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"Hello, Cupcake!" Karen Tack and Alan Richardson
This is an adorable cookbook that was a Christmas present from my mom, just before I started this project - as a matter of fact, it was the last book I got before I declared a moratorium on new cookbooks until I finished. (Yes, this rule has been bent, mostly by amused friends and family members who want to make me squirm.)
It's mostly a cake decorating book - or more specifically a cupcake decorating book - for people who don't know how to decorate cakes. It has cupcake recipes, but the meat of the book is instructions on how to make cupcakes look like puppies or penguins or spaghetti and meatballs or a hundred other things. I love it. It appeals to my love of desserts, of tiny food, of illusion food, of fancy things, silly things, and of expending far too much effort on something that will soon be eaten and destroyed. It's marvelous.
When a friend invited us over for a potluck Christmas Eve dinner and asked me to bring a dessert, I knew I had to use this book. I found a recipe for Edible Ornaments, vanilla cupcakes decorated to look like Christmas tree ornaments, and had a blast making them. The cupcakes were tasty, and the decorations were easier than I thought. Ornament hangers were made from gumdrops and licorice, stuck into the cupcakes with pretzel sticks, and the details were made from candy beads, M&M's, licorice, fruit leather, colored sugar, and anything else edible I could find and stick on.
( pictures hidden back here for them what wants to see 'em )
"Williams-Sonoma Dessert," Abigail Johnson Dodge
I think this was the last of my shiny, beautiful Williams-Sonoma cookbooks. Like many of the others, it too was a gift from my mom. I've been saving it as a reward, mostly because I adore making desserts. I like cooking, and I love baking of any sort, but desserts are my favorite. They're luxurious, and fun, and beautiful, and they make people happy, and they're just wonderful.
I had some friends coming over just to visit one evening, and decided I wanted to make something sweet to share. And it was getting close to the end of the project and I was running low on dessert cookbooks to use, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to break this book out.
It was a rather last-minute idea, so choosing a recipe was made easier by limiting myself to ingredients I already had, and I wound up making Pound Cake. It's versatile dessert, and I had planned on dressing it up by grilling it and serving it with maple syrup, or jelly, or lemon curd.
There was no need. I tried to fancy the cake up with toppings, but all that did was detract from the deliciousness of the cake. This was quite possibly the platonic ideal of cake. I adore it, and I can't wait to make it again. I'm sure I'll make other recipes from this book, but they're going to have to fight hard to be as good as this was....
"Do-Ahead Holiday," Betty Crocker
And back to the glossy checkout lane pamphlets. This one is another hand-me-down from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran's mother, and another one that I had never actually opened until it was time to use it for this project. One of the many things that this project has taught me, sadly but wisely, is that these booklets, while shiny and pretty, tend to have far fewer useful recipes than they seem to on a first glance.
This book wasn't bad, per se, just less than useful. It mostly consisted of recipes for appetizers (not so helpful in day-to-day life), crowd-sized dishes (less useful for just my husband and myself), and desserts (which I really needed to move away from at this point). Searching it for a main dish was challenging, but I eventually found and decided to make Ham and Cheese Vegetable Strata. It looked straightforward, the flavors seemed like they ought to go together fairly well, and it made a big pan of stuff that ought to reheat well for nights that I was working late. Sounds reasonable, yes?
It was... not bad. Easy enough, though it required a 2-hour pre-cooking refrigeration step, inexpensive enough, and made plenty of food. It was just kind of bland, and the flavors and textures never quite blended like I wanted them to. We ate it, and didn't mind, but it's not something I'll make again. I'll probably keep the book with the goal of making something else from it again, but never actually get around to it.
Some things I learn and grow, and some things about myself I just accept.
This is an adorable cookbook that was a Christmas present from my mom, just before I started this project - as a matter of fact, it was the last book I got before I declared a moratorium on new cookbooks until I finished. (Yes, this rule has been bent, mostly by amused friends and family members who want to make me squirm.)
It's mostly a cake decorating book - or more specifically a cupcake decorating book - for people who don't know how to decorate cakes. It has cupcake recipes, but the meat of the book is instructions on how to make cupcakes look like puppies or penguins or spaghetti and meatballs or a hundred other things. I love it. It appeals to my love of desserts, of tiny food, of illusion food, of fancy things, silly things, and of expending far too much effort on something that will soon be eaten and destroyed. It's marvelous.
When a friend invited us over for a potluck Christmas Eve dinner and asked me to bring a dessert, I knew I had to use this book. I found a recipe for Edible Ornaments, vanilla cupcakes decorated to look like Christmas tree ornaments, and had a blast making them. The cupcakes were tasty, and the decorations were easier than I thought. Ornament hangers were made from gumdrops and licorice, stuck into the cupcakes with pretzel sticks, and the details were made from candy beads, M&M's, licorice, fruit leather, colored sugar, and anything else edible I could find and stick on.
( pictures hidden back here for them what wants to see 'em )
"Williams-Sonoma Dessert," Abigail Johnson Dodge
I think this was the last of my shiny, beautiful Williams-Sonoma cookbooks. Like many of the others, it too was a gift from my mom. I've been saving it as a reward, mostly because I adore making desserts. I like cooking, and I love baking of any sort, but desserts are my favorite. They're luxurious, and fun, and beautiful, and they make people happy, and they're just wonderful.
I had some friends coming over just to visit one evening, and decided I wanted to make something sweet to share. And it was getting close to the end of the project and I was running low on dessert cookbooks to use, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to break this book out.
It was a rather last-minute idea, so choosing a recipe was made easier by limiting myself to ingredients I already had, and I wound up making Pound Cake. It's versatile dessert, and I had planned on dressing it up by grilling it and serving it with maple syrup, or jelly, or lemon curd.
There was no need. I tried to fancy the cake up with toppings, but all that did was detract from the deliciousness of the cake. This was quite possibly the platonic ideal of cake. I adore it, and I can't wait to make it again. I'm sure I'll make other recipes from this book, but they're going to have to fight hard to be as good as this was....
"Do-Ahead Holiday," Betty Crocker
And back to the glossy checkout lane pamphlets. This one is another hand-me-down from
umbran's mother, and another one that I had never actually opened until it was time to use it for this project. One of the many things that this project has taught me, sadly but wisely, is that these booklets, while shiny and pretty, tend to have far fewer useful recipes than they seem to on a first glance.This book wasn't bad, per se, just less than useful. It mostly consisted of recipes for appetizers (not so helpful in day-to-day life), crowd-sized dishes (less useful for just my husband and myself), and desserts (which I really needed to move away from at this point). Searching it for a main dish was challenging, but I eventually found and decided to make Ham and Cheese Vegetable Strata. It looked straightforward, the flavors seemed like they ought to go together fairly well, and it made a big pan of stuff that ought to reheat well for nights that I was working late. Sounds reasonable, yes?
It was... not bad. Easy enough, though it required a 2-hour pre-cooking refrigeration step, inexpensive enough, and made plenty of food. It was just kind of bland, and the flavors and textures never quite blended like I wanted them to. We ate it, and didn't mind, but it's not something I'll make again. I'll probably keep the book with the goal of making something else from it again, but never actually get around to it.
Some things I learn and grow, and some things about myself I just accept.
