A three-tiered chocolate cake crowned with pillows of whipped cream frosting. A warm-from-the-oven fruit pie complete with a golden-brown latticed crust. A rich, creamy custard whose silky texture reminds you of luxury and refinement.

For many of us, indulging in these and other delicious treats means visiting our local bakery or making unexciting substitutes from boxed mixes. But baking desserts from scratch, even desserts that you'd expect to find only in five-star restaurants, is a lot less difficult than you might think. In fact, anyone with the right mastery of the basic concepts, techniques, and strategies that classically trained pastry chefs use can bake and create desserts that taste spectacular—and look spectacular as well. When you master the secrets of baking, you can

• elevate everyday meals to restaurant-quality dining experiences,
• impress your family and friends with your culinary skills,
• rediscover the sheer joy of baking with everyday and uncommon ingredients,
• experiment with creating your own unique treats, and
• not have to resort to boxed mixes and store-bought goods.

Get a quick, easy, and comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of baking like a professional with The Everyday Gourmet: Baking Pastries and Desserts. These six lessons invite you to join Chef Stephen L. Durfee, an award-winning pastry chef and instructor from the famed Culinary Institute of America, as he demonstrates tried-and-true methods for baking everything from simple cookies and cakes to custards, cream puffs, and chocolate mousse. Filmed on site at the CIA's Greystone campus in Napa Valley and packed with dynamic studio demonstrations and opportunities to work hands-on in your own kitchen, these lessons give the novice and master baker alike practical tips and insights straight from one of the world's most respected culinary schools.

Start Baking with More Confidence

Unlike cookbooks (where all you can do is read the recipe, see the beautiful picture, and hope for the best outcome) and popular cooking shows (where the emphasis is more on entertainment than accessibility), The Everyday Gourmet: Baking Pastries and Desserts is fun to watch while at the same time highly interactive, academically rigorous, and deeply informative. By inviting you to learn with one of the CIA's great instructors, you know you'll be getting lessons that are more concerned with your education than with just entertainment.

Central to Chef Durfee's course is his ability to take the intimidation out of baking and replace it with confidence. You'll learn how to approach common baking techniques such as

• creaming eggs and sugar to the right consistency;
• rolling out and blind-baking flaky and crumbly pastry dough;
• whipping up your own frosting, whipped cream, and dessert sauces; and
• plating, decorating, and serving your desserts like a pro.

Along the way, you'll hone your ability to work with baking instruments from wire whisks, stand mixers, and pastry cream bags to ramekins, molds, and even a blowtorch—not to mention the most important tools any baker owns: his or her hands. You'll also get tips on setting up your baking station, testing for doneness, measuring ingredients properly, and more.

Learn Insider Tips for Making Delicious Desserts

You'll practice your skills on a range of baked goods that fit all sorts of meals, occasions, and cravings. Not only will you learn the step-by-step methods to recreating these delectable desserts, you'll learn insider tips and tricks for elevating your baked goods above everyone else's.

• Pound cake: After you've poured your batter, wet your finger with water and run it down the center. This will create a weak spot in the center of the cake so that, as it rises, it'll crack decoratively along that line and add a more homemade flair.
• Sweet biscuits: Try to get as many biscuits out of one layer of biscuit dough as possible. Biscuits made from rerolled scrap dough will be tougher than those made in the first batch.
• Chocolate mousse: Be careful to cool your melted chocolate before adding it to your whipped cream; if the melted chocolate is too hot, the cream will deflate and you'll end up with a mousse that's extremely dense.
• Chocolate éclairs: Rather than cut the top of your hollow éclair, fill it with pastry cream from two holes in the bottom. You'll know the éclair is filled all the way when you see pastry cream come back out of the first hole you've piped cream into.

In many instances Chef Durfee takes the time to show you what baked goods look like when they've been prepared the wrong way. By comparing successful and unsuccessful finished products, you'll dodge some of the missteps even the professionals can make.

Regardless of what secrets or tricks he's showing you, Chef Durfee always makes baking accessible. With more than 10 years of experience as a pastry chef instructor for the CIA, he is the consummate instructor whose expertise and delivery make baking exciting. And as for his artistry at creating eye-catching (and mouth-watering) pastries, his awards and honors speak volumes: the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef and designation as one of America's Top Ten Pastry Chefs by Pastry Art & Design and Chocolatier magazines, to name a few.

"So many people are interested in learning how to bake, but they're too intimidated because they think it's either too complicated or too scientific," says Chef Durfee. "The truth is that baking can be a lot of fun."

By the end of The Everyday Gourmet: Baking Pastries and Desserts, you'll find yourself in hearty agreement.