Review: Layered by Tessa Huff

Title: Layered: Baking, Building, and Styling Spectacular Cakes
Author: Tessa Huff
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: April 19th 2016
Source: Netgalley


Book Description:

It’s time to venture beyond vanilla and chocolate and take your baking skills up a notch. We’re talking layers—two, three, four, or more!

Create sky-high, bakery-quality treats at home with Tessa Huff’s 150 innovative recipes, which combine new and exciting flavors of cake, fillings, and frostings—everything from pink peppercorn cherry to bourbon butterscotch, and pumpkin vanilla chai to riesling rhubarb and raspberry chocolate stout. Including contemporary baking methods and industry tips and tricks, Layered covers every decorating technique you’ll ever need with simple instructions and gorgeous step-by-step photos that speak to bakers of every skill level—and to anyone who wants to transform dessert into layer upon layer of edible art.

Review:

★★★★★

From cover to cover, this is an elegant guide to all things cake.

The first section is much needed for people like me, whose cakes never seem to turn out quite like was intended. There's a list of utilized ingredients, tools of the trade (and how to use them), as well as a guide on how to decorate.

And then there's, of course, the cakes! The recipes are arranged by types of cake. Sections include "Classic Cakes", "Casual Cakes", and "Whimsical Cakes". This is a little muddled for me. I'd prefer more of a sorting by ingredients type of organization. Classic and casual are sort of subjective. But, that's nitpicking and I know it.

The recipes have numbered steps, which is helpful. But I'm going to be honest- I think this is an intimidating book to a beginner baker. Its recipes are pretty complicated, and many of the cakes have a lot of components.

The biggest plus of this collection of cake recipes is the photography, which is gorgeous. I also really appreciate, as a visual cook, that there are photos of each and every cake. That's what I look for most in a cookbook, and this book didn't disappoint.


Some of the cakes that I'm most eager to shove in my cake hole include Lavender Olive Oil Cake, Sweet Tea Cake, and Blueberry Pancake Cake.

This book would be great on a baker's shelf, and with such beautiful photography would make a great gift. If this is your first time ever baking a cake, be cautious of this one.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.