Desserts For Dummies

You're no dummy to salivate at the thought of Baked Chocolate Pillows, Fallen Chocolate Soufflé, or Mom's Apple Pie. Following the easy, breezy format of the Dummies series, pastry chef Bill Yosses, who spent a decade at the four-star Bouley Restaurant in New York City, takes you through these recipes and 130 more in Desserts for Dummies. The book is cowritten by Bryan Miller, once the restaurant critic for the New York Times. The 16 pages of color photographs in this book are alluring, but a few more illustrations in black and white would help, particularly accompanying the recipes for making puff pastry and strudel dough. You'll dive easily into recipes such as Toasted Coconut Frozen Soufflé and English Trifle, which is made from scratch starting with instructions for sponge cake. Yosses and Miller also offer information on ingredients and techniques to enlarge your repertoire and improve your skills. Dessert making is the most precise form of cooking, and Desserts for Dummies is appropriately less frantic and more direct than other volumes in the Dummies cooking series.