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ladysprite"Easiest-Ever Holiday Menus," Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks
We are finally getting to the end of the glossy checkout lane booklets. This is yet another hand-me-down from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran's mother, and yet another one that I hadn't looked through until now. On a first glance, it has a bunch of recipes that *look* interesting. Unfortunately, they range from impractical on a day-to-day basis (Rosemary Crown Roast of Pork) to not nearly as cool once you read them (a Cranberry Raspberry Trifle that just uses pre-made pound cake and pudding).
Ultimately, since we were looking for a weeknight dinner dish, we wound up making Smoky Lumberjack Chili. I do not view this as violating my oath to leave the chili-making to my husband, since this bore very little resemblance to chili - it involved Little Smokies sausages, refried beans, and barbecue sauce. On the other hand, in spite of the odd and not particularly chili-like ingredients, it was fairly tasty. Not gourmet food, but decent cold-weather dinner.
And maybe someday I'll try the trifle anyway, with homemade pound cake....
"Secrets of Fat-Free Baking," Sandra Woodruff
This was another holiday gift from my mother when I first started cooking in college, and another contribution to my body image disorder. After looking through it once, I decided to hide it on the bottom shelf and not look at it again - honestly, I'd rather just not have dessert than have the trimmed-down edited stuff described here. I don't care how earnest they are, I refuse to believe that either lecithin granules or mashed prunes can be used to replace all of the butter and fat in a recipe without changing the taste at all. By the time I came to the "very best fudge brownie" recipe that called for prune butter, fat-free egg substitute, and a whopping 4oz of unsweetened chocolate, I more or less gave up.
But the project is the project, so I soldiered on until I found the recipe for Raspberry Ripple Cake, in the section on reducing fat by using low-fat margarine. No lecithin granules, no mashed prunes, and I could cheat and use actual butter.
Alas, it was still clearly a low-fat cake. The texture was a bit rubbery, and the raspberry flavor was almost nonexistent. On the other hand, it was cake. Most of it went into the freezer to become Emergency Dessert, since when you're having a crummy day and need cake at 11pm, being slightly rubbery and low-fat is not as important as having something sweet and desserty Right Now.
The cookbook, on the other hand, will continue to live on the bottom shelf, hidden among the other non-useful books I can't bring myself to throw away.
"The Complete Dessert Cookbook," Johna Blinn
This is another ancient-looking book, a giant paperback that I believe I got for $0.99 at Half-Price Books when I was living in Columbus. Being in grad school, splurging was fine as long as it was on something that cost less than $2. And, for that amount of money, cheap cookbooks offered a pretty decent return on investment.
Unfortunately, being rather outdated-looking and not having any shiny pictures, the book never actually got used until now. And, on a quick look-through, it didn't actually look that useful. It has hundreds upon hundreds of recipes, true, but none of them seemed actually useful. They weren't bad, exactly, just.... not interesting enough to actually expend any effort in trying.
Until I found the recipe for Maple Oatmeal Bars. I am a sucker for bar cookies, and for anything maple flavored. I figured these would never live up to my dream for them, but I decided to try anyway. And much to my surprise and delight, they were pretty darn good. Chewy, sweet but not cloying, and actually tasting like maple instead of just sugar. They were even better served warm, with ice cream.
Hm. Now I want to make more Emergency Cake....
We are finally getting to the end of the glossy checkout lane booklets. This is yet another hand-me-down from
umbran's mother, and yet another one that I hadn't looked through until now. On a first glance, it has a bunch of recipes that *look* interesting. Unfortunately, they range from impractical on a day-to-day basis (Rosemary Crown Roast of Pork) to not nearly as cool once you read them (a Cranberry Raspberry Trifle that just uses pre-made pound cake and pudding).Ultimately, since we were looking for a weeknight dinner dish, we wound up making Smoky Lumberjack Chili. I do not view this as violating my oath to leave the chili-making to my husband, since this bore very little resemblance to chili - it involved Little Smokies sausages, refried beans, and barbecue sauce. On the other hand, in spite of the odd and not particularly chili-like ingredients, it was fairly tasty. Not gourmet food, but decent cold-weather dinner.
And maybe someday I'll try the trifle anyway, with homemade pound cake....
"Secrets of Fat-Free Baking," Sandra Woodruff
This was another holiday gift from my mother when I first started cooking in college, and another contribution to my body image disorder. After looking through it once, I decided to hide it on the bottom shelf and not look at it again - honestly, I'd rather just not have dessert than have the trimmed-down edited stuff described here. I don't care how earnest they are, I refuse to believe that either lecithin granules or mashed prunes can be used to replace all of the butter and fat in a recipe without changing the taste at all. By the time I came to the "very best fudge brownie" recipe that called for prune butter, fat-free egg substitute, and a whopping 4oz of unsweetened chocolate, I more or less gave up.
But the project is the project, so I soldiered on until I found the recipe for Raspberry Ripple Cake, in the section on reducing fat by using low-fat margarine. No lecithin granules, no mashed prunes, and I could cheat and use actual butter.
Alas, it was still clearly a low-fat cake. The texture was a bit rubbery, and the raspberry flavor was almost nonexistent. On the other hand, it was cake. Most of it went into the freezer to become Emergency Dessert, since when you're having a crummy day and need cake at 11pm, being slightly rubbery and low-fat is not as important as having something sweet and desserty Right Now.
The cookbook, on the other hand, will continue to live on the bottom shelf, hidden among the other non-useful books I can't bring myself to throw away.
"The Complete Dessert Cookbook," Johna Blinn
This is another ancient-looking book, a giant paperback that I believe I got for $0.99 at Half-Price Books when I was living in Columbus. Being in grad school, splurging was fine as long as it was on something that cost less than $2. And, for that amount of money, cheap cookbooks offered a pretty decent return on investment.
Unfortunately, being rather outdated-looking and not having any shiny pictures, the book never actually got used until now. And, on a quick look-through, it didn't actually look that useful. It has hundreds upon hundreds of recipes, true, but none of them seemed actually useful. They weren't bad, exactly, just.... not interesting enough to actually expend any effort in trying.
Until I found the recipe for Maple Oatmeal Bars. I am a sucker for bar cookies, and for anything maple flavored. I figured these would never live up to my dream for them, but I decided to try anyway. And much to my surprise and delight, they were pretty darn good. Chewy, sweet but not cloying, and actually tasting like maple instead of just sugar. They were even better served warm, with ice cream.
Hm. Now I want to make more Emergency Cake....
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 01:13 pm (UTC)I just object to the insistence that you can take a standard recipe for baked goods, like chocolate chip cookies, substitute prune mush for all of the fat, and not change the taste or texture at all.