5 Reasons Why ‘The Cake Bible’ Feels Brand New For the 35th Anniversary Edition

The baking aisle has more options — for better and for worse

The Cake Bible mostly refrains from recommending specific brands. “If the book could last 35-plus years, I don’t want to put things into it that don’t have as long a life,” Beranbaum quips. But even this conservative approach couldn’t account for the ways our groceries would change. For example, varieties of flour that didn’t even exist in 1988 have added more confusion for home cooks. “I didn’t even bother to put ‘bleached cake flour’ in the original Cake Bible, because bleached had always been all that existed as far as cake flour,” Beranbaum says. Since then, though, King Arthur started producing unbleached cake flour. “It really isn’t cake flour. It’s not made with the same wheat, and it doesn’t perform the way the bleached cake flour does.” To help ensure better results for her readers, Beranbaum tested all her recipes with modern ingredients, adjusting proportions and adding specificity to her ingredients lists where necessary.

Common baking tools have quite literally changed shape

Many cake pans today are two inches deep, while some vintage ones have a depth of just one-and-a-half inches. This means that the 1988 versions of the recipes don’t make quite enough batter to fill modern-day cake pans to the top. But is it really so bad to use a bigger pan than a recipe calls for?

Actually, yes. “If the pan is too big, the sides will shield the batter and slow down the baking. The resulting cake will be drier with a paler surface,” Beranbaum writes. So Beranbaum tested and adjusted the proportions in The Cake Bible’s revised edition to account for modern cookware.

In some cases, these adjustments to the book’s recipes yield pleasant surprises. The White Chocolate Whisper Cake recipe, for example, makes enough batter for exactly two 9-inch cakes for layering and three extra cupcakes, allowing the baker to taste his or her handiwork without slicing into the main event.

“Sometimes you can scale something down, but it gives you ridiculous proportions, like a third plus an eighth of baking powder or something,” Beranbaum says, laughing. “[A few extra cupcakes] was the solution.”

"The Cake Bible" goes on sale Oct. 22.

Courtesy HarperCollins

Bake with Rose

Levy Beranbaum shared three recipes from The Cake Bible for AARP members to try:

Devil's Food Cake

A deep, dark and delicious cake paired with a delicious Midnight Ganache.

The Chocolate Domingo

I dedicated this cake to Plácido Domingo, to create a special recipe for one of my favorite opera stars. 

Apple Walnut Bundt Cake

The perfect fall apple-season cake that can be enjoyed any time of the year.

Public tastes have evolved. So have Beranbaum’s

The Cake Bible wasn’t exactly reimagined for today’s culture of instant gratification. (“What’s the term people always use — quick and easy? I want to do an article,” she says, laughing, “‘The Virtues of Slow and Difficult.’”) But the book did get a style makeover, accounting for the changing visual tastes of cookbook readers. The photos were updated. The layout was reconsidered, too; long recipes were shifted around to ensure they appeared on opposing pages, preventing readers from having to flip through the book with messy fingers.

“Maybe it was a good thing we waited 35 years,” Beranbaum jokes. “We learned so much about how you have to write, about how you have to organize.”

Recipes were updated for other kinds of evolved tastes, too. “Through the years, more people have said that things are too sweet rather than not sweet enough,” says Beranbaum. In some cases, she’s come to agree. The updated Devil’s Food Cake, for example, contains added unsweetened moist, chocolate-forward taste that’s a little bit less sweet.

“Sugar is the enemy of flavor,” says Beranbaum. “If you don’t have enough sugar, you don’t have a good balance. But too much sugar means all you taste is sweetness.”

Rose Levy Beranbaum, right, says her husband, Woody Wolston, pushed her to revise "The Cake Bible.” "He was right. But I couldn’t have done it by myself. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Matthew Septimus

A roster of new characters — and a lot of good stories — have earned their place in print

As Beranbaum’s star rose in the cooking world, her work earned plenty of fans outside of it. The Large Chocolate Domingo for Special Occasions, for example, was a hit at Beranbaum’s fiftieth high school reunion, making fans of such talents as world-famous cellist Daniel Domb. Meanwhile, actress Jennifer Garner has become partial to Beranbaum’s Chocolate Bread, touting the pound cake-esque recipe as a lunchbox essential.

These decidedly sweet anecdotes (and the corresponding recipes) all make it into The Cake Bible’s latest edition. But the most impactful new character in the book’s revision isn’t a movie star; it’s Woody Wolston, Beranbaum’s husband and one-time assistant.

“He was the one who really pushed me to revise the book,” Beranbaum says. “And he was right. But I couldn’t have done it by myself. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Wolston’s contributions to the book earn him several namesake recipes and shout outs — one prime example being the Sticky Toffee Pudding, the first recipe Beranbaum gave Wolston to test in 2005.

“It also served as a test to whether we could work together,” she writes. “The cake and our partnership have passed the test of time.”