As is often the case with Beranbaum, the James Beard award-winning author of “The Cake Bible” and 13 other books, the subject was cakes. He told his interviewer that he could only choose one favorite from two categories: chocolate and non-chocolate.

Her favorite non-chocolate cake is the Triple Lemon Velvet Bundt Cake. His favorite chocolate cake is the one he calls Chocolate Domingo Cake. Both appear in the revised and updated 35th anniversary edition of “The Cake Bible,” released last month.

Domingo cake, named after his favorite opera singer Placido Domingo, is one of the recipes that has been revised and updated, even though he initially thought it could not be improved.

But he removed some of the sour cream from the original version and replaced it with boiling water, which brought out the flavor of cocoa in the cake. Placido Domingo tasted the cake and sent him a telegram from Spain saying “Bravo”.

“The Cake Bible” was revolutionary when it was first published in 1988. It literally changed the way people bake cakes.

Before the book came out, it was standard procedure to cream the butter and sugar together before adding the dry ingredients. The reverse creaming method mixes the dry ingredients first before adding the butter with a small amount of liquid; the rest of the liquid is then added along with the eggs.

“Butter coats the flour particles, preventing them from hardening too much. So the texture is very soft but not too mushy. That’s the ideal way to do it,” he says.

II where there is no butter. He is quick to point out that during World War II, people used a similar method of greasing, but he was the first to figure out how to do it successfully with butter.

Reverse frosting alone was enough to cement his name in baking history, but “The Cake Bible” revolutionized the art in other ways as well.

He was the first American to insist on the inclusion of metric weights for measurement because they were much more precise than ounces and cups. He also praises the fact that most baking chocolate manufacturers now convolutedly list the percentage of cocoa in each bar.

He translated the French book “A Passion for Chocolate” into English, including the authors’ insistence on using chocolate with the right amount of cocoa for each dish. San Francisco physician Robert Steinberg read the book and traveled to France to meet the authors and learn about chocolate.

When he returned to America, Scharffen founded the Berger chocolate company and, at his insistence, added a percentage of cocoa to the chocolates. Other American companies soon followed suit.

Part of Beranbaum’s background is in food science, and that shapes the way she approaches recipes. For example, one-third of the weight of white chocolate is sugar. When she uses it instead of dark chocolate in a recipe, she calculates how much sugar to remove from the ingredients to keep it proportionally perfect.

He is obsessed with details. So perhaps it’s no surprise that when this book first came out—which was his first—he had the entire 1,000-page manuscript written down on a tape recorder. This way, he was able to listen to her read the proofs closely as a way to catch any mistakes.

It was worth the effort, he says. There was not a single mistake in the 592-page book.

He thought he would never have to change or revise it. But then times changed. Cake pans, which were always 1½ inches high, are now made 2 inches high. Since farmers now use young chickens to lay eggs, the amount of yolk in each egg has decreased.

Her husband, Woody Wolston, who worked with her on the last few books, says the yolk makes up two-fifths of the egg and the whites make up three-fifths. However, now the yolk constitutes as little as one-fifth of the egg; This is a potentially huge difference for the meticulous pastry chef.

“If you’re making a cheesecake that requires six egg yolks, you may (now) need nine,” she says.

So while his books now list how many egg whites and how many yolks to use – and it’s not always the same number – they now also tell you how to use each based on weight.

Of course, you can use whole eggs in your cakes without weighing them, but this will affect the final product.

“We are the opposite of anyone who wants to make it quick and easy and not worry about the results,” he says.

“I want it to be slow and hard.”

This is the only way to achieve perfection.