Cookbooks in The Kitchen of What's Happening now

part 2: Royal Icing, Mousseline Buttercream, Savarin, Chocolate Domingo Cake, Lemon Curd, are all favorite recipes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, that I have made over and over and over because they are the best of their kind. It's nice to make things that you do not get tired of. Maybe that is why some people give up!

Rose is a researcher, scientist, artist, and  cookbook author who talks directly to you. She has worked out all the problems.  We became friends because of a letter I wrote to her about 15 years ago.  She claims in her book that the Mousseline Buttercream frosting will hold up in very hot weather.  I trusted that, and staged a very successful wedding cake at Sequoia Grove Winery in very hot weather.  I sent her the pictures with the letter; in 2 days she called me from New York and we talked for an hour, and have been great friends ever since.  

When she comes to San Francisco there is always some amazing food adventure afoot. Daniel Patterson's (Coi Restaurant)wedding cake, dinner with Marion Cunningham, The Tasting Menu at The French Laundry, a tented first class 3 course dinner with Jamie Oliver in the pouring rain,  an all day excursion to visit the Della Fattoria bread company in Petaluma, and more!

I told her I was on tippytoes waiting for the new book due out in September 2009.  It will be very interesting to see how she views now, what is important in cake making, cake baking. Rose states,"..this new book is all the things that i've evolved since the cake bible (it will be 21 years!) but the cake bible still stands--almost everything is new including that delightful cradle cake!" 

We discovered along the way, a mutual passion for dress design, knitting, and crochet, actually fanatical would be the best word. It's almost folie a deux.