Gluten-Free Dessert Recipes Customer Testimonials

"I made the carrot cake from your cookbook for a birthday party.  After tasting it, I realized how I had almost forgotten what "real" cake tastes like!  It was almost a religious experience....LOL!!! My husband loves it also and he is the non-GF one.

I also gave a piece to the secretary for our group at work and I told her it was GF.  She had a funny look on her face and I got the impression she was not overwhelmed with having been given a non-conformist cake sample.  : )  Well.....she went ahead and sampled and instantly registered a look of shock on her face.  She looked right at me and said...."I thought gluten free was synonymous with no taste! This cake is absolutely delicious!"  Oh....those gluten eating folk are so clueless!  I have converted another of their kind to MY way of thinking!

I also made the chocolate buckwheat torte that is pictured on your cookbook cover and it was a BIG hit with [even] the gluten eating crowd. I served it on a puddle of raspberry coulis and topped it off with whipped cream and it was fantastic.....very light and chocolaty!

I am having guests this week-end and will make another delight from your book.  It may just be the Boston Cream Pie....."

"I ordered your Gluten Free Desserts book shortly after I was diagnosed with celiac and not long before my father was diagnosed earlier this year. I drooled over the beautiful pictures and slowly built up my supply of flours. This weekend was the first big 'event' -- my parents' 35th wedding anniversary -- since we were diagnosed, so I decided to pull out all the stops and make a cake for them. I didn't get very far into the book before I found something that looked delicious enough to try -- your chocolate ganache cake. I doubled the recipe for the ganache to use for frosting.

It was a huge hit! We all had giant pieces, even my non-celiac mom, sister and husband, and fought over the leftovers -- but not before my dad tried to steal the ganache off everyone's pieces. It was deliciously rich, moist, and most important of all, chocolatey. I have to say that since my diagnosis, what I miss most is being able to walk into a bakery and order the most ridiculously chocolate thing on the menu. Your cookbook has given me hope that I can still have my treats!

Thank you for your wonderful book!"

"I wanted to let you know that I made the yellow cake recipe (pg. 42!) this morning and it's truly fabulous.

I made a half-recipe (the equivalent of one 9" round) and split it up. I like to make mini-cakes for my daughter, so I have 6" personal pan pizza / cake pans, and it made about 4 of those. I baked them for about 22-24 minutes, until it looked like they were starting to pull away from the sides, and they passed the "spring back when touched" test and the toothpick test. They are very airy and light! (We ate one and are making her a triple-layer cake for a birthday tomorrow!)

"Thanks for your great recipes! And thanks for your help!"

"I made the Chocolate Ganache Cake (Gluten-Free Desserts, p. 20) with my own icing for my dad's birthday. Dad has been on a GF diet since the early 80s. This is the best cake he has had since then [in nearly 25 years!]. He was blown away by how moist it is."

This following is an excerpt from the gluten-free book review Lucy (at Free-From Blog) wrote about our Gluten-Free and Wheat-Free Gourmet Desserts book.

"...Our gluten free daughter has been putting it in her packed lunch for school all week, so it obviously was a hit.

The grown-ups ate it and REALLY enjoyed it. It is a fabulous cake. The only downside is that it is a massive cake, at least twice as big as a normal-sized cake (or UK normal, anyway - perhaps this is a hangover from rationing!), and simply demands to be eaten. In fact, the cake insisted that I eat two slices yesterday.

Next time I shall cut the quantities in half, otherwise I shall have to buy a whole new wardrobe.

The book itself is gorgeous too - beautifully produced, with great pictures (one for each recipe, which I think is important), good, clear instructions, and a big easy-to-read type-face. I did have to go to greater lengths than usual to find all the different gluten free flours, most of which are not available in the local supermarkets (though they are available from specialist suppliers online). Now I have all the flours needed, I am set.

Next time, which may even be this afternoon, I shall make the Date and Nut cake, which looks ideal for taking camping - our plans for the weekend.

Our recommendation: buy this [book]."

"I finally got around to making the carrot cake (actually I made it on Mothers Day).  We had a picnic on the beach and I brought the cake - half of the people there were on a gluten free diet, but everyone LOVED the cake.  There was not a crumb (and I literally mean not a crumb - for my daughters were picking off all the leftovers off the plate).  Everyone is asking me to make the cake again and my Mom has already asked me to purchase a book for her."

"In baking and eating your Artisan Bread and Buckwheat Bread I finally feel like gluten free baking is coming of age."

"I am interested in purchasing a second copy of Michael Eberhart's Gluten Free Gourmet Desserts. I first purchased his book at the Celiac Fair in Suffolk County 2 years ago. I gave it to my son who had recently been diagnosed with Celiac. His wife has made some of the best desserts I ever had from his book."

"I now have also been diagnosed with Celiac and want to get my own copy of the book. I would much rather have a nice book than random recipes printed off the internet. I have reccommended this book to my friends with and without Celiac. I hope you continue to sell the book and look forward to your new book. Thanks for the great recipes!"

"This is a beautiful cookbook. Very thorough, great layout and the photos are outstanding. Excellent all around, I am so thrilled that I ordered this!!

