Sweet

Starred review from September 2, 2013
Gordon, founder of the acclaimed Valerie’s Confections, shares her passion for creating high-quality pastries and candies. Full-color photographs highlight the simple beauty of Gordon’s creations, which can be mastered by the home cook with a little effort. Recipes are divided into celebration and everyday cakes, pies, tarts, chocolates, confections, cookies, bars, spoon desserts, and jams, offering a varied mix of fruity, buttery, and chocolaty treats. In addition to painstakingly recreating once-famed but now-extinct desserts like Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake, Chasen’s Banana Shortcake, and Bullocks’s Wilshire Coconut Cream Pie, Golden shares homey favorites such as lattice-topped berry pie, classic shortbread, and brownies. Her jasmine panna cotta, chocolate pot de crème, and tiramisu trifle are simply mouthwatering, as are her coconut-finger lime cookies and salted-peanut blondies. Golden’s confections are also truly exceptional and include almond fleur de sel toffee, chocolate-dipped coffee crunch, and single-malt-scotch truffles. To help the less practiced achieve more professional results, Golden offers helpful hints on everything from cake building and petit fours to tempering chocolate and working with dough. She also provides a useful section on ingredients and equipment that make for a well-stocked baking kitchen. This thoroughly delightful collection is a must-have for baking and confectionary enthusiasts everywhere.