Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes
- ISBN13: 9780061703010
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
When Duff Goldman, Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes,” envisioned Charm City Cakes in Baltimore nearly a decade ago, his goal was to make wonderful cakes for friends and family. As word spread about his fabulous creations, his dream grew into a nationally renowned business staffed by a team of talented professionals, including musicians, artists, and creative souls with experience in architectural modeling, graphic design, deejaying, coffee making, performance art, dog w… More >>
Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes
Splashy, fun, colorful book. The graphic design pops. Would make a good gift.
Tons of detail here…details that I don’t particularly care about, but fans of the show might. Detailed map of the business. Cute little cartoony renderings of everyone who works there. A page with, I don’t know, 250 tiny photographs of different cakes all checkboarded together. Why? Because some graphic designer thought it would look cool. Lots of back story about the business and how it started.
I think this book is for fanatics only. If you want a cake decoration and construction book, look elsewhere.
Rating: 5 / 5
Although I thought this was a book where I can get some great cake recipes, I was a little disapointed. This is NOT a recipe book. It is a book about how he got started and how he ended up on the foodnetwork. This book will have you laughing, he has a great personality. Pretty interesting.
Rating: 4 / 5
I like ACE OF CAKES. Duff and his crew of happy-go-lucky decorators make for an enjoyable 1/2 hour and this book captures, for the most part that same sense of whimsy. Once you get through the obligatory biography section and the terrible cover, (An airbrush? How about a cake? Or at the very least some fireworks?) The book gives equal time to the rest of the decorators and the actual running of the bakery. This provides insight into the operation and also answers a number of questions about Charm City bakery that fans of the show may have wondered about. A great collection of pictures of cakes appear throughout along with some cute illustrations and the staff appears often in a variety of work related and biographical pictures. It really appears to be a great place to work and the book conveys this very well. A look at the creation of the show and the actual filming process is informative, but did we need the self-congratulations of every producer and network exec behind the scenes? But the explanation of why a reality show needs writers is welcome.
But I have a few quibbles:
In the FAQ’s how about giving an actual price range for the cakes instead of the snide “How much you got?”
Hand washing is mentioned far too many times- Why use a book to respond to internet annoyances?
Same problem with people wanting to visit. The book just doesn’t seem to be the place to respond to the problems of becoming too successful.
It was great to see the decorators making their own cakes for the book, but how about an in depth examination of one instead doing it piecemeal.
Like all the Food Network books I’ve seen so far, this one’s long on style, but I must admit has a bit more substance than most. The enjoyment the book will bring to fans will outweigh any complaints I have.
Rating: 4 / 5
Ah the pleasure of the cake without the calories!
The Ace of Cakes is a fun read whether you are a fan of the show or not. The hardcover 307 page glossy book packs a lot of appeal with tons of photos and behind the scenes information. Who knew cakes could be made in such a zesty variety. It even has a pull out centerfold – of cakes!
Though the book looks good and the ingredients (contents and photos are overall great) the copy I received was sloppily frosted. It is poorly bound with the binding cracking. The pages are attached to the book in a slipshod manner. In addition the book was poorly proofed and has numerous typos. Some of the photos are pixelated, though in general the photos are of high quality.
Despite that at Amazon’s low price point and with the unique content this makes for an unusual read, a visual feast and a tasty one at that.
~ Lee Mellott
Rating: 4 / 5
This book is the perfect gift for anyone who loves the Food Network show Ace of Cakes, featuring Baltimore-based rogue baker Duff Goldman and his unique and talented staff. It’s the right size for a coffee table book, about 10″ x 12″, hardback, a tad over 300 pages, replete with gorgeous glossy photos and even a “centerfold” montage of all the cakes the bakery has churned out in the last seven years.
Just as the title says, this book really is a vignette into the inner workings of Charm City Cakes (the bakery) and Ace of Cakes (the TV show about the bakery). Perceptive readers will also notice that the book is also somewhat of a love song to Baltimore. Baker beware, though: it’s not a cookbook or a cake decorating how-to guide. Duff begins with his own story of how he came into the world of culinary arts and eventually baking. Staff biographies are peppered intermittently throughout the book, each one as visually and substantively creative as the person who wrote it. Additionally, there are interviews with the directors, producers, writers, cameramen, and other production crew members. There’s even a comprehensive episode guide. One particularly fun and heartwarming section is the fan mail spread, with drawings and letters Charm City Cakes has received from across the country. The only feature this book lacks is an index; several times I have wanted to find one particular staff biography and had to thumb through the entire book to find it. Despite this one minor oversight, this book includes everything you would ever want to know about the production of Ace of Cakes and what it’s like to work at the bakery.
But what really engages the reader are the photos of the cakes. Each Charm City Cakes staff member created a cake for the book, and the work they do is so artistic, original, and creative that readers will flip through the pages hungrily just to see how much — to use a Duffism — bigger, badder, and more awesome the next one will be. There is quite a bit of text in this book, which I was surprised to find myself skipping initially (how can I read a five-page interview when the most amazing and creative cake I’ve ever seen is on the very next page?!). But then after having satiated my visual appetite, I went back and read everything and was happy to discover that the text was just as enthralling as the photos.
The inside story of the Charm City Cakes bakery is truly fascinating, and any Ace of Cakes fan will absolutely devour this book. Very highly recommended!
Rating: 5 / 5