Baking a cake or a batch of cookies is not an activity that most of us find to be intimidating, but making candies from scratch at home is often perceived as something difficult to do and outside the reach of many home cooks. There are exceptions to this, but they are limited to just a small handful of dishes, such as fudge. Sugar Baby: Confections, Candies, Cakes & Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Sugar is a cookbook dedicated to these sugary treats and is filled with recipes that make them accessible even to cooks who have never tried making candy at home – and just might leave you with a big sweet tooth after reading it.
The cookbook is filled with over 100 recipes for sweet treats and is packed with beautiful photos of most of them. The book is organized by sugar cooking stage, from simple dissolve to hard crack and working your way through the chapters as they are presented (while certainly not required to use the book) is a great way to get a well-rounded introduction to working with sugar, from almond toffee to vanilla nougat. That recipes are not exclusively for candy. There are quite a few recipes for cakes, custards and even yeasted breads, but these recipes are often accompanied by cooked sugar frostings or toppings that finish them off just perfectly and help to tie the book together.
The most appealing thing about this book – aside from the photos, which will tempt you right from the start – is that it offers a lot of recipes that you won’t see in every other cookbook. It is written in a light and friendly way that makes the book seem just as cheerful as the candies that grace its pages. You may not find yourself quitting your day job to open a candy store with this as your only reference, but it is a safe bet that you are going to add some delicious and surprisingly easy to make sweet treats to your repertoire after reading through Sugar Baby.
stacy
May 2, 2011FYI – Gesine Bullock-Prado is Sandra Bullock’s sister, who is a partner in Sandra’s restaurant, Bess Bistro, in Austin. I’ve already added this book to my list, in case any of those recipes are the ones from the restaurant.
Elaine M
January 23, 2012I’ve tried 3 recipes from this book, and all have been somewhat disappointing. (I’m not a novice cook). To me, three strikes and it’s out. so disappointed that I actually bought this (at a used book store-apparently someone else got rid of it fairly quickly).