A BRITISH APPROACH TO FRENCH PASTRY
Customer Rating: 
There is something 'different' when a british pastry chef writes a pastry book. It is maybe the marriage of Anglosaxon conservatism and tradition with French flair and influences in pastry that makes the British pastry chef to just create!
This book continues the line of good British pastry books like the ones by Gary Rhodes, Gordon Ramsey and others.
The recipes are in both Metric and Imperial and the temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.
Recipes range from simple to elaborate and they include gingerbread cake, orange pistachio syrup cake, battenburg, bakewell tart, lemon tart, jalousie, meringues, creme caramel, mousses including a baked chocolate mousse, jellies puddings and ice cream among many others. I find the best section of the book to be the Cookie/Biscuit chapter. I particularly like the shortbread recipe.
This book would do for an amateur baker but not all recipes are approachable.
Most of the recipes are for restaurant not pastry shop desserts.
The author gives sufficient intructions at the beggining of each chapter and of each recipe to facilitate any user. There are tips on the side of every recipe, with extra instructions, suggestions or variations.
The decoration of the finished products is a marriage between British conservatism and French modernism, that is it's not as bad as the British and not as good as the French, but it is good none the less.
Many of the combinations are too weird for my taste eg 'Spiced pumpkin custard with orange infused granola', but that's just my taste and this is my review.
One thing that put me off a bit is the general atmosphere of elevating the author, that makes itself felt throughout the book. To quote the backcover flap, describing the author: "...where she established herself as one of the world's greatest pastry chefs." In the continent, you can get pastry chefs of this level a dime a dozen.
All in all, this is a good book at a good price and I am not sorry that I bought it.
don't believe the French Laundry hype
Customer Rating: 100 Perfect Desserts? No, more like some cookies, some British stuff, and two or three new ideas. I'm sure Ms. Clark is many times more skilled and successful than I'll ever be, but I was disappointed in this book. I was hoping for French Laundry plated desserts, with multiple components, intrigue, complexity. The recipes mostly look good (except for pink-and yellow food coloring cake), but honestly the thing I'm most interested in making is a dessert the chef is pictured plating, but is not in the book. She has been at the Laundry for only 2 or 3 years, long enough to earn use of the name, but I think it is deceptive to use the restaurant name so prominently.
