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Learn to COOK - Puff Pastry Perfection: More Than 175 Recipes for Appetizers, Entrees and Sweets Made with Refrigerated Puff Pastry Dough
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List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $11.53
Your Save: $ 5.42 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.8
EAN: 9781581825428
ISBN: 1581825420
Label: Cumberland House Publishing
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2006-11-01
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
Studio: Cumberland House Publishing
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Editorial Reviews:
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Puff pastry is the royalty of pastries—crisp, flaky, and especially light, it literally rises to any occasion. And although preparing homemade puff pastry is a labor-intensive process, Puff Pastry Perfection shows that a package of frozen puff pastry sheets makes the magnificence of puff pastry accessible to home cooks everywhere.
Puff Pastry Perfection has eliminated the guesswork. At a cost of less than four dollars, one 17.3-ounce package from a grocer's freezer section delivers two perfect puff pastry sheets, prerolled and ready to use in recipes ranging from the first course to the last.
Oh, the enchanting creations that await! Frozen puff pastry can be used to quickly and easily render classics such as napoleons, cream puffs, strudels, turnovers, palmiers, mille-feuille, and French tarts. It can be twisted into appetizer sticks, cut into tartlet shapes, used as a quick pie or quiche crust, folded over savory appetizer fillings, molded over casserole fillings to create one-step pot pie "lids," or rolled and sliced into elegant, but oh-so-easy recipes.
Puff Pastry Perfection is more than just another collection of baked goods. It is a burst of extraordinary flavors that surprise and delight, along with foolproof instructions to make home cooks into baking heroes.
The result? How about portobello napoleons, wasabi shrimp puffs, dried cherry and almond baked brie, or spicy cumin cheese straws for starters? For supper consider chile relleno quiche, puff pastry po' boys, pizza bianco with prosciutto, arugula and parmesan or chipotle and cheese beef pot pie. Next, the sweets: miniatures such as ginger-lime sugar twists, southern pecan crisps, fresh mango napoleons, and puff pastry cinnamon rolls, all perfect for teatime or an anytime nibble. And finally the grand desserts: from lemon-blackberry cobbler to chocolate-walnut strudel to caramel apple dumplings, there's a sweet treat for every taste and occasion.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Comment: This is already one of my favorite cookbooks! It is wonderful and beautifully made, too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It will look like you slaved all day in the kitchen - but you wouldn't
Comment: Reviewed by Cherie Fisher for Reader Views (2/07)
"Puff Pastry Perfection" is a dream come true for those people who love the taste and feel of puff pastry without the complicated recipes. The book starts with a description and history of Puff Pastry and also adds many valuable tips for working with it successfully. The recipes are based on the store-bought, very affordable, prepackaged Pepperidge Farms brand that can be found in any grocery frozen food section. One advantage to the Pepperidge Farms brand is that it contains partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening instead of butter, so you don't have to worry about serving it to people who are kosher, vegan and lactose intolerant. I was very interested to read about the more expensive and harder to find all butter brand made by Dufour Pastry Kitchens and may try it to compare the difference in taste.
Puff Pastry is very versatile and can be used in appetizers, entrees and desserts, but most cooks do not use it because they are afraid that it is too complicated to work with. This book debunks those myths through over 175 recipes. My biggest problem with the book is where to start with the recipes - I want to try them all! I plan to use the recipes for hosting parties and when attending potluck dinners. I may have to try out the pizzas and Chicken Pot Pie before that though. Who could turn down recipes such as Parmesan Sage Twists, Italian Sausage Rolls, Dried Cherry and Almond Baked Brie, Wild Mushroom-Sausage Pizza, Puff Pastry Po' Boys, Banana Puffed Pie with Chocolate Rum Sauce, fruit tarts and Bittersweet Chocolate Torte, just to name a few?
While this is a great cookbook, I would caution the more inexperienced cook who relies on photos to keep an open mind. I found the instructions to be very simple and easy to follow without photos, but if I were a novice in the kitchen I might be intimidated by the lack of photos. All in all, I found "Puff Pastry Perfection" to be a great book and am looking forward to trying these wonderful recipes!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great lessons for puff pastry
Comment: I bought this book with the hope of learning more about working with puff pastry in general. Every time I tried to use it, I seemed to end up with tough, flat-ish results.
The author provides an excellent how-to section at the front that I have used for recipes in the book as well as recipes that I already have. For example, I followed the advice of keeping a baggie full of ice water nearby now to keep my hands from getting too warm as I am working with the dough. I also used to have trouble rolling out the dough; learned that I was probably not defrosting it long enough, now it's a breeze. I am very pleased.
I've only made some really simple things so far, to work on technique (sweet and savory twists, puff pastry topped mushroom soup, and some easy rolled up cookies), but they were all yummy and the directions were very easy to follow. I am going to try some the mango napoleons for New Year's Eve.
The Pepperidge farm kind of puff pastry is good, but if it's a special occasion, try the dufour all-butter kind. I tried it with a batch of Parmesan twists from the book and they were so good, it was worth the splurge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just A Kid Learning How to Bake
Comment: My cousin got this for me as a gift. I do not know how to bake as I am doing it for the first time. The book has many recipes for me to try, but I cannot imagine how it will look like once its done? Because, there are no picture illustrations, so I am lost!
I would probably need my Cousin or My Mom to help me. Thanks!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb recipes/ great collection
Comment: This is a wonderful cookbook. I have already used it for multiple hoilday occasions and plan to use it throughout the year. The history of puff pastry at the beginning is fascinating and the recipes are outstanding. A SMART cookbook, one I will reach for again and again for all kinds of entertaining because the recipes are so diverse, perfectly written and quite easy. Here is what I have made so far with great success:
*Blue cheese & Fig puffs (so good and so easy--made me look like a professional caterer. They use fig jam)
*Petite Pissaladières
*Brandied Pear Tarts (these were exquisite, and, again, so easy. Really beautiful too)
*Chocolate Macadamia Strudel (holy moly. I don't think there was a single crumb left)
*Double Ginger Sugar Twists (These may be my new favorite cookies. I love ginger and these were incredibly simple, only 5 ingredients)
For the record, I think it is ridiculous to give a low rating for a cookbook based SOLELY on the presence or absence of pictures. I've seen that for several cookbooks on Amazon, as well as trivial comments about the cover, etc.. FYI: As someone who once worked in the publishing industry, I know that authors have about zero control over such design aspects of books (unless you are a superstar author). It is largely a matter of the alotted budget set out by the publisher.
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