Best of the Pillsbury Bake-off Desserts

Posted by Margalit

My 14 year old daughter is learning to be a fairly good baker. She has several of her own cookbooks that she's picked out, and she's becoming a bit of an expert on the decoration of cupcakes. Her mushroom cupcakes are a classic in our household!

At the library the other day she took out The Best of the Bake-off Desserts, a short cookbook about the winning Pillsbury bake-off recipes over the last 60 or so years. The book begins with a short overlook of the types of recipes from each decade from 1950 through the 2000's, which is quite the history of American baking. The book itself contains 6 chapters of winning recipes throughout the entire contest. The reason my daughter liked the book is not that she's familiar with the contest. She's never heard of it before. She likes it because it takes packaged Pillsbury products and builds desserts around them. In other words, easy recipes for teenage kids to make and eat in a big hurry. Perfect fare for the teenager!

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Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off Desserts gives you more than 100 prizewinning recipes so you can re-create these dazzling desserts in your own kitchen. From 1957's French Silk Chocolate Pie that's now an American icon, to the Tunnel of Fudge Cake that became a household name in 1966, to the Oats 'n Honey Granola Pie that took home the $1 million Grand Prize in 2004, these recipes are sure to win top honors from your friends and family. The book starts out with cakes and tortes, then moves into pies and tarts, cheesecakes and puddings, cobbler and crisps, pastries, and other desserts. Just looking at the table on contents screams "oh, this looks GOOD". As my daughter thumbed through the pages, she was just about drooling over the different recipe titles. Taffy Apple Pound Cake, Caramel Between Fudge Cake, Lemon Platinum Cake, Orange Kiss Me Cake, Key Lime Creme Torte... the child was salivating! And who wouldn't?

The book has many full page photographs of the entries, but every recipe does not have a photo. I like to know what my desserts are supposed to look like, so I think I would stick to the recipes with photos to start.

Each recipe is on a separate page, with the ingredients clearly spelled out, and the directions nicely formatted and easy to follow. This book was well planned for cooks less familiar with baking, as well as the more experienced baker. Because they include a packaged product in the recipes, there is less measuring, meaning less chance for a novice baker to make a mistake. Unfortunately, some of the recipes call for packaged cake mixes and other items that are no longer available. For example, the Key Lime Creme Torte, the first cake we wanted to try, used a yellow cake mix with pudding, but we couldn't find that at either of our local grocery stores. I remember back in 1992, when this recipe won the contest, that you could buy boxes cakes with pudding. Now, it's hard to even find boxed mixes anymore.

If you are a novice baker, or have teenagers that are learning to bake, this is a great book to add to your collection. Even if you have to doctor the recipes to use ingredients currently available in stores, you can quickly make some very fancy looking desserts in a modicom of time. Who can complain about that?

TAGS: Best Of The Bakeoff Desserts, Cookbook, Pillsbury Bakeoff
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[ READER COMMENTS ]

1

Lesli said:

Margalit - Looks like your daughter is following in your footsteps!!! I love cupcakes, and these look yummy!

- Lesli
www.forks.ca
www.superwoman.ca

Posted at 03:54 PM, on July 21 2007

Best of the Pillsbury Bake-off Desserts

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