Desserts: More Than 140 of Our Most Beloved Recipes Hardcover – September 5, 2017

I am going to cut right to the chase with the one recipe I tried. I am not going to talk about the layout of the book and other things because what matters for me is easy tasty recipes. p.19 Vanilla bean cake (brown sugar). This was easy to make, and I made cupcakes instead of cake, and for ease I omitted making the caramel sauce. I uploaded a picture. Wow, delicious is all I can say. I was so surprised at how tasty this was, because the ingredients are basic. It's got a nice caramel color, it's soft on the inside with a bit of a crust on the top. Not to sweet. I did cook it for 30 minutes instead of 1 hour because it was cupcakes. This is going to be my quick go to recipe for when i'm having a sweet tooth moment. I've tagged a number of recipes in the book that I'm really interested in making. A few are made with almond flour, which I love because I always keep almond flour on hand because you can buy it from most retailers. There are a nice mixes of cakes and interesting cookies, that I'm very interested in trying- like brownie cookies. If this one recipe is any indication, I think the rest of the book will not disappoint.

Great pictures. Some of the recipes have ingredients that are hard to find even at whole foods.

Very nice book.

I love to read cookbooks and when my eyes took in the thick layers of chocolate and graham in the S’Mores Bars (YUM!) on the cover of this collection, I envisioned how fun it would be to fulfill a request to “bring a dessert” with one of these decadent options. I forgot that I’ve subscribed to Food & Wine Magazine in the past and never pulled out many recipes to save. It was the same for me here.The approx. 150 recipes tend to be for versatile bakers with well-stocked kitchens, to be refined (even complex) in flavors and special vs. everyday, and to be rich (I’m going by the ingredients lists; nutritional info is not provided). They’re arranged in groupings of Cakes & Pastries, Pies & Fruit Desserts, Cookies & Bars, Puddings & Custards, Frozen Desserts, and Candies & Sauces. An evocative full-page, full-color photo accompanies almost every entry, and I think most people (and foodies for sure) would see this collection as luscious. So I’m sad that the recipes didn’t hold my interest to read, much less prepare, much less eat even if at a restaurant.I did mark some smaller-scale, less-decadent entries to try right now for my husband and me, among them:. Caramel sauce (to pair with sliced apples for dipping). Sour cream coffee cake muffins (can freeze some for later). Apple cake with cranberries (assembled like a pineapple upside-down cake). Lemon-glazed citrus-yogurt pound cake (when baked as mini-muffins, they’re described as “a shot of fresh-squeezed juice,” YUM!)

This book is bigger and heftier than I had thought it would be and it really does a good job making you want to start cooking something delicious (if you are dieting, that could be cause for the removal of a star, but I'll assume you actually WANT to make yummy desserts if you are looking at this book <wink>). The photography is well done and makes my mouth water when I browse through it.There is a wide gambit of recipes in here. Some are very basic and familiar, most are at least a bit different than what you would expect to find in Betty Crocker (or similar all-purpose cookbook), and there are some that sound... exotic. Like miso banana bread. I mean, don't get me wrong--I love miso soup and I love banana bread, but I would never have thought of trying to combine the two. It's so weird sounding, I'm going to have to try it... maybe... someday... Anyway, my wife thinks the "exotic" (I think she called them "gourmet") things are too weird to bother trying with and to her this was a detriment to the book. I figure the book has enough other, much more approachable recipes in it that it can afford to also have some of these other items for more adventurous cooks.Many recipes will require you to source less-common ingredients like palm sugar, coconut flour, or similar. In my experience, these are easier to find than it may seem, if you are willing to actually look for them. If you just want to get cooking, however, you can find substitutions on the web pretty easily.

I was worried that the recipes in this book might be too fancy and complicated for my rather homey tastes, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that the recipes are all fairly simple and really delicious! There's something here to please everyone, I think, from chocolate cake to pies and fruit desserts. There are cookies and bars, puddings and custards, frozen desserts, candies and sauces, and some really remarkably original desserts like my favorite, Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding, which contains Krispy Kreme glazed donuts! It is so delicious, that one recipe is worth the price of the entire book! There's also a truly great recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Cookies that kids will adore, as well as fancy-looking desserts such as the Milk Chocolate Tart that looks very difficult, but is really simple to make.The recipes come from a variety of pastry and desserts all-stars, but they've kept it simple (but yummy) for home cooks like me.I highly recommend this book, even if it's just for that killer Krisy Kreme Bread Pudding recipe, which is HEAVENLY! Divine desserts!