I have Rose Levy Beranbaum's Baking Bible and have made several cakes from it. They have all come out great. My favorite is a chocolate cake with a white chocolate/caramel buttercream. Its finished off with a chocolate mirror glaze. I took it to a work function and people still periodically bring it up.

Her recipes are very particular and process heavy, which can be annoying. For example, she recommends you use fine sea-salt and aluminum-free baking powder. But the results are really spectacular. I got her books Cake Bible and Pie Bible for Christmas, so I look forward to giving those a whirl as well.

That's one of the few frostings I do like. Not a fan of sour cream?

Federale01 said:

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Her recipes are very particular and process heavy, which can be annoying. For example, she recommends you use fine sea-salt and aluminum-free baking powder. But the results are really spectacular. I got her books Cake Bible and Pie Bible for Christmas, so I look forward to giving those a whirl as well.

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Some people actually get a metaly taste from non aluminum-free baking powder. I am not one of them, but it's a pretty common occurrence.

A lot of you might enjoy the Food52 Baking Club group on facebook. They go through a book each month and have a master book for the year. I believe the Baking Bible was last year's master book. The January book was Rose's Baking Basics.

schmendeler said:

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I've been really wanting to try brave tarts recipe for Texas sheet cake.

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Do it, but don't try it with grocery store cocoa powder. It will be awful. Order some good stuff (something she recommends from the front of the book that is high in fat), and use that. It will be the best Texas Sheet Cake you've ever had. Her carrot cake with the cream cheese frosting is nails.

One thing I've noticed about the Bravetart recipes is that they are very specific on technique, equipment, and ingredients. If you try to make substitutions in the wrong spot, it will not turn out well.

Good to know. I know she's very particular with her chocolates.

I've done her chocolate chip cookies twice and while good they haven't turned out how I think they should and I'm not sure why.

schmendeler said:

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Good to know. I know she's very particular with her chocolates.

I've done her chocolate chip cookies twice and while good they haven't turned out how I think they should and I'm not sure why.

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Bake them shorter than the recipe calls for. Also, cut the salt back to 1.5 teaspoons.

HTownAg98 said:

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schmendeler said:

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Good to know. I know she's very particular with her chocolates.

I've done her chocolate chip cookies twice and while good they haven't turned out how I think they should and I'm not sure why.

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Bake them shorter than the recipe calls for, and make sure you get the butter and sugar creamed well. There's an article on Serious Eats about it. Also, cut the salt back to 1.5 teaspoons.

I have suspected that my butter wasn't creaming properly but haven't figured that part out yet. As for the salt, it didn't seem overly seasoned to me. Does that have a structural effect?

Also, I agree that I need to pull them a little earlier. They already are a bit lighter than other cookies I normally bake and I don't over bake usually. But that was the other thing I had considered changing.

Federale01 said:

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I have Rose Levy Beranbaum's Baking Bible and have made several cakes from it. They have all come out great. My favorite is a chocolate cake with a white chocolate/caramel buttercream. Its finished off with a chocolate mirror glaze. I took it to a work function and people still periodically bring it up.

Her recipes are very particular and process heavy, which can be annoying. For example, she recommends you use fine sea-salt and aluminum-free baking powder. But the results are really spectacular. I got her books Cake Bible and Pie Bible for Christmas, so I look forward to giving those a whirl as well.

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Rose is god. I've been baking from her books for almost a decade now - I have the Pie and Cake Bibles, Roses's Heavenly Baking, her new Baking Bible, and the ever so scarce Rose's Christmas Cookies. When Rose tells you to do it this way, you do it this way. I love that she knows furking EVERYTHING about baking.

My dirtiest page in the the Pie Bible is her cherry pie recipe, and in the Cake Bible, I love her yellow cake, white chocolate whisper cake, and basically all of her chocolate butter cakes. I love the red velvet and the almond sponge with raspberry whipped cream from Rose's Heavenly cakes, and her carrot cake (wherever that one lives), and her cut out cookie recipe from her Christmas cookie book has become my go to. WOODY'S LEMON LUXURY LAYER CAKE (also Heavenly Cakes). I've made that one so many times. Her caramel recipe is my all time favorite go to caramel recipe, even now as a vegan - it still works perfectly with vegan butter and coconut cream. Plus, her books are solid enough that I haven't had to go out and buy a second copy because the binding has fallen out in all that time.

