Heather Bertinetti - Bake It, Dont Fake It!: A Pastry Chef Shares Her Secrets for Impressive

I think its very rare to actually grow up to be what you always said you wanted to be when you were a kid.

Growing up, my favorite hobby was baking at home for my family. Blame it on my Easy-Bake Oven, but it was truly love at first bite! While most little girls my age were doodling hearts with crushes initials in them, I was drawing plated desserts on my folders and lunch bags. I loved imagining all the different flavor and color options for cakes and frostings. I loved making edible art. And most of all I loved the reaction I got when people ate my creations. I knew at a very young age that pastry was my calling. Baking was something I was good at, and it was my go-to answer for the what would you like to be when you grow up essay question. I never once wrote anything different.

Fortunately I was able to pursue that passion in culinary school and to learn the reality of choosing baking as a career. Thrown into the hot seat at an early age, I was pastry chef at some of the most popular, most visible restaurants in Manhattan. It was sink or swim and I rose to the challenge. How exciting for me as a young chef to have a huge kitchen as my office and to be able to create, invent, and collaborate with talented partners to design dessert menus and serve the most discriminating palates!

Once I had met that challenge, though, I began to sense that I had a bigger goal. I realized that the most gratifying thing to me about being an executive pastry chef was teaching my cooks techniques and recipes, helping them hone their skills. And now that desire to teach what I know has outgrown the boundaries of the restaurant kitchen.

I feel quite passionate that I can help anyone understand baking. I really enjoy explaining the in and outs of baking, and I feel that if I can give people that knowledge, they will feel empowered to do it themselves and be inspired to create. Cooking from scratch gives you such a sense of achievement... and its just plain better eats! There is really nothing that can compare with a homemade dessert. The proof is in the pudding (literally).

I feel especially compelled to prove this point because I meet so many people who tell me that theyre scared of baking... that they fake it by buying premade desserts or using mixes. I just know that I can fix that. Thats why I wrote this book. It is the next phase in my career. If I can help you understand baking, then I consider that a mission accomplished for me.

So thats my mission, now lets get started. Before anything else, go to . This is where I give you the important information about how to use this bookwhat ingredients and equipment I use, and how I use them. And how to measure ingredients!

From there you can move on to the first chapter, which Ive called Baking 101. Here are the basic techniques and recipes that will help you gain a good understanding of baking, as well as tips that will steer you clear of mistakes (my whipped cream looks like butter... now what?). This chapter is one of my favorites because it is your foundation for everything else. But even a basic recipe can get dressed up and be something special, so throughout the chapter Ive included Chef It Up! tips where I will tell you what I would do with the cake or pie or cookie if I were serving it in one of my restaurants.

Following the basics in Baking 101 is a chapter called Beyond Baking. In a restaurant, the pastry chef is usually in charge of the entire dessert menu, which is a whole lot more than baked goods. So this chapter will introduce you to basic desserts like custards, sorbets, crpes, poached fruit, simple candies, and more.

Once youve mastered all the basics, you can move on to the somewhat more demanding recipes in the chapter called The Next Level. These recipes are not necessarily more difficult to accomplish, but they can demand more of your time and may call for specialized pieces of cooking equipment (like a pizzelle iron). As with the Baking 101 recipes, these recipes may also get Chef It Up! tips so you can really impress people with your dessert skills.

At this point, youre a pro, ready to take on the worldand maybe a couple of serious challenges. So for the super ambitious, I end with a chapter called Showstoppers. The is a prime example. Although it is a labor-intensive cake, you will be able to make it easily, with all your knowledge from the previous chapters. This is truly a special-occasion cake.

My hope is that if you bake your way through this book, youll be putting desserts on the table that might even fool your guests into thinking that you secretly went to culinary school.

Heather Bertinetti

November 2013

P.S. Check out my blog: Bake It, Dont Fake It! at hbertinetti.com