Le Cordon Bleu Professional Baking and The Culinary Institute of America Baking and Pastry
My final go-to volumes for basic cakes are two textbooks from Le Cordon Bleu and The Culinary Institute of America given to me by my aunt-by-marriage, food writer Anne Mendelson. Both focus on basic technique and recipes &emdash; building blocks &emdash; rather than a specific dessert. Meant to be used in a retail or commercial bakery, the yields are usually triple a home recipe (six dozen cupcakes or six nine-inch cake layers). Very useful for wedding cakes, and other situations calling for insane amounts of cake.
Interestingly enough, they don't have the same recipes. From Gisslen's book, I bake the spice cake and angel food cake. From the CIA cookbook, I bake the lemon chiffon cake, creme anglaise, German buttercream, and cream cheese icing (which is equal weights of cream cheese and butter, and less powdered sugar). I refer to both for basic research when I need a new cake or sweet yeast bread recipe; they provide me with good ideas and point me in the direction to go.
From these basic recipes, both show how to build ever-more complex pastries up to architectural wonders.
If you don't want or need six dozen cupcakes (or you need twelve dozen, or four fifteen-inch layers), Professional Baking has a chart of how much batter to use for any size layer. Both teach scaling (how to increase and decrease a recipe for more or fewer servings) and basic recipe ratios. The also cover most baking ingredients, from all-purpose flour through lychees, and equipment from measuring spoons through steam-injection ovens.
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The recipe: Chocolate orange lebkuchen
It always distresses me that there could be a German cookie I don't like, such as traditional Nuremberg-style Lebkuchen. So, I work at recipes until I've baked something I like, but is true to the spirit of the original. This one has been particularly hard, and most of Christmas 2008 was spent with Sarah, our exchange student, trying variations of this recipe. We cut back the sugar, added cocoa and varied the spices. She will still think this is too sweet, but whenever I make these, I will remember baking with her.
There are lots of types of Lebkuchen. The Nuremberg style is made on round oblaten (rice paper circles) with nuts, citron, orangeat, and spices. Other styles are rolled out and cut, or are bar cookies baked in a sheet and cut apart. It's the citron and orangeat — most often seen in fruitcake — that does me in. This cookie uses candied orange peel instead, for a fresher, true orange taste. It starts with a strong chocolate taste, but finishes with a lingering of orange.