I've made several of the desserts in this book -- and most of them were amazing. Seriously amazing. You haven't had a cheese Danish until you've had one straight out of the oven. It was fantastic. Hot brioche the same. And the tarts and the cookies...oh my. My roommates and coworkers alike are now hovering every weekend and Monday morning to see what I've made/brought to work. My dessert game has been elevated.
Keep in mind that the ingredients are listed in grams and ounces -- you'll need a kitchen scale. It's easy to get used to but if you don't have one you can't even begin.
I do have one big complaint. As another reviewer mentioned there are ERRORS in the recipes. (At the end of the genoise recipe in the "tips" section it says that for a 6-inch cake you use x amount of flour and an 8-inch cake y amount...but shouldn't that be in the ingredients section? And if not there shouldn't it say in the ingredients section "see page z for flour amounts"? I would think so.) An example is the lemon cake recipe. In the body it mentions adding sugar twice but it's only listed once. I worried I'd get a sickeningly sweet cake if I added too much so I only put in the amount listed...and got a blah boring cake. (Though the light-as-a-cloud texture was delightful. Too bad it wasn't tasty too.) And then sometimes equipment is in the ingredients section...line breaks are off... there are pictures of the execution of recipes that contradict the directions in the recipe... I found it very strange.
For an art that is as exacting as French pastries are it's all the more striking that there are so many errors in the book. Most of the final products are AMAZING. But I wish they had paid as much attention to detail in the editing as you need to do to make pastries.
