If you are a beginning baker, this book offers an accessible introduction to essential baking ingredients, equipment, and techniques as well as detailed, step-by-step recipes that make it easy to prepare even the trickiest baked goods. If you are already an accomplished baker, it offers many sophisticated and unusual recipes that will help you refine your knowledge and skills.

The book features a distinctive organization based on six key baking ingredients, from fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and chocolate to dairy products, spices and herbs, and coffee, tea, and liqueurs. Select an ingredient or flavor you love, and you'll find many delicious ways to incorporate it into your baking.

Bloom's recipes encompass every type of baking. You'll find spectacular versions of familiar favorites - Cherry Pie, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, and Double Peanut Butter Cookies - as well as intriguing variations and extravagant indulgences, including Coconut Biscotti, Lemon Verbena and Walnut Tea Cake, and Dark Chocolate Creme Brulee. Her meticulous recipes specify essential gear, offer tips on streamlining the recipe and storing the finished dish, and provide advice on varying ingredients and adding panache.

With in-depth guidance on techniques and ingredients, 225 standout recipes, variations and embellishments for almost every dish, and 32 pages of striking full-color photographs, The Essential Baker is truly the only baking book you'll ever need.

"Bloom, the author of eight cookbooks whose work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food + Wine, adopts an unusual approach in this exhaustive and tantalizing look at baking. Instead of categorizing recipes by food type, she organizes them by primary ingredient — a useful approach for the baker with a craving or surplus of one ingredient. Sections include fruits and vegetables; nuts and seeds; chocolate; dairy products; spices and herbs; and coffee, tea, liqueurs and spirits. The recipes themselves are uniquely formatted in a table layout that lists the ingredients across from their steps to help with organization. Bloom includes a list of equipment needed for the dish along with instructions on storage, streamlining, altering the recipe and recovering from mishaps. The collection covers the gamut with 225 recipes, including such delectable gems as Pear and Walnut Layer Cake with Maple — Cream Cheese Icing; Coconut Biscotti; and Cranberry Nut Tea Loaf. Other highlights range from Chocolate Chip Cookies and Macadamia Nut Blondies to Malted Milk Chocolate Cheesecake and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Bloom also provides valuable instruction in sections on essential ingredients, equipment and supplies, and techniques. 32 full-color photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Carole Bloom blends years of baking experience with a reassuring and personal voice. The beginning baker will find everything needed to create fabulous desserts successfully, and the experienced baker will find dozens of enticing new recipes. The Essential Baker is brilliantly organized by key ingredient, with generous tips and hints to encourage creativity. This is a wonderful addition to any baker's library and a perfect first book for a new baker."

— Alice Medrich author of Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate

"Want to learn to bake? Buy just one book— this one. Having The Essential Baker is like having a lifetime of baking experience and teaching in your kitchen. Enough information and recipes to last any baker a lifetime."

— Gale Gand Executive Pastry Chef and partner of Tru, Host of the Food Network's Sweet Dreams, and author of Chocolate & Vanilla

"An exhaustive and tantalizing look at baking. . . . Delectable."

— Publishers Weekly, starred review

The only book home bakers need to master the art of baking

Carole Bloom puts her vast knowledge and experience as a pastry chef, teacher, and cookbook author into this comprehensive baking guide. The book features basic instruction on techniques, ingredients, and equipment, plus a collection of delicious, foolproof recipes. The recipes are arranged in chapters devoted to baking with specific ingredients, such as chocolate, fruit, nuts, herbs, and coffee. They include information that helps guarantee success, with tips on essential gear (equipment and utensils) and technique (including what to do if something goes wrong).

Carole Bloom (Carlsbad, CA) is the author of seven books, including Chocolate Lover’ s Cookbook For Dummies (0-7645-5466-2). Her recipes and articles have been featured in Bon Appé tit, Gourmet, and other publications, and her television appearances include the Today show and CNN.