Product Description

As Executive Pastry Chef at the White House for almost twenty-five years, Roland Mesnier has been responsible for creating thousands of elegant, delicious confections and dazzling desserts for hundreds of state dinners and family occasions. An accomplished teacher as well as a master chef, he now shares his expertise with home cooks in Dessert University.

This beautifully illustrated volume is a complete course in making the full spectrum of spectacular sweets -- from breakfast pastries, cookies, and pies to fresh-fruit desserts, frozen confections, and cakes. Recipes in each chapter are organized from the simplest to the most complex, and Chef Mesnier walks you through each step, pointing out common mistakes and offering insights on technique gained from his years as a professional. Most of these recipes need few special ingredients and almost no fancy equipment; nearly everything can be purchased at a well-stocked supermarket, department store, or kitchen supply store. Chef Mesnier includes tips on techniques, ingredients, and serving suggestions, and offers home cooks practical advice, such as how to fill and use a pastry bag and the best way to whip egg whites. A resource list is also included, so cooks can find the more unusual ingredients they need to make these delectable creations.

Mesnier starts off with his fresh-fruit desserts, including uniquely wonderful recipes such as Bananas in Raspberry Cream, Blueberry Fool, and Poached Peaches with Chestnut Mousse. He moves on to creamy custards, puddings, soufflés, mousses and Bavarians, ice creams, meringues, crêpes, and breakfast treats (including buttery brioche and croissant doughs). Chef Mesnier's cookie and bar recipes will fill your cookie jar with such treats as Chocolate Chip Cookies, Almond Crescents, Orange Butter Cookies, Brownies, and Florentine Squares. There are sweet and savory tarts, and cakes ranging from the simple (Lemon Pound Cake) to the unusual (Peanut Butter and Jelly Roulade Cake) to the sophisticated (Chocolate Champagne Mousse Cake). Ambitious home cooks can even try their hand at making chocolate candy and sugar decorations. A chapter on syrups, sauces, and other dessert components completes the book.

More than fifty black-and-white line drawings throughout illustrate Chef Mesnier's instructions for the more complicated recipes, and there are sixteen stunning color photographs of finished desserts.

Home cooks and professionals spend hundreds of dollars in formal cooking classes to learn what masters like Roland Mesnier have to teach. In Dessert University, Chef Mesnier has distilled the experience and expertise of an extraordinary career into one accessible, user-friendly volume. Whether you're a novice who has never picked up a rolling pin or an accomplished cook looking to hone and enhance your skills, this is truly a book you cannot do without.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48918 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

Amazon.com
Slightly older egg whites--the ones from supermarket eggs are already three to five days old by the time you buy them--whip up smoother and higher than fesh ones. This bit of information introduces the section called Magical Meringues in Roland Mesnier's Dessert University. For 25 years Roland Mesnier has been executive pastry chef at the White House. He's also a teacher who never forgets what it is to be a student. So he's ready, willing, and able to share what he has learned about producing desserts to die for.

There's a gentle, encouraging spirit that runs through this book, and it comes from the unique situation a White House pastry cehf finds himself in. On the one hand he has to prepare high-end restaurant-quality desserts for lunches and dinners that seat people by the hundreds. But the chief responsibility is to a single family and its guests, which makes the work more like a private chef who only has to satisfy one customer. So these are family recipes, in a sense, that can stand up to restaurant specs.

The book opens with a chapter on fruit desserts, a chapter that establishes a simple, user-friendly line. What follows are chapters on Puddings Custards and Souffles; Mousses and Bavarians; Frozen Desserts; Meringues; Crepes and Deloctable Fillings; Breakfast Pastries; Cookies; Tarts and Pies; Cakes; Chocolate Candy and Decorations; Sugar Decorations; and Syrups, Sauces, and Glazes.

