Lots of great recipes that don't have icky ingredients and great suggestions on how to modify your own recipes.

This book is fabulous. If I hadn't seen in the title that it was lower in fat and better for you I would have thought the desserts were from the full fat foods. These were easy and tasty.

This book is great! As a co-recipe developer on this book I am proud to say that i had a part in the fantastic recipes. Try the pecan cookies or the german chocolate cake. The Orange Bread pudding with sauce is so rich you will need a glass of milk. I have been teaching "fattening" pastry classes for years and this year I replaced a few of the recipes with these and people do not even know. Try it on your family!

This cookbook is a wonderful compilation of cakes and slices (bars)that are not too complicated and are based on simple and wholesome ingredients. No matter what continent you cook on, everything you need to know to adapt the recipes is included.

Since it was purchased this book has been most useful in our family catering business, out of over 45 cook books we have this is the most used. The variety and selections are excellent and everyone is almost guaranteed flop proof.A must for any baker or lover of deserts. Incrediblely luxurious Swiss rolls, decadent chocolate cakes,sunny coconut and bananna and the best ever fruit cake selection are just a few of many sections. There are even a sections on non allergic and healthly cakes.Buy it now and kiss those packaged cake-mixes goodbye.

This book saves the day, when you are expecting guests or organising an afternoon tea for friends. Some recipies are fast and faboulous to make, some are more complicted but worth the effort. Very creative.

This cookbook would have been much better with more pictures. As it is, only a few appear in the center of the cookbook. It would also have been better with fewer cookie recipes.

I like this "little" baking book very much. It is an entire book dedicated to the magic art of petit-fours, or small, french, bite-sized bits of desserts and sweets. There are some books on the subject, mostly professional. However, here is a simple, easy to follow book ideal for the home baker to make these wonderful little things.

The author has been a successful caterer for many years. She knows what is easy to make, and are also very popular things that people just love. Here is a collection of those recipes that meet both requirements. It is a baking book you will probably use very often. Be warned, however, that these wonderful little gems are very labor intensive. You will be slaving over the proverbial hot stove for rather long perions of time per recipe. Multiply that by three or four recipes, and it all adds up to a very long time. Fortunately, the author supplies proven, time-saving organizational tips in the last chapter. I also note that her hints and suggestions for decoration can be skimpy at times; decorating things this small is not an easy task.

My complaints are mostly organizational. Several basics, like cake or crust recipes, are used in multiple recipes, but are buried in the middle of chapters or embedded in one particular recipe. These should always be the first recipe in the relevant chapter on their own, or given a separate chapter by themselves. Also helpful would be a cross reference chart, so that one glance will tell you how many different petit-fours you can make with the same basic cake or crust recipe. It does have some charts at the end, but these are not organized by the base recipe. There are some pictures, and each one tells you what page the recipe is on; however, the reverse is not true: a recipe may have a picture, but you won't know it unless you check the pictures each time.

As a collector of cookbooks and culinary instructor, I can say this is one of my favorite books. I recently made some of the recipes for a class: Dominoes and Polka Dots (the almond biscuit is outstanding!). This is one of the few miniature cookbooks I have found and a must for all pastry lovers.

I was looking forward to getting this book.I was disappointed that it has alot of the same cakes and ideas that several of my other books already have.If you don't have any books on fondant or only have a couple, then i would suggest getting this book.It has lots of picture's & does a good job on explaining what to do.

This is a fabulous cookbook! After doing Wilton-style decorating for years, the fondant recipes in this book are very creative and will earn ooos and ahhs from others. I've made six or seven of the cakes in this book and all turned out wonderful- they are time consuming but aren't really difficult- they just require patience. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to cook artisically. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who rarely bakes and just wants a quick, simple cake.

I just recieved this book about a month ago, and how amazed I was. There are so many wonderful ideas in this book. It's a must for any cake decorator to have in there collection! It has full, easy to follow, color page instructions for each of the cakes, including recipes for cakes and icings used. There's a Volts Wagen cake that they shaped out of regular square cake. Awesome! The barbie cake is so beautiful, any little girl would fall in love with it. I could keep going on and on. I totally recommend this book, and hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

The zucchini brownie recipe is quick and yummy! I've made several other recipes in this book, too. They're fun and real conversation starters - just don't tell 'em what's in it until after they start eating! Here's why I like the book: Great ideas, easy recipes, easy-to-ingredients. I recently made the brownies and the kids ate them up!

I enjoy cooking and trying new things. It is simply hard to believe the wonderous recipes that are presented in this book. We have all heard about the importance of vegetables, and this book gives a new way to "be good to yourself" while enjoying something that tastes wonderful. These desserts taste "too good to be true."

The experts are constantly telling us that we need more vegetables in our diet, but when the time comes to tell us *how* to increase our vegetable intake, they always seem short on appealing ideas. No longer! These authors saw the problem and came up with a solution... or, rather, more than a hundred solutions: vegetable desserts! This is creative cooking at its best. The recipes range from the standard use of vegetables in desserts (like Rhubarb Crunch and Maple Sweet Potato Pie) to the downright unusual (like the Kraut Crisps or the beet-based Mystery Pie). The recipes are all fully analyzed for nutritiional content, and many of them are surprisingly healthy, like the Pumpkin Tofu Pie (which, believe it or not, is the best pumpkin pie I've ever had!). There is also a lot of information about cooking and vegetables in general. This book is great for parents, vegetable fans, and anyone else who has a sweet tooth but cares about what they eat.

The story takes place in the summer in Michigan on a farm. It is summer storm season and the grandmother has her grandaughter over. The grandaughter is afraid of thunder, so the grandmother bakes a cake to take away her fears. They quickly got all the ingredients and made the cake. If you make the cake before the storm hits, you made thunder cake. I highly recommend this book for children 4 and up. This is a humorous book by Patricia Polacco.
Eric C.

