Uh, let's see. I have a little problem with WordPress. I wrote this last December and wanted it published before Christmas. I scheduled it. Then I went on vacation. And this morning I saw that, well, it's still scheduled for last December but never made it live. It's a great dessert cookbook, so you can start preparing now for next Christmas. Or, or just get it and make desserts for St. Patrick's Day, Easter, your birthday, or any day you want something sweet and good.
Sorry for the delay.
I’m posting this on the Saturday before Christmas. Which gives you just a few days to get to your local bookstore — or order online — and get your copy of Baklava to Tarte Tatin by Bernard Laurance. He is France’s favorite food blogger, a TV chef, an excellent writer, and a superior packager of recipes.
This book’s subtitle is A World Tour in 110 Dessert Recipes. And in this book, this book that you want open and ready in your kitchen, you do travel far and wide.
Appropriately, half the book is devoted to desserts from Europe including:
Flourless Almond Cake
Coconut Macarons
Crunchy Caramel and Hazelnut Drop Cookies
Strawberry Pistachio Layer Cake
Apple Strudel [pictured at the bottom of this post]
Moving to the Americas, the recipes seem natural:
Utterly Decadent Brownies
Giant Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies
Canadian Sugar Tart
Carrot Cake
Other cultures devour sugar, too. In North Africa and the Middle East, you will find:
Moroccan Coconut Balls
Almond Baklava
Egyptian Bread Pudding
Yeasted Fritters in Honey Syrup
And from Asia and Oceania the offerings include:
Mango Sticky Rice
Crunchy Peanut Bars
Indian Semolina-Carrot Cake
Water Chestnuts with Tapioca and Pandanus Leaves
The European and American recipes titles bear familiarity for they are common to us. It’s brownies and carrot cake and strudel for Pete’s sake. But moving further afield, it’s not clear what kind of dessert Mango Sticky Rice just might be. Rice for dessert?
But that is half of the two-fold charm of this significant book. From one perspective, you get a talented Frenchman’s take on classic recipes, like Utterly Decadent Brownies. And from the other perspective, you are offered temptations from distant lands. Temptations that, when offered by Bernard, you can safely succumb to.
This book is beautifully produced. Many of the recipes are accompanied by full page photos that can only be described as finger-licking good. If you are about to celebrate New Year’s with some resolution about “watching my dessert profile” then you must avoid this book at all cost.
Since, however, by February, you are going to back enjoying dessert, the most important dish of your meal, you really owe it to yourself to enjoy this tempting work starting now. If you wait and then discover how good it is, you’ll be filled with regret. Regret is bad. This book is grand.
Suzi and I will be testing recipes and reporting along. What kind of confidence can I have now to recommend this book so glowingly to you? There are several detailed pages devoted to making meringue, both Italian and French, and using both of them in several macaron recipes. Bermard describes his personal odyssey, trying macarons, failing, experimenting and finally mastering them. They look so simple. They are not.
The expertise display in this meringue-and-macaron discussion leaves me quite certain that Baklava to Tart Tatin offers you excellence on every page.