Gale Gand's Short and Sweet: Quick Desserts with Eight Ingredients or Less

by Gale Gand and Julia Moskin

From Gale Gand, award-winning executive pastry chef and host of Food Network'sSweet Dreams,more than 75 tempting desserts that are long on flavor . . . even when you're short on time. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400047331
• ISBN13: 9781400047338
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter Publishers
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.8" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Elegant but Simple

Great ideas for desserts that are made from things already on your shelf and that don't take too much time to make.

Eclectic collection

Gale Gand presents an eclectic collection of dessert recipes. You may not find your favorite but you will certanly find something that will pique your interest. Organizing recipes by time was a good idea. My favorite recipe from this book was the passion fruit mousse - innovative and yet infallible!

Great Book for Baking with Kids. Neat Variations on Classics

This book, `Gale Gand's Short + Sweet' is the fourth work of which Gale Gand has been a co-author or principle author. Gale has demonstrated several of these recipes, especially the recipes for kids, on Gale's Food Network show, `Sweet Dreams'.The book focuses on recipes that can be done quickly with eight or fewer ingredients. With a few caveats, the book succeeds in providing interesting, workable recipes for people with few pastry skills which can be done in a relatively short time, with no expensive ingredients and no unusual ingredients.The recipes are divided among four chapters covering recipes which can be completed with 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 45 minutes active time, plus a chapter on `kid doable' recipes. The book gives relatively quick recipes for some old standards such as hot fudge sundaes, Clafouti, scones, Panna Cotta, chocolate chip cookies, shortbread, cheesecake, Tarte Tatin, turnovers, semifreddo, Tiramisu, apple tarts, crème brulee, buttermilk biscuits (c/o Shirley Corriher), cinnamon-raisin bread, and my all time favorite snickerdoodles.While all these names are familiar, Gale gives a new twist to almost all of them, leaving only the venerable Shirley Corriher biscuit tradition and the snickerdoodle recipe untouched. Thus, she is following the same tradition as David Lebovitz by producing creative variations on the standards. Ms. Gand does a little better in my mind than Lebovitz in `Ripe for Desserts' in that she has concentrated on recipes that can be done easily and cheaply. Unlike Lebovitz first book, `Room for Dessert', Ms. Gand does not give long discussions on technique or ingredients. Her effort is redeemed by her recipes' simplicity.There is a really important caveat to the claim that the recipes can be done in 15, 30, or 45 minutes. This caveat is that this does not include baking times, which can be up to 30 minutes. It also does not include refrigerate time to relax or condition intermediate preparations. This time is not inconsequential when it comes to planning kitchen time. On the other side of the coin, the recipes are quite good in giving points in the preparation where intermediate steps can be refrigerated or frozen before finishing. This may not be a big thing most of the time, but when it helps, it really helps.There are some things I found which may only annoy a frustrated teacher. These are errors in fact or errors in grammar. The most glaring error in fact I found was the statement that balsamic vinegar is made from red grapes. Since this is such an obviously easy mistake to make, it signals a lack of care by the publisher's copy editor. The same can be said of the few very obvious grammatical errors.I generally have little interest in photographs of savory dishes, but desserts are a different story. Desserts are as much about eye candy as they are food for the sweet tooth. On average, the pictures in this book are good to very good, with a few stinkers here and there. It is beyond me why the publish