Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake
150 Recipes from Simple to Sublime

By Michele Urvater

"Michele Urvater has now made every Americans favorite dessert, chocolate cake, as fun to make as it is to eat. The recipes are easy to follow and yield excellent results."—Nick Malgieri, author of Cookies Unlimited

"The book itself looks good enough to eat. Michele Urvater writes recipes that really work, which is only one of the many reasons that will make you glad she has chosen to share this special chocolate cake collection."—Lora Brody, author of Basic Baking

Chocolate cake...the words themselves are enough to make anyone's mouth water, picturing luscious desserts that are guaranteed to satisfy the most discerning sweet tooth. Now, from bestselling cookbook author Michele Urvater comes the definitive volume on the subject, Chocolate Cake: 150 Recipes from Simple to Sublime, a celebration of America's favorite dessert in every imaginable form, this book will live up to every chocolate lover's richest fantasies.

There is something for everyone in Chocolate Cake, the most comprehensive collection of chocolate cake recipes ever put together in one volume. Urvater, whose experiences have ranged from hosting The Food Network's Monday to Friday show to being a corporate dining room chef, prepares would-be bakers with a wealth of information on the ingredients, equipment, and techniques needed to produce the most delectable desserts. Then she delves into the recipes themselves, divided into sections of Plain and Easy Batter Cakes; Cheesecakes; Butter and Shortened Cakes; Layer Cakes; Foam Cakes; Biscuit Cakes; Flourless Cakes; and Special, Individual, and Refrigerated Cakes.

The 'Icing on the Cake' includes recipes for Frostings, Buttercreams, Icings, Fillings, and Glazes; and the finishing touch is a chapter on Decorative Techniques that are guaranteed to make cakes look as good as they taste.

Chocolate Cake spans the globe to include recipes from diverse countries and cultures, such as the classic French chocolate-and-almond Reine de Saba; the Austrian inspired Walnut Chocolate Torte; a Hungarian confection called Rigo Jancsi, consisting of layers of sponge cake sandwiching a thick layer of whipped cream; and that all-American classic, Classic Devil's Food Layer Cake with Fudge Frosting. Urvater's recipes are as simple as the Wacky Chocolate Cake, in which the ingredients are mixed directly in the baking pan, to the Opera Cake, a fantasy confection consisting of cake layers alternating with layers of chocolate filling and coffee buttercream and glazed with chocolate. and each recipe is coded with a degree of difficulty so that everyone from the novice baker to the professional chef will be able to achieve success-and chocolate gratification.

Classic, comprehensive, and utterly delicious, Chocolate Cake is destined to become the baking volume for every baker's library for generations to come.

About the Author

Michele Urvater is the author of the bestselling "Monday to Friday" cookbook series and the former host of the Food Network's program of the same name. A baking and culinary graduate of New York City Technical College, she began her career sharing a single chef job with two other women in a small restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She has also worked as a chef in a private corporate dining room and has taught cooking classes before beginning her second career as a cookbook writer. Her most recent career began just a few years ago, when she fell in love with the pastry arts and returned to school to earn a diploma as a pastry chef from the French Culinary Institute. She currently lives with her family in New York City.

Buy the Book!

Chocolate Cake:
150 Recipes from Simple to Sublime
By Michele Urvater
Broadway Books, October 2001
Hardback, $35.00
Color photographs
ISBN: 0-7679-0607-1
Information provided by the publisher.