Baking Cookbooks

I love acquiring baking cookbooks... well good baking cookbooks that is. I hate those ones that only have a couple recipes that interest you. Anyhow, a couple weeks ago I bought this cookbook (which is not just baking related), Carnations EASY-DOES-IT Cookbook.

Reading through it has been the funniest thing! First off, the publishing copyright is 1958. Which should tell you a little about what is to be found inside. In complete it reads as a 'house-wife primer', how the little lady can make her daily life/chores easier for herself. And thus I would like to now list some of my favorite lines:

"Take a tip from your husband. Run your home as efficiently as he runs his office! Over 1,000 meals a year makes you a B.H.E (thats short for Big Household Executive) in your kitchen."

"If Men could change the time-honored wedding ceremony, some of them might suggest, "Love, honor and make good gravy!" Keep lumps out of your gravy!"

"BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT!"

"How Did Folks Manage to Entertain B. TV (before television?)"

"Sooner or later, every husband has an attack of barbecue-itis. Properly encouraged, this disease guarantees you a summer vacation from the kitchen!"

"Children and guests are seldom at their best in adult party surroundings. Isn't your party the time to have youngsters greet guests they know, and then disappear, or have dinner quietly by themselves?"

"You're not just impressing your family....every day, at every meal, you're making memories for them."

I had a laugh at the cookbook. It doesn't have the greatest sounding recipes, but as a cookbook collector I felt the need to have it anyways.

I found some other baking cookbooks at the library that I really really want to have in my own personal collection as well. These are:

Martha Stewart's Cookies

Hello! Its Martha Stewart Related, of course its going to be Fabulous!

Duncan Hines: Cake Mix Magic 2

Um, Cake Mix Magic 2? Is there an original Cake Mix Magic as well? I looked for it at the library, but alas, they had no such thing. This is an amazing resource. Sometimes I can get cake mixes really cheap, and this has lots of recipes to liven up the basic box mixes.

Pillsbury: Holiday Baking

Holidays included in this book are: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Years. Mainly its filled with sweet treats to make, but also sprinkled in are some party appetizers as well. Hello! Who wouldn't see the Peppermint Whoopie Pies on the front cover and not want to own this cookbook? Also I have seen many cookbooks recently for Whoopie Pies... so I guess they are making a comeback. Either way any cookbook about or including Whoopie Pies is tops in my book.

Thats it for this post. I will hopefully have some time tomorrow to write a post for the cake(s) I made today (well made most of anyways, I will put the topping on them tomorrow before consumption at Thanksgiving Dinner)

Happy Thanksgiving to You and Yours!

Chai Spiced Tea Loaves with Mini Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

I have taken a month long break from the blog, but now I am back. My grandfather passed away a month ago and after that I put all my stuff in storage, moved in with my grandmother to keep her company & pay off the few bills I have. I also found a job in the month I have been away.

Today I am back at the baking! Thanksgiving is in a few days and I decided to bake a couple different things for the occasion.  Today I made Chai Spiced Tea Loaves with Mini Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. A few years ago I actually made the Tea Loaves (minus the chocolate chips) for the first time. They were the best things I made that Christmas from the Smorgasbord of goodies I tried my hand at.

This time I decided to add in some mini chocolate chips to give a sweet little punch to the delectable tea loaves.

Tea Loaves:
1/2 cup water
1 tea bag (black tea)
3 cups All Purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Chai Spice Blend
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
3/4 cup Vanilla Low-Fat Yogurt
2 sticks Butter (softened)
1 cup sugar
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
5 large eggs
(I also added in 3/4 cup to 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips)
Glaze Topping:
1 tablespoon water
1 cup Powdered Sugar
 
Pre-Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease & flour 6 mini loaf pans

Microwave 1/2 cup water for 1.5 to 2 minutes. Steep Tea Bag in Water.

In Medium Bowl Combine Flour, Chai Spice, Baking Powder & Soda, and Salt.

In Small bowl mix yogurt with 1/3 cup of the cooled tea.

In a Large bowl, with mixer on medium, beat butter until creamy (about 1 minute).Gradually beat in both sugars. Beat 2 minutes, until fluffy. Reduce speed to low, beat in eggs 1 at a time until well blended. Beat in a little of the flour mix, alternating with a little of the yogurt mix until both are just combined in the butter mix. (At this point I stirred in the chocolate chips). Spoon batter evenly into the mini loaf pans.

