Dorie Greenspan's Baking

Say it with me: Devil's Food White-Out Cake. Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise. Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread.

I want to make Everything from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking.

The book does have a subtitle: From My Home to Yours. But before I'd noticed that (hidden under the infernal yellow paper strip that libraries will insist upon plastering across the front of an interlibrary loan, and I say this as a close relative of a Librarian), I was pleased by the book's straight-shooting, elemental, to-the-point, first-part-of-the-title. Baking. Says it all.

The biggest challenge is deciding what to try first. I love coconut, and Greenspan adds it into everything from a tea cake to a custard tart. And the Celebration Cakes. Oh. The Perfect Party Cake is a four-story confection of white cake, with lemon-flavored buttercream and raspberry jam layers between each of the thin cake layers, and coconut patted onto the sides and top of the cake.

There's a birthday cake for everyone here. A Tiramisu Cake. A Normandy Apple Tart. A Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake. The format of the book is cleanly-designed; the typeface large enough to be seen as you're leaning across the counter, stirring while reaching for an ingredient; the photography tasty but not veering toward the genre I lovingly call Victoria's Secret for Cooks.

Greenspan is direct, offers just enough personal history to give the book the feel of an autobiography, and and smart. This is what she says about chocolate in her recipe for Gooey Chocolate Cakes: "The most important rule to remember. . .is to use not only the best chocolate that you can find, but the chocolate that you most love to eat." Can I just say, You Go, Dorie.

First up: a blond brownie recipe that looks suspiciously similar to a toffee bar at a worldwide coffee shop that refuses to divulge the ingredients. I've been trying to crack the code on that one for a few years now. Then it's on to the cakes, and hopefully, no looking back.