All Cakes Considered...

This cook book caught my eye just because how beautifully designed it is, but once I opened it up I was delighted to find that it possessed great content to go along with great form! Written by a producer of the popular NPR show All Things Considered the cook book was born out of her tradition of making a cake to bring into the office every Monday.

What a lovely idea! What an easy way to get popular. I’ve decided to cook my way through the cookbook in an attempt to engender the cupboard love of the entire staff at Words Worth Books. The book is set up to be cooked through chronologically, starting with the more basic recipes like pound cake and working up to more elaborate fare like “Stephen Pyle’s Heaven and Hell Cake” which has layers of devils food cake and angel cake, all stuck together with peanut butter filling and coated in a thick chocolate ganache. Yes, please!

But it’s not just the great recipes, or the beautiful design of the book that endear it, but the great anecdotal writing style of author Melissa Gray. Each recipe comes with a hilarious rambling introduction, and lots of great side-bars.

So far I have attempted the “Man Catcher Sour Cream Pound Cake” and the “Brown Sugar Pound Cake”… and they were both huge hits! - Carolyn