Flowers: A French Patisserie Cookbook

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This book is great. If you want to make beautiful pastries buy this book. Are the directions detailed and specific. No. Why should they be. If you want pedestrian desserts consult Ina Garden or Betty Crocker. If you don’t have fundamental baking knowledge, learn it, it’s not hard. There’s nothing wrong with someone as successful as Cedric not wanting to tell every home cook how he became as successful as he is.

I was surprised to see firstly that there is no ebook or Kindle version of this book on launch. After waiting several months to get Cedric Grolet's newest installment Flowers - I was extremely excited when it showed up at my doorstep. That excitement faded extremely quickly despite my love of pastry making. Having owned the previous two books Fruits and Opera, I was hoping that the editorial direction would be better. It is better then Opera and Fruits, but unfortunately it lacks the element that would have made this book Superior in terms of not just a pretty book to look at but a true resource for pastry chefs.The fact that the book is about piping intricate flower shapes and that there are barely any detailed picture work regarding piping said shapes of flowers is unbelievable (check the image and go ahead and make that flower from 2 pictures!). I would say that out of all the desserts there are very few that actually show the piping step but add insult to injury most of the pictures of the piping steps are incredibly unhelpful with the even more abysmal descriptions of the piping. For example in one of the desserts and I kid you not it says " create an irregular star shape and start piping out a flower in a circular motion while making sure that you follow the end like the semicircle at the tip of your index finger." It wasn't the exact wording naturally I don't want to violate copyright, however it was exceptionally like this and it made absolutely no sense. Even more weirder, Cedric decides to feature some kind of stone work as the backdrop for his dessert pictures, and these seem to have more photography space than his piping work. I'm not sure if this Stone House provided him free furniture but there is clearly something odd and going on there because I don't think it's just for artistic purposes.In terms of the recipes themselves, they most certainly are there. One thing that might confuse people is that certain recipes have the same element written differently whereas they use a base recipe at the very end. It's unusual that they keep asking you to turn to page 337 or 342, when there is clearly enough negative space on the page to put that recipe there again in terms of the ingredients. A lot of the editorial decision making in this book is just as annoying as Fruits. Abrams Books the publisher clearly needs to learn how to make proper cookbooks or at least be able to say no to somebody who doesn't know how to write them like Cedric. Constantly turning to the appendix is frustrating. In another weird instance, every single tip in this book is referred to as a "Saint Honore tip." Which makes absolutely no sense. For the first time it was nice to see that Cedric mentioned Wilton as the tips, but it is clear he is also using unavailable debuyer tips. Furthermore a lot of recipes are inaccurate in terms of baking time which can admittedly lead to a lot of failure, wasted ingredients, and moreover wasted money. As a previous reviewer before me mentioned, the cookies state to bake for only 15 minutes, but in a home oven this would take more than 40 minutes.Thankfully this book is better than Cedric's second book Opera, which is filled with just a bunch of words and hardly any pictures. But then again, that's not saying a whole lot.The foreward mentions that in order to make any of these desserts in the book "only a pastry bag and piping tip is needed." Cedric is adamant that no special equipment or tool is needed. I struggle to understand why such a talented pastry chef would claim this when he himself utilizes special equipment and ingredients that are most certainly required - such as: HVLP spray gun for coatings (90% of the desserts require coating sprays), a commercial dough sheeter for lamination, expensive amounts of Vanilla caviar only he can get on discount, an Irinox commercial blast freezer, xanthan gum, kappa carrageenan, cocoa butter deodorized, fat soluble food powder - not gel/liquid coloring, special pastry ring molds of varying sizes which can add up price wise, and not to mention a farm willing to give up most of its harvest for 1 dessert. OK the last one is an exaggeration but you get the point!And unfortunately all of these reveal something very telling: that a talented pastry chef does not make a great cookbook author. I think what would help Cedric a lot is if he were to include a special link of some sort that shows videos of piping work for his readers who support him by paying these grotesque prices for this book that is honestly not worth it. Unfortunately, Cedric Grolet seems to have an aversion to making his craft available in an easily accessible manner for a lower price for the masses. At the end of the book, he encourages you to make him proud. Unfortunately he has not realized that he has not made us, his students, proud. He has failed us as a useful teacher and one that just shows off his skills at a distance for his own hubris without really wanting to help his students excel.

The book is damaged

I really admire Cedric's work, but unfortunately, I have decided to return this book. The recipes are disorganized and lack proper instructions and steps. I recently spent an entire day making his cookie recipe, but it turned out to be a waste of time and ingredients. I was surprised to see that he left out many details and directions that could have been helpful in each step. For example, he suggests baking cookies for 7 minutes at 325F, which is simply not enough time. I had to bake mine for 30 minutes, and they were still soft. Additionally, most of the recipes lack a logical order of steps. As a representation of his work, I would have expected better organization and more detailed instructions for such a technical book.

If you want a book to decorate the table in your living room, this is a nice book, but if you are looking for recipes or baking techniques please don't waste your money on this book. If you're a home baker, don't buy this unless it's to decorate your home.

This book is only useful to professional pastry chefs with a battery of unusual ingredients and equipment on hand. For the home pastry maker there is no description of the specialty ingredients, no step by step instructions on piping, and no description of how to use a spray gun (that most home pastry makers would never own yet required in many recipes). The organization of recipes is woefully lacking in ease of use due to many parts of a recipe are on various other pages of the cookbook. The small light grey typeface and text spacing adds another layer of frustration since it is not the easiest to read. The description of baking pans to use in a recipe do not always match what is shown in the photographs. I wish I had read reviews prior to purchasing since this is not an inexpensive cookbook.

As it's usual with Cedric Grolet's books I guess, it's a very nice looking book. If you're looking for something with pretty pictures, beautiful presentation and typography to leave on the coffee table, sure, go ahead. If you're looking to bake the recipes though, find another one.I tried a first quick and simple recipe from that book today - cookies. Everything went well until the baking instructions - 7 minutes at 165C. For the record, each cookie is a 100g dough ball at that point. That's a lot of dough, at a fairly low temperature, for a very short time. They need well over double that time to not be raw on the surface.That's just one recipe, and it could very well be a typo (maybe 17 minutes?). However I'm not really eager to believe that - another cookie recipe in the same book has a very similar dough and instructions, and an identical 7 minutes baking time. More to the point, it's a trend in every one of Cedric's books - most of the recipes have at least one ingredient that's way off in terms of quantities. I hoped it would be different...