making something completely new.

When I first get a cookbook, I usually flip through it and find a couple of recipes that I want to try the most. That was not possible with this book. If I had marked every recipe I couldn't wait to try, the book would look like a porcupine with markers sticking out all over! I started with Sonhos, Portugese "dreams" doughnuts. Oh, my! These were a HUGE hit with my girls!! I didn't use the optional 4th egg, and I'm really glad I didn't. I think these would have been to eggy tasting if I'd used the 4th. Make sure and cook them plenty long enough--they'll split slightly and puff up much larger than expected when they're done. My first batch I didn't leave long enough and they were slightly doughy inside, but all the rest were amazing!! Definitely try the Turkish Lemon Cake, Tippaleipa (Finnish Funnel Cakes), and the Devil's Food Cake!

One downside to this book is quite a few ingredients may be semi to very hard to find. If you live in an area with many specialty shops or are comfortable buying online, that may not be a big issue to me, but it was fairly frustrating to me.

If you are a beginning baker, you might have some trouble with some of these recipes, but if you're at least somewhat experienced I recommend this book! I gave it 4 out of 5 because of the more advanced nature, and the fact that there are many harder-to-find ingredients.

I received a copy of this book from Quayside Publishing for my honest review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.