Product Description

From kid-friendly recipes, such as Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes (Fourth of July) and Hairy Spider Cupcakes (Halloween), to more sophisticated adult recipes, such as Champagne Cupcakes (New Year’s Eve) and Irish Coffee Cupcakes (St. Patrick’s Day), A Baker’s Field Guide to Cupcakes has the perfect recipe for every occasion. Each of the 60 easy-to-make recipes is accompanied by a beautiful photograph and organized by holiday in calendar order, including recipes for special occasions such as weddings, birthdays, graduations, baby showers, office parties, picnics, and more. And with 15 master recipes for batters and frostings on which the recipes are built, each batch of perfectly delectable cupcakes can be personalized according to taste.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69445 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 164 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781558323230
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Dede Wilson has written several cookbooks including Truffles and the Baker’s Field Guide series, which includes Holiday Candy & Confections, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Christmas Cookies. A contributing editor to Bon Appetit, Wilson has worked professionally for more than 20 years as a restaurant chef, bakery owner, caterer, recipe developer, spokesperson, and frequent television guest. She is a host of The Holiday Table, a PBS cooking show.

Customer Reviews

Great for the beginner
I don't know what that one-star reviewer is talking about. I had never baked cupcakes before. Bought this book and immediately began baking cupcakes and they turned out wonderful. It's not going to make you an expert decorator overnight, but the basic master recipes are solid, and the methodology is top notch. Very light, fluffy batter. Very tasty. Highly recommended to anyone just starting out and looking for a solid foundation.

Easy ideas!
I want to preface my review with a little information about myself. I'm a working mom that is also a Girl Scout leader. I initially bought the book to do easy cupcakes with my Girl Scouts because they like to bake, and sometimes I'm just not organized enough to come up with a project on my own and make sure I have all of the ingredients for it. I also stay at home with my kids (and half the neighborhood kids) all summer. And I live in Arizona where kids play indoors all summer.

There are so many good and DO-ABLE ideas in this book. I have a stack of cake and cupcake decorating books a foot high, and most of the techniques are too advanced for grade school and middle school aged children. Heck, most of them are a little too advanced for a busy mom that can't put a whole day into cake/cupcake decorating. This book has VISUALLY APPEALING designs that are easy enough for kids to do (well over half of the cupcakes) AND best of all, the kids think they are cool. I'm sorry that one of the reviewers didn't like the sheet of fondant over the cupcake... but guess what... THAT was by and large the favorite around here. Plus, I had never worked with fondant before (I'm an 1980s wilton cake decorating class-trained cake decorator) and this easy introduction gave me Fondant Confidence and now I won't hesitate to try to use fondant on my next large birthday cake.

All of the Halloween designs are favorites here (even in June), and we have made the ones that look like Hostess cupcakes more than once now. In addition to the fun designed ones, there is another whole batch of favorites that are new "flavors" rather than new designs. The Cookies and Cream cupcakes were a big hit with everybody, and so were the Zesty Orange Pound Cake cupcakes. They reminded me of some orange hostess (i think) cupcakes I had as a child.

I have not tried all the cake and frosting recipies since I do have tried and true recipies that I prefer to use. However, everybody here did enjoy the carrot cake recipe, and I found that it didn't really matter what the design was, my kids would eat the carrot cake as long as there was some kind of frosting. (The beach scene cupcake with the umbrella works so well with the carrot cake.) The Fluffy Meringue frosting is also a nice departure from the usual heavy buttercream that I use. It can make a kid cupcake into a grown-up pastry dessert.

One final thing to say, what I ended up doing since there were so many cute designs and I didn't really have a use for 24 of any particular one, was make a few dozen cupcakes ahead of time and freeze them in ziploc bags of 12. Then as my kids begged for cupcakes, I'd pull a dozen out along with frosting that I had made and pre-frozen, and we had a one hour project rather than a whole day project.

All in all I'm very pleased with this book. There is something in there for every age and every preference, and nothing is so difficult that you need formal pastry training to make it look good!

Cupcakes
I really enjoyed this book especially the creativity of the cupcakes. I made several (key lime, lemon merigue, orange) and got rave reviews when I brought them to work. You must like to bake if you use this book. A lot of the recipes have multiple parts of preparation. Also, after making the first batch of the author's recipe for the cupcakes themselves I decided to use my own cake recipes as I found that the ones in the book to be on the dry side and more complicated than cupcakes needed to be.