There's something so rewarding about making tall cakes. That is one reason I love this book, which probably started my obsession with cake. The other reason this book is about four notches above most other cookbooks, especially cake books, is that every cake is completely different. There is no standard white cake or standard chocolate cake. Each cake has its own method and its own strange additional ingredients, and each one is absolutely outstanding. This one, for example, has no butter in the batter (Betty Botter did not make this cake). Instead, it starts out as whipped cream, to which you add eggs, yolks, sugar, and vanilla. It was like making cake out of ice cream. The filling and the frosting are whipped cream based, too, but the whole thing felt very light. And, fresh from the fridge, it is just the thing for a hot, hot day in July.