Someone done set your up for decades of being the good cake/pie person!

Christmas cookie book ordered! It will give me plenty of time to practice. Thanks for the specific recommendations.

Your cookie decorating is so amazingly clean! I'm also wondering, what are the darker bits inside the snickerdoodle cake?

And good rec on the Food52 baking group - I've been starving for cake/bake talk since I moved back to BCS and left my serious baking friends.

Up on the docket for this weekend - Tosi's lemon strawberry layer cake, to make some good use of a buncha of Meyer lemons brought back from my mom's tree.

Federale01 said:

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Christmas cookie book ordered! It will give me plenty of time to practice. Thanks for the specific recommendations.

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Nice! I just got it this fall and have only made a few recipes, so I'm really interested to hear about others! I love that a lot of it are more sort of old fashionedy recipes.

I've tried the cutout cookies, rolled thick, and have been using them lately as my go to cutout cookies. There's also a yeasted cookie in there that smells like cinnamon rolls when it's baking!

K2T2 said:

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Your cookie decorating is so amazingly clean! I'm also wondering, what are the darker bits inside the snickerdoodle cake?

And good rec on the Food52 baking group - I've been starving for cake/bake talk since I moved back to BCS and left my serious baking friends.

Up on the docket for this weekend - Tosi's lemon strawberry layer cake, to make some good use of a buncha of Meyer lemons brought back from my mom's tree.

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The darker parts are a thick concoction of butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar to give the texture of the sugar on the outside of a snickerdoodle cookie. Everyone that ate the cake said that it tasted exactly like the cookie. It was a birthday cake for someone that didn't like sweets very much, except loves snickerdoodles.

I'll talk baking anytime you want. I've got tons of book recommendations from technical to not as technical too. The food52 groups is great though. They also have a separate group for cooking. What's great about these groups is a lot of times they have the author of the book active in the group for that month answering questions. Rose did a post just last week I think.

Anyone have a go to lemon cake recipe? I'm considering doing a lemon cake soon but haven't done a lemon cake from scratch before. If I can't find one that I want to try I did find this coconut cake from Stella Parks I really want to use.

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/06/coconut-cake-recipe.html

Max Power said:

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Anyone have a go to lemon cake recipe? I'm considering doing a lemon cake soon but haven't done a lemon cake from scratch before. If I can't find one that I want to try I did find this coconut cake from Stella Parks I really want to use.

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/06/coconut-cake-recipe.html

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I've done this one and we enjoyed it. https://thecakeblog.com/2017/06/strawberry-lemonade-cake.html

Quick question for the bakers here. What's your pan of choice? I have yet to find a pan that really works well for me. I have some 9 inch round Wilton pans that I like, but the sides are slightly angled so my baking strips won't stay on the pan. Just trying to find a line that gives a pretty consistent bake. I am tired of really domed results I have been getting.

Get these. Fat Daddio's Anodized Aluminum Round Cake Pan, 8 Inches by 3 Inches https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013374AM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_EPfzCbSTV97FK
Tall pans make better cakes. Anodized aluminum conducts heat at the correct rate to get the rise, and the tall sides prevent doming. I used to have those Wilton pans, and I could never make a good cake. I switched to the Fat Daddio pans, and have had no problems.

Thanks. Do you use cake strips around the pan?

Nope. You don't need them with these high sided pans.

I like the 3 inch fat daddio pans too. I just got some huge ones for cookie cakes. A lot of times for regular cakes, though, I'll use Tosi's method of baking them in a sheet pan and using a cake ring to cut out the size I want.

Cool, thanks. That makes sense to me. Rose's baking bible adamantly requires 9"x1.5" pans. I thought having a higher side would help the structure of the side of the cake rise with the middle, but was going with what she requested.

If you're bored, here's why the tall sided pans are better.
https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/guide-to-best-cake-pans.html

interesting

I just made The Greta from the Milk Bar Life book as a 16 inch cookie cake, and it came out great. I was worried about it coming out of the pan all in one piece, but I used my home made cake release goop and parchment on the bottom, and it came out beautifully.

I made the banana cream pie from the Milkbar book and its pretty good, but I overdid the food coloring