Short Cookbook Review: Vintage Cakes

Vintage Cakes: Timeless Recipes for Cupcakes, Flips, Rolls, Layer, Angel, Bundt, Chiffon, and Icebox Cakes for Today's Sweet Tooth

About the Book:

A charming collection of updated recipes for both classic and forgotten cakes, from a timeless yellow birthday cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, to the Christmas standard, Bûche de Noël, written by a master baker and coauthor of Rustic Fruit Desserts.

Make every occasion—the annual bake sale, a birthday party, or even a simple Sunday supper—a celebration with this charming collection of more than 50 remastered classics.

Each recipe in Vintage Cakes is a confectionary stroll down memory lane. After sifting through her treasure trove of cookbooks and recipe cards, master baker and author Julie Richardson selected the most inventive, surprising, and just plain delicious cakes she could find. The result is a delightful and delectable time capsule of American baking, with recipes spanning a century. 

Each cake has been expertly tested and retooled using the best ingredients and most up-to-date techniques. With precise and careful guidance, Richardson guides home bakers—whether total beginners or seasoned cooks—toward picture-perfect meringues, extra-creamy frostings, and lighter-than-air chiffons.

A few of the dreamy cakes that await: a chocolatey Texas Sheet Cake as large and abundant as its namesake state, the boozy Not for Children Gingerbread Bundt cake, and the sublime Lovelight Chocolate Chiffon Cake with Chocolate Whipped Cream. With recipes to make Betty Crocker proud, these nostalgic and foolproof sweets rekindle our love affair with cakes.

My Comments:

I never cease to be amazed at the compliments I get for my homemade cupcakes.  My secret recipe?  Whatever mix is on sale at my favorite store.  As far as I'm concerned, it is quicker, easier and cheaper to whip up a box of cake mix than it is to make a special trip to the store to pick up cupcakes for whatever event is being held.  

Making the cakes in this book is not quicker, easier and cheaper than cake mix, but I'll bet they taste better. I don't have a permanent copy of this book, only a temporary review copy so, per my usual policy, I will not be making any of these cakes or sharing the recipes with you.  However, I will tell you that the pictures are very pretty and the variety of cakes, tremendous.  Some look reasonably easy; others look like you will have a lot of dishes to wash when you are done.  If there is a baker in your life, s/he might really enjoy this one.