Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts

by Maida Heatter

Gathers recipes for cakes, cookies, pastries, crepes, blintzes, popovers, cream puffs, puff pastry, pies, cheesecakes, ice creams, and souffles.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction

560 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 1974

About the author

Maida Heatter was an American pastry chef and cookbook author who specialized in baking and desserts. Heatter's cookbooks have been the recipient of three James Beard Foundation Awards, and she herself was inducted into the Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America in 1988. She was also inducted into the Chocolatier Magazine Hall of Fame.

Reviews

[Rose Kemps · Rating 5 out of 5]

as a young bride I cooked my way through this book cover to cover-- I call her the Julia Childs of sweets, such is the attention to detail to ingredients, shapes,
no compromise for her...go find a special kind of parchment paper in a snowy night upstate New York

[Ferdinand Capitulo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterworks of baking from the Queen of Desserts. I love the stories and quips Maida writes. She cover a huge range of different desserts from torts, cakes, cookies, pastries, and frozen desserts. She is mostly an expert on all things cakes and cookies, but her other fairs is good as well.

Made Queens Mother’s cake. Chocolaty to the extreme and very decadent.

The most unusually is the Squid, a fried cookie.

Tons of great idea and I wish I had time to do them all.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough recipes for classic desserts and cookies.

[Ahmad Mathbot]

😍

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maida Heatter baking books are excellent and are the ones I suggest when asked by people looking for a good baking book. She teaches one how to bake and her recipes are delicious.

[Dray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic and well experienced recipes on a broad range of desserts. Perhaps the best endorsement I can give is that I bought a copy for my limited space library.

[Joelen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me as a birthday gift from a special friend. My friend has shared with me some amazing desserts each month for the past year at my dinner parties. Each dessert she brought was a recipe made from this book, so I'm so grateful for her thoughtful gift. The book I have is the older version from 1974 making it even more special. I seriously don't need any other dessert cookbook because this book has it all.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book, and was lucky to get a copy of it from my library's book sale. Everything that I've made so far (Italian pine nut macaroons, some coffee chocolate cookies that I can't remember the name of, West coast brownies) has been delicious. The macaroons are some of my all time favorite cookies, and my friend couldn't stop raving about those coffee chocolate cookies. There aren't any pictures on the inside; however, the covers depict the desserts in all their glory.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that introduced me to cakes made with spring form pans. I will love Maida Heatter forever for that alone.

Favorite recipes? The Queen Mother's Cake and Raspberry Strawberry Bavarian.

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal favorites: chocolate roll, pecan squares,brownies. I am dying to try the merangue mushrooms

[Alexis]

Maida Heatters Book of Great Desserts by Maida Heatter (1999)

[Amy Madnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of her books. The many brownie recipes are all wonderful as are the pound cake and bunt cake recipes.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.