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(More customer reviews)`The All-American Dessert Book' by the accomplished baking writer, Nancy Baggett is the fifth `American' dessert book I have reviewed in the last two years, not even counting her own, earlier `All American Cookie Book'. This seems to be an incredibly rich topic, as I see practically no `All American' books on other branches of cookery, except for the great `James Beard's American Cookery'.
The other `American Desserts' books are by Wayne Harley Brachman, Judith Fertig, Karen Barker, and Laura Brody (emphasis on chocolate). The great thing about this subject is that these books are uniformly superior cookbooks, but I will give two big nods to Ms. Baggett over the other books.
First, Ms. Baggett's two `All American' baking books form a larger body of recipes than any of the other four alone. While Nancy's second book does have a chapter on cookies and bars, there is no overlap of recipes with her earlier book, so the two are highly complementary, although the newer book does have a few which border topics in the cookie book, such as a new ginger cookie recipe.
Second, Ms. Baggett makes a point of giving us very detailed recipe instructions. The observation that very few of us got training at our mother's knee anymore is becoming more and more common in cookbooks, so many cookbooks, like Ms. Baggett, are giving us more detailed instructions. While I am very fond of Wayne Harley Brachman's book, especially for his many recipes for basic pastry doughs, I thing I would go to Ms. Baggett for her recipe for certain standards, if the two cover the same preparation.
The first thing I always go to in a baking book is the author's recipe for pie pastry. It is amazing to see the variety of additives one can find in this seemingly simple preparation. While many highly respected bakers will add vinegar or egg to the water in making the pastry, Ms. Baggett adds baking soda. Otherwise, her technique is the same you will see over and over again, with the new suggestion of using supermarket produce bags to sandwich the dough as you work it, due to their strength and food grade material.
Like Brachman's book, Baggett covers desserts which lie outside the world of baking such as puddings; custards; ice creams; sauces and sundaes; and candies and confections. The last subject is strong on fudges, taffies, caramels, and marshmallow.
Like all these books, this one is not by any stretch of the imagination a COMPLETE compendium of American desserts. I suspect that you could take all five books together and find a truly American sweet that is missing. I looked for my two favorite Pennsylvania Dutch sweets here, Apple Dumplings and Shoofly pie and found the former only as a variation to a peach dumpling recipe and found nothing on shoofly pie or molasses cake or anything else familiar to our Amish and Mennonite friends.
I am especially fond of the way Miss Nancy writes her recipes and whenever I need a cookie recipe, I always go to her book first, even before I go to bakery superstar, Nick Malgieri. And, I see the same attention to details in this volume. I am especially happy with her lecture on using the right sized pans and the techniques for assuring ourselves that our pans are comparable to what is called for in the recipe.
Very highly recommended book on American desserts of all kinds.
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