Gâteaux

Moist Cakes

Appears in

Published 1974

About

Batter cakes and pastries are both called gâteaux in French culinary language. Creations big and little, crisp and soft, shortened and unshortened all fall within this category.

But in American cooking a cake is always made with batter, is customarily shaped in rounds, loaves, or squares, and is either layered or unlayered. Pastry is used for making dessert pies, cobblers, and tarts and is not confused with cake.

In an effort to bridge the gap in culinary thinking between this side of the Atlantic and the other, I have sought to organize French cake and pastry making along American lines. First, French gâteaux are fitted into American dessert categories and each is assigned a chapter to itself.