A Grandma and little girl were together. There was about to be a thunder storm and the little girl was afraid of thunder. Together they made a thunder cake. If they didn't finish in time it wouldn't be a real thunder cake. I recommend this book to 1st graders. Joy G.

This story was really cute! My step-sister loved this book and when we made the cake, everyone gobbled it up, despite the interesting secret ingredient! Everyone always loves this yummy cake, and this cute story!

I wrote a review for Sugar Roses (a book I said is OUTSTANDING) and they've put that review onto this book as well (Sugar Flowers for All Seasons). I've noticed they duplicated the reviews from others too. I have not looked Sugar Flowers for All Seasons so I can't say one way or the other if it's any good, (although considering the author, it's probably great).

It was nice to see a book with more than just roses and by more than one artist. There are some neat ideas with good instructions. I have only been making sugar flowers for about 7 years and was glad to see a few new ideas.

This book is not only EXQUISITE to look at, but very detailed in its instruction. Since it is mainly roses, you get more varieties, which I find a tremendous bonus, since most cakes only display your basic white, red or pink rose. The book is separated into luxurious flower arrangements (that highlight a certain variety of rose) and the following pages tell you in detail how to create that rose, the other plants in the arrangement, and to assemble. All of the pages, including the ones of directions, are in lush full color photographs, and laid out as beautifully as the incomparable flower arrangements. Worth EVERY penny.

This is a nice little booklet, with a diversity of cheesecake recipes in it. There are no hard to find ingredients listed, and directions are clear for everyone to understand. No fancy techniques needed. It's a small sized book with only recipes, no pictures or coffee table quality intentions. The only purpose is obviously to list recipes that will accomodate every taste.

This little book may seem at first very plain... no colorful pictures inside, no glossy pages. But it does what you want a cheesecake cookbook to do: it gives you 50 mouth-watering recipes, plus 17 extra recipes from "special places" such as The Plaza Hotel and The Regent Beverly Wilshire (all of which are simple enough for the average baker to handle).

The lack of pictures is a plus for me. I don't find myself stressing over whether or not my finished product looks as perfect as the one in the photo, as I do with other cheesecake cookbooks with pictures.

The book has yet another bonus: instructions on how to avoid cracks forming in the cheesecake as it bakes, how to give a cheesecake away without giving away the bottom of your springform pan, and how to slice the cheesecake as perfectly as restaurants do.

Overall, a great buy.

This is a great book.Do you love cheesecake? Just read it! I sure you never too late.I have recoommended it to all feel in love with this great book. Trust me, you can't too late for this book.

Not only have I bought this book - I actually tried a few recipes.

I must say that I was sooooo deeply disappointed because some of the recipes were just not "it" - especially after having such high hopes with this title.

On the positive side, I will say that the graphics and the decorating ideas are great - you will just need to use your own recipes for cakes (at least the ones I tried).

I became interested in cake decorating and found this wonderful book. It gives step by step directions for baking and decorating a wide variety of cakes (and cupcakes) for all sorts of occasions and holidays. It also provides time-saving tips for when you don't have time to make cakes and frostings from scratch. I had no experience at creating pretty cakes before but now I can't wait for an occasion to make one.

I love this book, if you are first time cake decorator, this will help you with not only how to use the equipment, but give you recipes as well. Good book for the begginer and the advanced.

What a disappointment to find out that this book is out of print. It is refreshing to find a book that diverses from the usual Purim tales about Haman or Purim costumes. This story can be used in many circumstances in which a person can overcome adversity to contribute positively in the community around them. Herschel is blind, but finds other ways to be productive in a world that has him labeled. My students were totally spellbound as I read to them. Great story.

I was disappointed to see that this book is out of print and hard to get. I read it to a group of children last week that were totally spellbound from the beginning to the end. It is difficult to find Purim books that deviate from the traditional "Esther and Haman" story of the Megillah. This book took a totally different angle, focusing on human worth. The little boy in this story made his disability (blindness) secondary, and showed his town (and the reader) that a disability is only one if viewed as such. He found other ways of contributing to his community. Find this one if you can.

Hershel was a bit of a teivele (devil). He was the only boy in his village who could not see, but that did not stop him from making mischief, as boys will do.

He behaved well in school, but grew bored when the others practiced their writing; that was when he pulled a frog from his pocket and let it loose to revel in hearing the teacher, Reb Shimmel, jump up and down and dance around the frog.

He caught his frogs at the river, his favorite place in the town. There he had frogs, water, and friends--and mud to play in besides, He loved building tunnels and mountains in the smooth cool mud, and often came home dirty.

His mother Basha would scold him for getting so dirty, for it made more work on top of all she had to do to keep them clothed and fed since Hershel's father had died.

This year when Purim came, he wanted more than anything to help his mother make the Hamantashen--shaped like Haman's hat--the cakes that they would carry from house to house as sweet gifts to remember the joyful victory of good over evil so long ago in Shushan. His mother told him that to help, a person needed eyes.

Hershel climbed into bed, said the Shema, and whispered his prayer to God, to be able to really help his mother. That night he dreamed of an angel descending on a silver ladder, who bent and spoke to him. "Make what you see," she told him. "But I don't see," he protested. "The doctor from Kotsk said I shall never see again."

When Hershel awoke the next day, he told his mother the story from his dream, and determined to help her shape the Purim cookies that year--by feeling.

Guidelines prevent me from telling precisely what happened in the last 12 pages of this story--but it's quite a tale. And, as the song says, Purim was "a happy holiday, What a happy holiday!"

The book also includes a two-page summary of the Story of Esther and a recipe for Hamantashen. Alyssa A. Lappen