I have ordered Magnificent Cakes but do I need the Cake Bible as well??

I hear the cake bible deals in depth with icing techniques (I am not a decorator!) but a lesser part is devoted to baking cakes as such (66 pages)???

But I have seen some reference here to useful tables at the back of the book.

For those of you who have both books I would appreciate some advice.

I am keen to order the Pie book as well. What type of pies are covered??

Paul. Welcome to the forum! The Cake Bible is 560 pages long and I would say a huge portion of it is devoted to different cake recipes (butter cakes, sponge cakes) and components that would complement the taste and look of a cake (i.e different kinds of buttercream, ganache, strawberry/raspberry preserve that you can incorporate to the buttercream, fondant, marzipan). I have just started making Rose’s recipes - I’ve only tried a couple of recipes from the Cake Bible - so I cannot really speak to how wonderful this book is but I think we have numerous people on this blog who swore by it. Amazon has a bunch of sellers offering used books for very reasonable price, I think it’s worth it to get one. Regarding the Pie & Pastry Bible, it has all the pie that you could imagine - sweet (Apple Pie, peach, blueberry, tiramisu) and savory (cream puff with savory filling, deep dish chicken pot pies, quiches). The pastry section has recipes for french puff pastry, danish pastry, phyllo and struedel. Rose also has several different pie crust in there. On an additional note, we actually have a bake-a-long where we are going to bake through Rose’s latest book. You’re more than welcome to join if you’re interested. For more information you can check out http://heavenlycakeplace.blogspot.com/.
I hope this helps and I hope I don’t sound too much like a telemarketer!

Thanks Jenn!  Sounds like I need all of Rose’s tomes. You are a good marketer!!

You need the cake bible…for sure.  Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is a wonderful book with wonderful recipes…but the cake bible has all the basics.  The cakes and frostings are in separate parts of the book…and you can mix and match, but the basic cake and frosting recipes are all there.  I couldn’t bake without it.

I’m making a cake using both books today.  I think you need both!

You can always check the Cake Bible out of the library- most have it- and see what all the fuss is about.  When I did this, I didn’t want to return it until my own copy arrived from Amazon!

The library should also have the Pie & Pastry Bible.

Hi all - remember I am in Africa and our libraries here don’t have the huge resources to buy books like the USA or UK.

So I can’t take a peep at the books before buying. - I am totally reliant on the excellent info from you and very much appreciate your input.

Also Amazon US no longer takes orders from us here due to mail theft - so I have to order through a local bookseller. This means my costs are much much higher.
Add to this that my local currency is nearly 8 to the US $ even though the $ is very weak at the moment and you will appreciate how difficult it is for African bakers to buy books. Rose’s blog is a huge source of cheap info for us. Thank you Rose!

One last question - anyone bought Shirley O. Corriher’s Bakewise book. How do you rate it? There seem to be mixed reviews on Amazon on Bakewise unlike her Cookwise which has rave reviews.

Paul - 21 October 2009 11:26 AM

I have ordered Magnificent Cakes but do I need the Cake Bible as well??

I hear the cake bible deals in depth with icing techniques (I am not a decorator!) but a lesser part is devoted to baking cakes as such (66 pages)???

But I have seen some reference here to useful tables at the back of the book.

For those of you who have both books I would appreciate some advice.

I am keen to order the Pie book as well. What type of pies are covered??

The books I use at least every other day are The Cake Bible, RHC, Shirley O. Corriher’s Bakewise, and at home, Rose’s Pie book.  I have many books here as reference, but I use TCB the most: not so much because it has good well-tested cakes and icings (there are MANY more than 66 pages of cake baking in TCB), but because there is so much good reference material concerning weights and conversions of recipe materials including chapters with formuli for scaling up recipes for tiered cakes (especially good when weighing grams of ingredients to insure that you are consistent from one cake to another) and the WHY of many baking processes and ingredients (this is especially helpful if you like to experiment with your own ideas and refinements to recipes you may have gathered).  I have collected many cookbooks over the years, but for baking (esp. cakes), I keep coming back to this book when I need reference help.  There is also referenced a source for ingredients that might be a little more difficult to acquire than what you might be able to get on the phone from your local jobber or retil GroSto (Tobler Narcisse, for example).

Although I am a newbee here to the website, the sense of community and the folks offering resolutions for issues helps a lot, too!  I have promised myself to bake through Roses RHC book this year.  I might even go through the Cake Bible as well if I can find a home for all these cakes…

If money is not an issue in this economy, get all three, you won’t regret having them.

HTH

I guess it will have to be all three!

Hi Paul - welcome!!!

If I had to chose between The Cake Bible and Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, TCB would win hands down.  Yes, the technical info is the best, but the actual recipes are SUPERB!  I’ve never had one fail, and I’ve become the sought out baker in my circles because of it.  Highly, highly, highly recommended!

That being said, if you can get both, by all means do!  RHC is a wonderful new book and every recipe I’ve tried so far is on par with what I’ve come to know and love about Rose.

I am not familiar with Magnificent Cakes.

Another vote from me for The Cake Bible.  I think I appreciate and understand Heavenly Cakes so much better with the foundation provided by TCB.  And, it you don’t have access to some of the ingredients recommended by RHC - e.g. tart fruit butters, and so on, TCB has great recipes to make your own double-strength purees for addition to buttercreams.

Apologies that should of course be Rose’s H e a v e n l y Cakes which are of course magnificent!

Paul,  I agree with all of the above - you MUST have The Cake Bible.  If I could take one and only one baking book to the Desert Island it would be this one.  Second place is the P&PB; - it is chock full of information and recipes.  I like Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise too but she uses a LOT of sugar in her recipes which kind of puts me off.  However, she too gives ingredient weight in grams and gives loads of information on the science of baking.  If you can at all afford it, get all three and then with your Heavenly Cakes you will never need another baking book again.  Except, of course, for a bread book, but that’s another story….

Thanks Annie. Cake Bible it is.

I got my Cake Bible used through Amazon for like $10. I’m sure that is still expensive for plenty of people in Africa, and I bet shipping is going to add a significant amount. But I’d agree with others that RHC builds on the foundation of TCB. If I had to choose one, I’d go with TCB, but I think you could make out quite well with just owning RHC.

-Holly