http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/dining/cookbook-review-dorie-greenpans-baking-chez-moi-nick-malgieris-pastry.html 2014-12-01 21:52:39 Cookbook Review: Dorie Greenpan’s ‘Baking Chez Moi’, Nick Malgieri’s ‘Pastry’ Leading bakers down sugar-dusted paths, five books surprise and delight. (Article plus video.) === Maida Heatter’s dessert cookbooks are so detailed in their instructions that she practically tells you when to stop sifting the flour so you can wipe off your glasses. I discovered Ms. Heatter’s books when I was a teenager with an immense sweet tooth. I loved their exactitude, which saved me from many a kitchen catastrophe. Her writing style is precise and practical. She included suggestions like using a saltshaker to sprinkle water into pie dough to yield flakier crust, and chilling the beaters and bowl before whipping heavy cream for the fluffiest texture. God is in the details, as they say. Fall is blockbuster season for cookbook publishers, and the 2014 crop has been heavy on baking. I found myself thinking about Ms. Heatter a lot recently as I baked my way through the rich stack that hit my desk. There were giant, authoritative books by known authors, and smaller, quirkier books by newcomers. The best ones were able to walk a novice through the particulars of pastry science and also give innovative recipes, not just the chocolate tortes you’ve seen before. Of all the cookbooks I tested (and when I say “tested,” I mean read in bed, bookmarked, splattered, annotated and obsessed over), the encouraging meticulousness of Dorie Greenspan’s “ Ms. Greenspan anticipates where you may go awry and holds your hand through the process. When instructing the cook to add molten sugar syrup to a bowl of beaten whites, she writes: “Stand back and carefully and steadily pour the hot syrup into the bowl. Try to get the syrup between the side of the bowl and the whisk. Perfection is impossible, so ignore any splatters.” She was right. The syrup splattered, hardening into candylike nuggets stuck to the side of the bowl that I had her permission to ignore. The resulting marshmallow frosting was a sweet and glossy cloud. And the cake was a knockout: tender, gently spiced and gorgeously rich from the praline-flecked cream cheese rolled up in its sugary heart. This bûche is the most complicated recipe in the book. Ms. Greenspan, who has a home in Paris, collected most others from her French friends and acquaintances, who, she writes, don’t ever bake fancy things. With an adorable pâtisserie on every corner, why should they? Their recipes are rustic, buttery, homey and — best of all — simple. The brown butter and vanilla bean loaf cake is just the kind of comforting snack you can whip up on a Friday evening to savor all weekend long. Sugar-dusted olive oil and wine cookies were a snap to make, yet with a layered, lingering flavor that walked the happy line between savory and sweet. Pastries of all kinds — savory, sweet and a combination — are the focus of Nick Malgieri’s latest book, succinctly titled “ Mr. Malgieri’s teaching skills are manifest on every page as he breaks down the process of dough-making into thorough but easily digestible steps. With him at my side, I managed to turn out flaky, buttery pains au chocolate, which impressed the heck out of The cookbook author Alice Medrich is justifiably known for her chocolate dessert books, which consistently offer some of the most intense and flavorful bittersweet treats. Her authoritative “ In her hands, earthy teff flour, nutty sorghum flour, sweet coconut flour and others are not just substitutes for wheat flour; they add complex and fascinating notes to baked goods of all kinds, from a delicate corn flour génoise to a sturdy chestnut flour cheesecake. Her caramel-scented apple crisp was one of the best I’ve ever baked, with or without gluten. So was a velvety chocolate layer cake made with a combination of oat and white rice flour. All three of these authors are cookbook pros with years of experience, so I wasn’t surprised at their level of confidence and expertise. The shocker came from a newcomer: Ben Mims, an editor at Food & Wine magazine, whose “ I wanted to make practically every one of Mr. Mims’s original, modern and often whimsical takes on classic Southern desserts, but had to stop myself (for now) after three. Creative notions abound, including a pale but tender red velvet cake using pomegranate juice as the tint. His Southern cassata — a riff on a Sicilian marzipan confection — ingeniously substitutes pecans for almonds and cream cheese for ricotta. My favorite was a layered chocolate flan and cake hybrid — creamy, luscious and completely unlike anything I’d made before. And finally, there was Johnny Iuzzini’s somewhat frenetic but entertaining “ It’s that kind of touch that makes each of these five books sing. When it comes to dessert making, the tiniest details add up to delight.