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"Swaggart" by Ann Rowe Seaman
A thorough biography of the disgraced televangelist drops a bombshell about his Louisiana childhood.
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[12/10/99]

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"Fortune's Rocks" by Anita Shreve
It takes place in the late 19th century, but the sexy feminism in this novel is very late 20th century.
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Ivory Tower
Memories of an Aggie Bonfire boy
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Classics Book Group: Galway Kinnell on Emily Dickinson

By Galway Kinnell
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By Ann Hodgman

Sweet Celebrations: The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes By Sylvia Weinstock Simon & Schuster, 196 pages Buy this book at B&N.com The Making of a Pastry Chef By Andrew MacLauchlan John Wiley & Sons, 338 pages Buy this book at B&N.com Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen Produced by the Culinary Institute of America John Wiley & Sons, 466 pages Buy this book at B&N.com The French Laundry Cookbook By Thomas Keller Artisan, 325 pages Buy this book at B&N.com After-Dinner Drinks By Jon Beckmann Chronicle Books, 113 pages Buy this book at B&N.com The Hemp Cookbook By Ralf Hiener Ten Speed Press, 142 pages Buy this book at B&N.com

Dec. 10, 1999 | "I love reading cookbooks in bed," I once blared out in a TV interview. Hearing the guys in the control room laugh, I hastily made things worse by adding, "Not that kind of bed." Why didn't I just say "Cookbooks make great bedside reading"? Especially at this time of year, as the holidays march toward us and trample everything in their path and the thought of cooking one more thing makes me want to put my own head into the oven. Maybe in January I'll feel like cooking again, but for now the only cookbooks I'm reading are the ones that steer me away from the kitchen and under a pile of quilts, where I can cozily marvel at other people's industriousness and forget my own horrible frantic life. The following suit the purpose admirably and would make nice presents as well.

Sylvia Weinstock's Sweet Celebrations: The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes is just about perfect. I have no immediate plans to spend hours making a wedding cake -- or one shaped like a hot-air balloon or a half-open hatbox with sheets of edible "tissue paper" poking out -- so this is the best bedside reading I could hope for. If I hadn't actually met Weinstock, I wouldn't believe she was a real person. Surely only an imaginary chef gives directions like "The fruit and flowers should be started 10 to 12 weeks in advance."

But she does exist, and the book's idyllically beautiful pictures prove that her cakes do, too. Weinstock's not one of those bakers who rely on Crisco and plastic fountains to get their effects. Her recipes are of uniformly high quality. It's probably impossible to make anything that comes close to looking like one of her creations, but "Sweet Celebrations" seduces you into wanting to try. I'm fairly certain that I'm going to make the cake that looks like a stack of wrapped Christmas presents, although my time might be better spent in wrapping real presents if I had shopped for any.

The Making of a Pastry Chef, by Andrew MacLauchlan, lures the reader even further into the recherché world of fancy desserts. This is the perfect book for those artsy souls who dream of dropping out of the rat race to work with spun sugar at a four-star restaurant. Of course, pastry chefs work harder, for longer hours and standing up, more than most ordinary people could bear. ("Maintaining my knees is the hardest part," says Maury Rubin of City Bakery.) But that only makes this book more succulent: You get to feel like a pastry chef while simultaneously thanking God you're not one.

Though the book has recipes for 50 exceptional desserts, including rhubarb napoleon with preserved ginger, tangerine sorbet with pomegranate sauce and berries in champagne jelly, the fun part is the interviews and anecdotes from famous pastry chefs. "One Fourth of July, I was working on the Trump Princess in New York," recalls Dan Budd, a professor of pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.:

We had desserts going from the kitchen, which is at the base of the vessel, to the back deck … We put these desserts on large mirror platters and put them in an elevator with a waiter. The elevator was open on every level and the mirror caught on the second level of the boat and flipped the desserts straight up in the elevator shaft and the mirror slid down between the elevator and the floor and it traveled all the way down, smashing at the bottom of the ship. Donald Trump himself turned and said, "What was that?"

Gosh, this bed is comfortable ...

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