I saved the book package to open for a special time as a treat to myself. Which was yesterday. Four kids.....enough said.

...[now] trying to decide between Chocolate Zucchini Bread and Chocolate Raspberry cupcakes, or Chocolate Almond Buckwheat Torte."

I bought your book last week and spent most of yesterday trying out recipes. The peanut butter pie is terrific! My pie crust making needs some adjustments, but for a first attempt, I am pleased. The filling is delicious! And it's gluten free!! WOW! I also made the peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips, the chocolate chip cookies, and the double chocolate cookies with carmel bits. (In the chocolate chip recipe, I switched the cornstarch for tapioca (I am corn intolerant too) but resolved to tweak it a bit more next time, perhaps add part mesquite/part tapioca instead of all tapioca. My husband and sons loved everything, though!

So nice to see them smiling after eating a treat, instead of guzzling down a quart of milk to get their saliva going again!

Yours is the first book that really takes taste to the next level. Our whole family deals with celiac disease and multiple food allergies, and our youngest son was just diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes just before Halloween. We've waded through some pretty awful gluten free meals and desserts in the past.... but things are looking up! I've bought dozens of cook books but your book is definitely the best! I can't wait to try the rest of the recipes! I offer one suggestion for the next book: it would be absolutely wonderful if you added nutrition information for each recipe, especially a carb count. That would really help out with insulin adjustments.

Well, it's [now] Tuesday and the chocolate carmel cookies I made Sunday night are already completely gone! Tell your wife my husband is a dentist and he's pretty darn nervous about the delicious sweets proliferating in our household since the purchase of your dessert book! My son (with Type1 Diabetes), made me figure his dinner insulin last night to include a piece of the peanut butter pie and a chocolate caramel cookie! And tho my husband frowned a bit, he broke into a grin and dug into the dessert plate himself -- it's been a long time since dessert tasted so good!

I used to bake (before celiac) all our breads and treats, and everything just came to a halt suddenly when we were diagnosed. I immediately tacked on a few extra allergies for myself, which was overwhelming. For awhile I just quit cooking "creatively" and bought mixes and boxes that were "safe". I was afraid I'd hurt my family accidentally, I guess. For so long, we ate for "fuel", not for taste. When Hunter [my son] ended up with diabetes last fall, I thought "I HAVE to start baking and cooking "REAL" food again. No more bland mixes. I have to find a way to get back some sense of normalcy for our family, especially Hunter."

My husband, who paid his way through college and med school working as a bar tender and chef, jumped in to offer help researching whole food dinners. (gluten free/ corn free /soy free /potato free /diabetic-safe - whew!) I will never forget the first dinner he brought to the table - eating it, I was so stunned I could barely chew. Tears poured down my cheeks. I cannot express how blissful it felt to eat that meal. I had completely forgotten how joyous! a delicious dinner with family and friends could be. Right after that, I met another woman (with a celiac/diabetic son too) who gave me a bag of her homemade cookies. Her cookies were so good compared to the ones I'd been buying...

I threw all our boxed versions out, and inspired by her efforts, bought every gluten free dessert book I could find and started experimenting. That was last Fall. There have been a few successes, but most of the good things came simply from experimenting with and converting my old favorite recipes. Not so much from my immense new collection of recipe books. Oh, some were "okay" and definitely better than the boxed items.... but none were spectacular. (I didn't have tears pouring down my face)

You and your wife, though,... your dessert recipes are different!! They are spectacular! And I can't wait to try the rest of them! Most celiacs (or those on a gluten free diet anyway) have gotten so used to mediocrity... and it doesn't have to be that way! NO MORE MEDIOCRITY!  With a little extra time and effort, gluten free can be extraordinary.... maybe even better than wheat — maybe even (am I really saying this?) a blessing in disguise!!

And to think I was scolding myself: "Kel, OF ALL THINGS - YOU DO NOT NEED yet ANOTHER GLUTEN FREE DESSERT BOOK!" Funny how life is never quite what you expect!!

Thanks to you and your family, (and make sure you let me know when your next book is available!)

Warm regards,

[and, a few days later, Kelly sent this email update to us...]

Hi Mike,

WOW! TELL YOUR WIFE: THE CARROT CAKE IS FABULOUS!!! My husband did NOT believe it was gluten free!! My kids thought it was AWESOME! And I sat enjoying it (my favorite cake!) with a little tear rolling down my cheek! Such Bliss!

I ran out of white rice flour so I didn't get to try the other recipes I had marked, but as soon as the flour arrives, I'll get right back in the kitchen.

I am convinced I can sell your books EASILY in my store [I plan to open this year]!! You guys are going to put smiles on a lot of faces around here!!!

I am SO happy I ordered your book!

"I received your cookbook a few weeks ago and so far I have tried the chocolate-almond-buckwheat cake and (just today) the carrot cake.Yum!

Thank you so much for the hard work it must have taken you and your wife to sort out the ratios of various flours to get just the right texture for each dessert.

I was a bit sad to think that I'd have to trade in most of the recipes in my favorite Baking with Julia cookbook when I realized I'd need to be gluten-free. Today I am quite happily enjoying my warm carrot cake and looking forward to trying out all of your other recipes."