Caprial's Desserts - Hardcover

Caprial Pence; Melissa Cavey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580082858 ISBN 13: 9781580082853

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2004

Synopsis

Caprial Pence has teamed up with Melissa Carey, her pastry chef at Caprial’s Bistro, to create another fantastic cookbook, this one entirely devoted to desserts! In preparing the collection, Caprial and Melissa poured through their recipe files, winnowing them down to 50 core recipes, each grounded in the chefs’ shared appreciation of wholesome, comforting, no-nonsense desserts that beg to be made time and again. The result is a deeply satisfying, truly essential collection of classic and contemporary recipes for cakes, pies, and tarts; custards and puddings; ice creams and sorbets; and cookies and special-occasion desserts. Like a culinary school class, CAPRIAL’S DESSERTS focuses on the basic process pastry chefs practice daily—using master recipes and techniques as a springboard for developing creative new desserts. Building on the 50 master recipes, each chapter reveals how they can be finessed to create one exciting variation after another. Along the way, clear step-by-step photographs put you alongside Caprial and Melissa in their kitchen as they share their secrets for making extraordinary pie dough, working wonders with an ice cream machine, perfecting the delicate art of puff pastry, and numerous other essentials of the sweet kitchen. If you are new to baking, this book will give you the confidence, inspiration, and skills to build a solid dessert repertoire; if you are an experienced baker, it will help you hone classic techniques and push you to new levels of creativity and improvisation in the kitchen. A model of beauty and clarity, CAPRIAL’S DESSERTS is destined to become a well-thumbed, and flour-caked fixture on your kitchen bookshelf.

About this title

Review:

Caprial Pence (of Caprial's Bistro in Portland, Oregon) and her pastry chef, Melissa Carey, go for "flavor and substance" in Caprial's Desserts, a volume of master recipes and variations for the desserts that keep her Bistro customers coming back for more. These are simple desserts that don't need translation. They are mostly old-fashioned, the kind you wish your grandmother passed on to you, such as the rich and moist Chocolate Buttermilk Cake. And to ice it, her Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting is the recipe you've been looking for. Master recipes are followed by variations just to get you started. Caprial encourages us to experiment with whatever we have on hand. Their recipe for a truly crispy Fruit Crisp is followed by variations for Oatmeal-Nut Crisp and for Individual Fruit Crisps. Once we understand which parts of the recipes are safe to change, the sky's the limit. Banana Cream Pie, Caramel-Pear Tart with a Graham Shortbread Crust, Jenny's Great-Grandma's Gingersnaps, and Peach-Raspberry Scones are comfort food epitomized. Orange-Caramel Pull-Apart Bread, Chocolate Bread Pudding, Strawberry-Mascarpone Ice Cream, and Coconut Cream Cake will impress your friends and thrill your kids. These recipes are creative enough for anyone to appreciate, and are so clear, concise (most take up less than a page), and easy to follow that even pastry novices will feel comfortable diving in. --Leora Y. Bloom

From the Publisher:

* New paperback edition of Caprial Pence and Melissa Carey’s collection of desserts, featuring 67 master recipes and their variations.

* Full-color photography throughout, including more than 60 illustrations of fundamental pastry-making techniques.

* Caprial’s books have sold nearly 300,000 copies.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1580082858
• ISBN 13: 9781580082853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 262