PURE DESSERT

Pure Dessert
by Alice Medrich 2007/hardcover/262 pages/Artisan/$60.74
Books Kinokuniya

Rarely do I stumble on a cookbook from which I want to make every single recipe. I'm very happy to report that this gorgeously illustrated tome is one of those books.

Medrich's talent is for illuminating familiar flavours with new insight, and organising new combinations with such elegant logic that they seem instantly familiar. Hence the likes of a dark chocolate and citrus tart with jasmine tea-infused cream; a rosewater and mint ice cream that shuns eggs for a cleaner flavour; and a coconut, palm sugar and rum layer cake that wouldn't look out of place on a Peranakan dining table.

I cannot think of the recipe for little crepes stuffed with fresh cheese and caramelised in butter and sugar without salivating.

Chapters are organised by key flavours rather than type of dish: milk, chocolate, herbs and spices, honey and sugar, fruit, spirits and alcoholic beverages, and grains, nuts and seeds.

Inveterate bedtime-cookbook readers will find many nuggets of useful information scattered throughout the text - for example, adding too much egg yolk to tuile cookie batter blunts its flavour, and rich, malty brews make better beer ice creams than very hoppy beers. Who knew?

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DEMOLITION DESSERTS

Elizabeth
Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes From Citizen Cake
by Elizabeth Falkner
2007/hardcover/230 pages/Ten Speed Press/$61.81
Books Kinokuniya

'Aaahaahaa!!!' cries the author's spike-haired cartoon alter-ego, as she motorbikes through a meringue mountain in one of several manga-style comic strips scattered through this freewheeling cookbook. Ms Falkner is clearly a little bonkers. But that's all to our good.

The owner of San Francisco's famed Citizen Cake cafe, Falkner has a reputation for quirky, delicious desserts. Not everything in this eye-popping book is fancy-shmancy, though. For every high-concept combination, such as manchego cheese churros with quince paste, paprika-dusted almonds and sherry gastrique, there's a good old-fashioned American-style showstopper, such as buttermilk cupcakes busting with lemon curd and peaks of vanilla meringue icing.

Some creations even bridge the two, such as a mouth-watering 'peanut butter and jelly' parfait of tapioca pearls infused with concord grape juice, layered with peanut butter ice cream, buttermilk panna cotta and crunchy caramel-coated popcorn.

Simple and complex variations of each dessert are given, to accommodate home cooks with less or more time and gumption.

Falkner also addresses all the ingredients and tools in the modern pastry chef's arsenal, from blowtorches through to xanthan gum, explaining clearly how to wield them to achieve different textures and effects.

This is a perfect buy for home cooks keen to know how the pros create and plate the multi-component desserts that are de rigueur nowadays.

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Baking

Baking: From My Home To Yours

by Dorie Greenspan
2006/hardcover/514 pages/Houghton Mifflin/$67.54
Books Kinokuniya

Dorie Greenspan has co-authored two dessert books with French patisserie genius Pierre Herme, and one baking book with American food icon Julia Child, three books which have won four awards between them.

This, fellow bakers, is all you need to know about her culinary credentials.

She writes clearly and encouragingly, including basic explanations of the chemistry of baking, plus numerous practical tips. Think of her as the parent who walks backwards in front of you as you wobble along on your first bicycle, outstretched hands always there when needed to help you steer and balance.

A professional by choice but a home baker at heart, Greenspan has filled this book with not only a huge selection of classic homestyle recipes, from streusel muffins to berry cobbler, beautiful pound and marble cakes, brioches and bundt cakes and pecan pie, but also some surprises, such as a honey cornmeal cake with port-poached figs, and a toasted coconut custard tart spiced with a pinch of ground coriander.

One of the best surprises is a recipe, courtesy of Herme, for an ethereally light lemon cream, which is probably worth the price of the book alone.

Highly recommended for novice and avid bakers alike.