If you’ve pulled dessert duty for an upcoming picnic or back-yard barbecue, one of these books may offer inspiration.
– “Retro Desserts” (Morrow, $27), by Wayne Harley Brachman, salutes “Totally Hip, Updated Classic Desserts” with dozens of recipes from the ’40s to ’70s, healthy dollops of cooking advice, lots of playful trivia, and great, kitschy graphics and photos. “Classic,” for Brachman’s purposes here, applies to those desserts that rekindle images of Technicolor, tiki rooms and the Cleavers-ambrosia, bananas Foster and strawberries Romanoff (recipe below) are included, but our favorite titles were ones we had never heard of: Crazy Craters of the Moon Cake with Moonrock Topping (translation: chocolate cake filled with mini-marshmallows) and roast suckling pineapple (you need a grill, a pineapple and a cup of maple syrup).
– “Classic” adopts a more serious but equally appealing meaning in the recently reissued “Classic Home Desserts” (Houghton Mifflin, $35), by Richard Sax. The author, who died in 1995, won a James Beard Award and Julia Child Cookbook Award in 1994 for this thorough, elegantly written guide to 350 “heirloom and contemporary recipes from around the world.” Humble favorites such as brownies, pies and cobblers rub elbows with fancier fare, such as cranberry-raspberry tart pastiche and chocolate chiffon loaf cake. Ethnic favorites (Polish honey cake, toasted benne wafers) and regional classics (Tennessee moonshine cookies, St. Louis gooey butter cake) are sprinkled throughout every chapter. Sax is a good teacher, offering lessons in both baking and food history.
– A more mainstream take on dessert can be found in “The Bake Sale Cookbook” (Fireside, $15), by Sally Sampson, who keeps the focus on familiar favorites-brownies, zucchini bread, oatmeal raisin cookies. Despite the name, recipes produce standard yields (hey, you can always double them). It would be a good book for young or beginning cooks, who can learn the basics with goodies that will produce appetizing results.
– Worth a mention for its visual impact alone is “Colette’s Birthday Cakes” (Little, Brown, $34.95). Cake decorator Colette Peters presents a variety of elaborate cakes–so elaborate, in fact, that this book is really for folks with experience. Recipes and instructions on building these works of art are included. Still, for a coffee-table book experience, you’ll marvel at her creations, such as the three-tiered “Deep Blue Sea” cake, pictured on the book’s cover.
STRAWBERRIES ROMANOFF
We tried and loved this easy, rich dessert:
Slice 2 pints washed, stemmed strawberries. Mix 2/3 of the strawberries with 1/4 cup each sugar and orange liqueur in large bowl. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. Put 1 pint vanilla ice cream in refrigerator to soften. Put 1 cup whipping cream and half of the macerated strawberries in cold mixing bowl. Whip to soft peaks using electric mixer, about 2 minutes. Fold in ice cream. Distribute the cream among 8 chilled bowls. Mix remaining plain sliced berries with remaining macerated berries; place on top of cream.
— Adapted from “Retro Desserts”