At 540-plus pages this is a big, well-illustrated, cleanly written book with clear instructions and concise recipes. But it isn't intiomidating. Rather, it's welcoming. You'll feel as comfortable whipping up an Apple Sorget with Caramel sauce as you willbaking a Chocolate Butter Cake. And the best advice of all from this master? Practice, practice, practice. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
Thanks to Mesnier's tremendous dessert reference, everyday home cooks can now whip up the very sweets the author has been serving to the First Family and White House visitors for the past 25 years. French-born Mesnier, who was hired by Rosalyn Carter in 1979, is honorary president of the World Cup of Pastry, but his culinary know-how stretches far beyond the intricacies of croissants and brioche. After all, he's been working in America and serving international heads of state for a quarter century, so he's well versed in classics like Cheesecake, Baked Alaska, Brownies, All-American Apple Pie, Oatmeal Cookies and Rum Raisin Ice Cream. His cookbook isn't to be taken lightly, however; there aren't a ton of speed-saving shortcuts, nor are there revised, easier versions of detailed dishes. That said, the recipes, for the most part, call for basic supermarket ingredients, with the occasional trip to the greenmarket for fresh fruit. (In fact, Mesnier is a huge fan of fruit desserts, and he offers a wide variety of options for low-calorie sweets that don't sacrifice flavor for calories, like Mango Tropico Soufflé.) With advice on techniques and short but revealing asides on Mesnier's interesting career, the book is at once an indispensable guide to preparing desserts and fascinating armchair reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
White House Pastry Chef Mesnier shares his considerable talent and skill with those Americans who have never had the privilege of dining at the Executive Mansion. Mesnier's book amply documents the state of dessert cookery at the dawn of the twenty-first century. He begins with fruit desserts, newly fashionable for their simplicity and lack of excessive fats. His emphasis on mousses and Bavarian creams further illustrates the current trend toward using fewer egg yolks and toward use of gelatin as a stabilizer and thickener. He makes use of newly universally available, assertively flavored tropical fruits, such as mango and passion fruit. The chef also offers lucid explanations of the different types and various uses of meringues that comprise so central a part of the pastry chef's world. Mesnier still works with traditional desserts, and he has plenty of attractive recipes for cookies, cakes, and pies that are still in great demand. His simple icebox cookies are sure to win kudos at any sweet table. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The fruit themes can get monotonous, but his well spoken lessons are ever important.
I feel like a better pastry chef by reading Ronald Mesnier's books. He emphasizes the quality of ingredients when it counts the most but mentions when it is o.k. to use frozen or preprepared items in a dish. He prepares dishes in slightly unconventional ways that happen to often be healthier than traditional preparations.

He LOVES his fruit, and you just might get tired of reading all of the fruit themed desert recipes and however imporant his information is, it can seem annoying if you have read his other pastry book, which is also full of fruit. I would have liked to hear him talk more on the subject of other things, but everything did get adequate enough time spent that I do not feel like it was a waste of time getting this book. I would recommend it.

the best book
This is simply the best book on baking I have ever used! I bake a lot. At least one thing every day and I have never owned a book where every recipe I have tried has turned out beautifully until now. If your someone who likes to bake out of a box this book is not for you, but if you've wanted to try something different from your everday items this book is wonderful. Mesnier breaks everything down and teaches you the simplest way to do everything. If there's an easier way to do something, he's found it. It's not like other dessert books, where you've never even heard of half of the ingredients, or they're all super expensive items with long drawn out instructions. I'm now making things that I never in a million years thought I would be able to make. This is the book I turn to for any technique. In fact, I've taken ideas from other books and then put them together using the techniques in this book. Quite simply this is the best book ever!!!! I love it and I recommend it to everyone.

Great book for learning how to make deserts. Good recipes too!
I like the book. The best part is that Chef Mesnier has a brief introduction to each recipe. He gives instructions or advise which I found most helpful.
I have thousands, yes thousands, of recipes but few come with thoughtful comments about them. Chef Mesnier makes even difficult techniques seem possible for the average person.
In short, if you like to learn about making deserts get the book. If you are a professional chef who knows everything about cooking, this book is probably not for you.