Cookbook Project, Book #195

[ladysprite]

"Flour," Joanne Chang

I have to admit, I came at this book rather backwards. I love the Flour bakery. When umbran and I were doing practice walks while I was training for the 3-Day, one of our routes would take us past Flour, and I have yet to find anything in the world that tastes better than one of their raspberry seltzers on a hot summer day. (Oh yeah, and their baked goods are excellent too.)

When I found out that there was an official Flour cookbook, I fell in love with it at the bookstore - the level of detail! The shiny, beautiful pictures! The conversational tone of the writing, the diversity of the baked goods, everything about it was custom-designed to appeal to me. And, because metaphysick is awesome, at one point when I was feeling particularly low last summer, he bought it for me as a surprise gift.

I've read through it more times than I can count, and I admit I've already dabbled with a couple of the recipes from it (the cornmeal lime cookies were excellent), but I finally decided that, for an official Project Recipe, I should make something a little more unique.

So this morning for breakfast I made Brown Sugar Popovers. Popovers are one of my favorite baked goods, and I always somehow wind up surprised at how easy they are to make, in spite of all the mythology and superstition around them, but I've never tried any recipe other than the hand-written one given to me by the same coworker who bought me the popover pan as a wedding gift lo those many years ago. And I had never thought of making them as a sweet pastry instead of a savory dinner accompaniment.

These were nothing short of amazing. They were simple enough to make while I was still groggy, semi-medicated, and working out morning pain; they came together in minutes, and we had all of the ingredients already in the pantry. They rose up higher than any popovers I've made before, and they were rich and sweet and buttery and warm and flaky and nothing short of perfect.

I love this book, and I can't wait to make just about every other recipe in it, but goodness knows I'll be making these popovers again. (And again, and again....)

Comments

[metaphysick.livejournal.com]

Hooray! I'm so happy the recipe yielded deliciousness!

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Sounds yummy!

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

There is a second Flour book, with some focus on savories.

I love the first Flour book. It's all delicious. The milky way pie is my go-to Thanksgiving recipe, a guaranteed knockout on a dessert buffet. But it'll kill you. The second book is not exactly full of diet food. But it's delicious and you can survive eating it. Chicken pot pie. Oil-poached salmon and tabbouli. Spicy turkey burgers with tomato jam. Watermelon and heirloom tomatoes with a killer vinaigrette. And a recipe for the raspberry syrup that goes into the seltzer.

[hermitgeecko.livejournal.com]

I thought Flour's fame (and correspondingly the Flour cookbook) were regional to Boston, or at least New England. Then I tripped over it in the Barnes + Nobles in Kalamazoo. I was so surprised!

Man, now I need a copy. *adds to wishlist*