Author(s): Erin Gardner

Cook Books

Erin Gardner has a secret about the most successful cake recipes: they're all the same. They all share similar ratios of ingredients that add tenderness, strength, or flavour. Otherwise, they wouldn't work. Add too much or not enough of something and the recipe will fail in any number of ways. Creating a foolproof cake recipe isn't sorcery, it's science. You don't have to be an expert - everyone can learn to make a great cake. And you can learn to write your own cake recipe, too. With Erin Bakes Cake, Gardner has written the first cake book of its kind: Its unique design lays the foundation for a great cake, the building blocks, and then offers endless ways that those blocks can be reassembled. She shows how to make gorgeous and intricately decorated cakes - without the use of hard-to-deal-with fondant. Every cake can be personalised: A classic pound cake can be transformed into a wild flower honey pound cake, a creamy ganache topping into a chai ganache or a toasted peanut version. A veggie cake can incorporate sweet potatoes, and a crunchy topping can be created from honeycomb, candied amaranth seeds, or even Rice Krispies (R)! To develop her signature style of creating cakes from the plate up, Gardner has drawn on her love of science, experience in business, and work as a professional pastry chef and cake designer. And with tools like a chart illustrating a cake's anatomy, she'll teach readers to do it all, too!