Book Review: The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

By Mary Anne Ellis | Southern History Department, Central Library

Since the COVID crisis began, many of us with time on our hands started trying experiments in the kitchen and pushing the limits of our cooking and baking skills. If you enjoy baking, you need to take a look at The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. The author has long been fascinated by the more precise aspects of baking—she even wrote a graduate school paper on the topic of how sifting the dry ingredients affects the quality of a yellow cake—and admits that “it was never the flavor of desserts alone that beguiled me. It was also my fascination with the variety of textures derived from so few ingredients . . . When faced with three chocolate buttercream recipes—one with yolks, one with whites, and one with cream—how could I decide which to make?”

If such subtleties appeal to you, or if you just want to check out a range of tempting recipes and jaw-dropping photographs of the finished product, this book is a must for your collection. There are instructions for basics that can be adapted for various occasions—pound cake and yellow cake, for instance—but there are also tips on preparing your cake pans, turning out the finished product, how to store leftovers (assuming that there are any!), and even cakes that are quick to fix and don’t need frosting or decorations to make an impression.

I’m no expert baker and I don’t keep any kind of written bucket list, but if I did, one of the entries would definitely be: “Make one of the cakes in The Cake Bible!” The photographs of the finished cakes are mouth-watering and one of my favorite things about the book, but there are also plenty of illustrations of utensils, decorating tools, and specialized cake pans, in case you find yourself asking “What the heck is a Turk’s Head Mold and where do I get one?” But whether you are looking for new challenges as a baker or if you just love to page through beautiful cookbooks, this one is not to be missed. Indulge yourself with a delicious read!