Cookbook’s Authors Have Made Baking and Decorating a Piece of Cake : Try This Layered Delight of Chocolate, Ganache, Nuts

When a food writer and editor, two food stylists, several pastry chefs and professional cake bakers join efforts to produce a cookbook, the almost predictable result is “Pretty Cakes.” The cookbook lives up to its name, giving the home baker a variety of beautifully decorated cakes that look professional but are easy to prepare following the explicitly enumerated step-by-step instructions.

“Pretty Cakes, the Art of Cake Decorating” (Harper & Row Publishers: $22.50) is written by Mary Goodbody, senior contributing editor to Chocolatier magazine, with Jane Stacey, East Coast food stylist and pastry teacher.

Some of the cakes with intricately stunning designs were provided by Ellen Baumwoll, pastry chef at Patisserie Lanciani in New York City. A whiz with the parchment paper cone, Baumwoll contributed camellia shower cake, gracefully finished with marzipan, Pastillage camellia-like flowers and royal icing dots (made of egg whites and powdered sugar). Another spectacular offering from Baumwoll is the Lohengrin, an anniversary tier of fruitcake and chocolate genoise layers filled with Swiss meringue butter cream. The tiers are covered with white marzipan, glazed with fondant, dotted with royal icing and then accented with fresh flowers and satin ribbon.

Cheryl Kleinman, a New York caterer and food stylist, contributed 18 special cakes ranging from daring and flamboyant styling to demure. She presents imaginative techniques with marzipan, as in her Miami casual cake, a pistachio cake filled and frosted with pale green butter cream and whimsically gilded with brightly colored marzipan shapes.

Similarly, Kleinman’s Mardi Gras rum cake features a pecan-rum genoise that’s filled with praline butter cream, frosted with rum butter cream and effectively decorated with a marzipan mask and confetti. The mask is made by molding gold-tinted marzipan over a traditional Halloween mask, which is then allowed to dry for two days before use. For the Christmas holidays, Kleinman offers two attractive creations that are out of the ordinary: white chocolate buche de Noel with white chocolate curls sprinkled with powdered sugar, and a shimmering Christmas gold cake.

Children’s Cakes

Specializing in children’s cakes, Lisa Cates and Janet Ross, owners of American Pie Bakery in Fairfield, Conn., shared their recipes for the giant’s cupcake and the enchanted flowerpot, both made from a chocolate cake base.

Of 50 cakes in the cookbook, about half of them came from Stacey, including the wonderfully scrumptious Rich Pistachio Cake given here. Interesting to note for the holidays were her brandied Christmas fruitcake surrounded with dried fruit and nuts and chocolate fireworks decorated with chocolate stars and strands. For a light dessert, her summer fruit roulade is genoise flavored with framboise, filled with sweetened creme fraiche and seasonal fruits then rolled and frosted with creme fraiche.

The first chapter of “Pretty Cakes” covers the dos and don’ts of successful baking, including ingredients, equipment and techniques. For cooks who have difficulty in preparing a cake for frosting, the chapter has illustrations covering slicing a cake into layers, changing a cake’s shape to give a smooth frosting finish and decorating with the pastry tubes.

Building Blocks

Chapter two provides the basic cakes, fillings and frostings, the “building blocks” from which all other special cakes are made. The remaining cake recipes are organized into seven categories: spring, summer, fall and winter; cakes for adult and juvenile birthdays, cakes for holidays and special occasions and finally, wedding, anniversary and shower cakes.

Here is the Rich Pistachio Cake, a chocolate layer cake filled with ganache and ground pistachios, frosted with ganache and decorated with whole pistachios.

RICH PISTACHIO CAKE

(“Pretty Cakes, the Art of Cake Decorating”)

1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar

3/4 cup milk, at room temperature (or buttermilk, but omit lemon juice)

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

3/4 cup boiling water

3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

3 eggs, at room temperature

2 1/4 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 pound unsalted pistachios

Ganache

Prepare chocolate cake layers 1 day ahead. Butter and flour 2 (8-inch) round layer cake pans. Add lemon juice to milk to sour it. Add vanilla. Place chocolate in bowl and pour boiling water over it. Stir until chocolate has melted and allow to cool.

Cream butter at high speed in electric mixer until pale and smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Gradually add sugar, beating at medium speed until mixture is light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, blending thoroughly and scraping sides and bottom of bowl after each addition with rubber spatula. Add melted chocolate and mix just until blended.

Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder. With mixer on low speed, add sifted dry ingredients to butter mixture, a third at a time, alternating with milk. Begin and end with dry ingredients. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl frequently and mix only until blended after each addition.

Pour mixture into prepared pans. Bake at 350 degrees 20 to 25 minutes until wood pick inserted in center comes out clean. Place pans on wire racks until cakes are slightly warm. Remove from pans and allow to cool completely on racks.

Shell and grind 2 ounces pistachios in nut grinder or food processor. Prepare Ganache several hours before assembly.

When ready to assemble, whip Ganache until it lightens in color and is thick enough to spread. Place 1 cake layer on flat serving plate or cardboard round. With metal spatula, spread about 1/2 cup Ganache over cake.

Sprinkle with ground pistachios. Position second cake layer on top. Smooth any Ganache that may have seeped out between layers and refrigerate cake until filling sets, 15 to 30 minutes.

If Ganache has hardened, rewhip in electric mixer with paddle attachment. Frost cake with half of remaining Ganache, beginning with sides and ending with top. Refrigerate cake again 15 to 20 minutes. Frost cake again. (To give smooth finish, use metal spatula that has been warmed in hot water, then dried.)

Reserve 18 to 20 pistachios in their shells. Shell remaining nuts and set aside several whole ones. Coarsely chop most of nuts and finely chop rest. Decorate cake by gently pressing coarsely chopped and whole pistachios around base and top. Pull apart some of shells and leave others nearly closed. Garnish with random clusters of unshelled nuts on pistachio border, at base of cake and on top. Sprinkle with remaining finely ground pistachios.

Ganache

1 pound semisweet chocolate

1 cup whipping cream

1/4 cup favorite liqueur or to taste, optional

Chop chocolate into matchstick-size pieces and place in mixing bowl. Bring cream to boil and immediately pour onto chopped chocolate. Stir until smooth and strain through medium sieve. Stir in liqueur. Cool to room temperature. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

Note: When warm, Ganache is thin enough to pour over cake and will remain dark and shiny. When cooled, beat with electric mixer until light and thick, but use immediately or it will become solid. However, it may be beaten again to soften it, if necessary.