The Good Cook: Cakes

Towering wedding cakes festooned with frosting garlands, layered birthday cakes glowing with candles, fruited Christmas cakes moist and dark - all are symbols of celebration. So, on a less magnificent scale, is a seedcake baked for afternoon tea, or a cupcake shaped to please a small child. Cakes, in sum, are festive food, and the techniques for making them constitute one of the happier culinary arts. This volume addresses the entire field of cakemaking. The following pages give some historical information about cakes and offer practical advice on using ovens for baking and on serving wine with cake. Next, a series of demonstrations explains the preparation of all the elements that decorate cakes: Step-by-step photographs show how to handle nuts, chocolate and other ingredients; how to mix icings and frostings; and how to use a pastry bag to pipe those icings and frostings into decorative borders, intricate leaves and many-petaled flowers. In this introductory section you also will find information on preparing baking pans so that cakes may be perfectly unmolded. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Good Cook: Cakes