Bake 30 - 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaves comes out clean. Cool loaves 15 minutes and then remove from pans and cool on racks for 2 hours.

Mix the glaze topping items together and drizzle over the top of the loaves (best if done while on the wire cooling racks with wax paper underneath or even with the loaves just sitting on wax paper themselves)

These loaves can be pre-made and then wrapped in parchment paper, put in ziplock bags and frozen until later (probably no more than 6 months though).

Mini Snickerdoodle Cookies w/Chocolate Glaze Drizzle

Snickerdoodle cookies are very tricky to make. It's a 'wet' dough that sticks to everything! It has to be chilled (I chose to freeze it rather than refrigerate the dough as that kept it solid long enough for me to work with it) before you can bake it. The Recipe I used was as follows:

Ingredients:
*1 cup butter (I substituted margarine)
*1 1/2 cups sugar (I have made them with both regular sugar and brown sugar)
*2 large eggs 
*2 3/4 cups flour
* 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 
*1 teaspoon baking soda 
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*3 tablespoons sugar (Again you can decide regular or brown sugar)
*3 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

Mix butter (or margarine), 1 1/2 cups sugar and eggs thoroughly in a large bowl with a hand mixer.

Combine flour (which should be sifted), cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Blend dry ingredients into butter mixture.

Chill dough, and chill an ungreased cookie sheet for about 10-15 minutes in the fridge. When you put the dough in to chill preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons sugar, and 3 teaspoons cinnamon in a small bowl. (you can use less cinnamon according to taste)

Scoop 1-2 inch balls of dough, place in the sugar/ cinnamon mixture. (1 inch balls make mini cookies)

Coat by gently rolling balls of dough in the sugar-cinnamon mixture.

Place on chilled ungreased cookie sheet, and bake 10 minutes.

Remove from pan immediately.

After the cookies had fully cooled I took some Duncan Hines Chocolate Amazing Glaze (http://www.duncanhines.com/products/glazes) microwaved it as instructed, then with all the cookies very close together on several overlays of wax paper, drizzled the glaze across the cookies. Store in a covered container, stacking won't be possible with the glaze as it remains sticky. You may also want to refrigerate before traveling with them, I did.

                                                                           Enjoy! ~ Sarah E. Lynch

I Bake, Therefore I Am!

I will tell you right from the start, I am not a talented writer. I've written my fair share of poetry and greeting card-esque passages, all decently prosed. But when it comes to writing news articles, stories, novels, etc... Well I leave a lot to be desired to say the least. 

But something I can do fairly well is Bake. Now don't take that the wrong way, that is to say, I can't cook. Well I can cook a slight number of things, but not enough to make a whole weeks worth of decent, edible meals. But when I bake something in the universe upends itself and allows me to make some delicious treats without me knowing exactly how I am capable of baking and following detailed recipes, but not being able to cook detailed meals.

Yesterday I was at Goodwill and looking through the cookbooks. I love finding cookbooks solely about baking, I have begun to have a slight addiction to buying them. Well of course yesterday was no different. I found two books I just had to have. The first (and the one I am most excited about): Gourmet's Best Desserts. The second: Readers Digest; Cakes, 1,001 Classic Recipes from Around the World.

Gourmet Best Desserts was published in 1987. Looking through the 500-odd pages I am feeling slightly daunted. I am in no way a professional baker or pastry chef, and many of those recipes are very detailed and intricate. But also the book includes tips, tricks, explanations of techniques that you are going to need to use. So I am excited to dive in and attempt most of the recipes on my own.

Cakes, 1,001 Classic Recipes was published in 2003. And its pretty much your straight forward recipe book. No tips, tricks or techniques listed for information on how to perform said recipes. But a good cookbook I think to have for reference when needing to make someone a sweet treat for a special occasion.

For awhile now this Blog has sat lonely and empty. I couldn't figure out just what to blog about. But right now all I can think about is baking. I've wanted to own my own bakery or bakery styled food cart for a year or two now. But as I am not anywhere close to be being in a position to having either of those things, this Blog will have to do for now. I guess it will be my baking journal of sorts. Right now I only mainly have the web cam for pictures, so most pictures I will include for now will be lower quality than I would like. But hopefully sooner rather than later I will be able to purchase a camera.


So thats my Blog entry for today. Short and Sweet. Check back later for updates on how my self-taught baking lessons are going!
                                                                                                       ~Sarah E. Lynch