Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt

By Leslie F. Miller

Book Overview

Few creations are more associated with joy or more symbolic of the sweet life than cake. After all, it is so much more than dessert.As a book about cake would demand, this one is a multilayered, amply frosted, delicious concoction with a slice (or more) for everyone.Let Me Eat Cakeis not a book about baking cake, but about eating it.Author Leslie F. Miller embarks on a journey (not a journey cake, although it's in there) into the moist white underbelly of the cake world. She visits factories and local bakeries and wedding cake boutiques. She interviews famous chefs like Duff Goldman of Food Network'sAce of Cakesand less famous ones like Roland Winbeckler, who sculpts life-size human figures out of hundreds of pounds of pound cake and buttercream frosting. She takes decorating classes, shares recipes, and samples the best cakes and the worst.The book is held together by the hero on a quest, one that traces cake history and tradition. If we were to bake a cake to celebrate the birth of cake (cake is an Old Norse word, first used around 1230), it is hard to say how many candles would go on top. Though the meaning of the word (originally "lump of something"), not to mention our expectations of its ingredients, has changed over time, we now celebrate cake as the coming together of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, and a pinch of salt.And what a celebration. Baking a cake is hard work, but tasting it is pure pleasure. So put on some elastic-waist pants and grab a fork.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416588736
• ISBN13: 9781416588733
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 323 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Delicious Book

In her debut book, Baltimore's Leslie F Miller, a self-proclaimed lover of cake, takes us on a wild ride concerning all things cake. Not a cookbook, but a love poem to cake, Let Me Eat Cake conveys Miller's intensely personal relationship to cake, from her earliest days baking (and eating) to her experiences with some famous bakers (including Duff Goldman and Warren Brown). Along the way she dishes some fabulously entertaining gossip, sets us straight on the origin of the expression "let them eat cake," and unravels the mysteries of The Today Show's wedding cake competition. The chapter in which she takes cake decorating classes is itself worth the price of the book - it delivers such acutely painful details of her attempts and failures at making buttercream roses that you will be cheering for her as though you were watching an Olympics competition. And then there's the recipe for her grandmother's sour cream pound cake......

A Must Read!

A wonderful celebration of family and food. I would venture to guess that everyone on the planet has at least one "cake memory" and you will bask in the glow of that memory while enjoying this book. Leslie Miller truly captures the essence of comfort food. I laughed out loud at her wit and cried reveling the memory of my grandmother's baking. You can't miss with this one!

What's not to love about cake?

Everybody loves cake, whether it's the warm yellow fluffy insides, or the milk chocolate frosting your mom slathered all over the first birthday cake you can remember. There's something nostalgic and comforting about it, and that's what makes Miller's new book so gratifying. Personally, I don't have a lot of great childhood memories, but I do remember the birthday cakes my mother made, and those are memories I hold dear. "Let Me Eat Cake" channeled me right back to those days, sneaking tastes of frosting from the chipped glass plate, taking awful pictures of the Union-Jack cake she made when I was a teenager obsessed with The Who. Miller's book follows a similar personal journey, and that's why I loved it. From her stories about her grandmother, to her own hilarious efforts to bake and decorate cakes, her love -- not just for cake but for all it represents -- is patently obvious. This is what makes nonfiction so eminently readable: the writer's passion. Her quick-witted honesty and laugh-out-loud humor reminded me of Mary Roach's "Stiff," and I for one can't wait to see what Miller does next.

A Delightfully Sweet Addiction

This book was everything the title said it would be and much more. It was truly a celebration of cake. Leslie F. Miller went on a quest to introduce readers to not just her love of cake, but her true passion for it. And she taught us a thing or two about the history of the food and its traditions, as well. We were brought into factories and cake boutiques, we went along when she attended decorating class and interviewed the Ace of Cakes, Duff Goldman. She shared recipes and also shared stories of baking cakes in her own kitchen, whether they were beautiful, or required a sign saying they were ugly but tasted good. I found myself laughing often and smiling much throughout the book. As the author states in her preface, "I set out to write a layered cake full of a little bit of this and that: some history for those who need to know, some folklore for flavor, some narrative. Every bite has a little bit of something, including nuts. And like cake, this book is light and fluffy." It's a wonderful romp through the sweet land of pastry. I certainly could use a slice right now. And every time Ms. Miller mentioned running her finger along the edge of the cake down along the plate to swoop up a little of the frosting when nobody was looking, I have to admit I had the urge to run to the County Market down the street and see what they had on bakery shelves.

A Wonderful Read!

This wonderful book was written by the very creative and multitalented Leslie Miller. It is a funny, educational, and plain old wonderful read. I both laughed out loud and snorted coffee out my nose while reading the book. I learned a ton about cake and enjoyed myself doing it. Miller is an amazing story teller. You can't go wrong with this book.