New Release: Super Duper Cupcakes

If you are ever asked to review a book about cupcakes, say yes, because there's only one proper way to review a book of this sort and it's yummy. Super-Duper Cupcakes: Sweet and Easy Cupcake Decorating by Elaine Cohen is a new book from Sterling Children's Books that brings cupcakes back down to basics for kids.

This book has only two cupcake recipes -- Deep Dark Chocolate and Vanilla Heaven. And, thankfully,  it also says that it's perfectly acceptable to use store-bought cake mix or even to buy pre-made cupcakes and just decorate them yourself. For an overwhelmed parent, this takes away a bit of guilt during a busy week.

Z chose the chocolate recipe and helped me make the batter. It was really easy and came out super light and airy.

The cupcakes baked up perfectly though, as usual, I overfilled the cups. I just can't ever seem to stick to 80 percent!

Once they cooled, we used a store-bought frosting (Duncan Hines Frosting Creations -- mint chocolate flavor) and then gathered together some leftover Easter candy (yes ... leftovers before Easter because they were actually our pre-Easter candies ... don't judge) and started decorating!

The book has lots of great themes--animals, vehicles, holidays--but we went (mostly) with flowers. I also tried the technique of putting a cookie cutter on the top to make a shape from sprinkles (or in this case, Nerds). Sadly, I had to use a circular biscuit cutter because apparently I only have Christmas cookie cutters. I'm going to have to remedy that sometime before next spring.

Anyway, this book was easy to use and Z loved just looking at it and dreaming of cupcakes. The cupcake recipe was wonderful, making fluffy cupcakes with a rich chocolate flavor. I will definitely try the vanilla recipe next time. If you're starting to bake with your children and are overwhelmed by some of the other options out there (which are gorgeous but probably out of reach for the average home baker), give this one a try!

Licking the spoon (and the bowl),
K and Z

A Week of Gift Ideas: For Anglophiles and Foodies

Everyone knows that a good cookbook can be a great gift and I've got two to recommend.

Jamie Oliver's Great Britain (strangely just Jamie's Great Britain in, well, Great Britain ... as if we in the colonies wouldn't recognize that cute, boyish face), is a book that I won from Tasha a few weeks ago. It's maybe less of a traditional cookbook and more of a celebration of British food but it's really fascinating! It's also a hefty hardcover which is obviously a great choice for a gift. There are a couple of recipes that I'm still going to attempt but mostly I've used it so far as a bit of eye candy and fuel for my raging anglophilia.

And a more seasonal choice is Delish: A Home-Baked Christmas. This is really a book for seasoned bakers, with recipes for stollen, panettone and christmas puddings. But if you have someone in your life that isn't afraid to make something spectacular and who happens to have access to candied fruits galore, why don't you give this to them and then reap the dessert rewards? Z has made me promise to try making the White Christmas Slice -- melted white chocolate, crisped rice cereal, raisins, coconut, dried apricots and glacé cherries made into a bark. It honestly sounds delicious.

In an eating mood all of a sudden,
K

A Hefty Journey Through Modernist Cuisine

This may not be the most appetizing imagery when discussing a cookbook but Modernist Cuisine has blown my mind. I meant to have this review done over a month ago but I just couldn't skim these amazing books after all. I ended up reading most of this 50 pound behemoth, my mind whirring with all sorts of revelations and notions. Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet have created something that cannot just be called a cookbook. Yes, there are recipes--mostly in volume 5 and 6--but I found the first four volumes to be where the real meat of this series was.

Each volume has something different to offer. Volume One is "History and Fundamentals" and it delivers. There's not only a history of cooking itself, from cooking fires to fast food, but also tidbits of food safety and some good, old-fashioned debunking of common kitchen/food myths. This volume will appeal to students of history and science. It explains what modernist cuisine is ("a new, intellectually motivated cuisine ... [with] a trend toward general appreciation of the scientific basis for cooking", pg. 1-52) and it has a few pages about how this book came to be. My BFF would be happy to know that there's a large section called "Microbiology for Cooks" that discusses various foodborne illnesses and the best ways to avoid them. This was an incredibly full volume and I wish I could share a list of all of the things I found fascinating but I would probably end up typing for hours. (P.S. MSG isn't actually bad for you and grilled meats might not increase your risk of cancer.)

Volume Two is "Techniques and Equipment" and it appears to be the largest volume in the set. The title is pretty self-explanatory as well. It covers classic and modern cooking techniques and talks about some of the equipment that you would find in a modernist kitchen. The most important technique seems to be "sous vide"-- cooking food in a water bath for even temperature distribution and control. If you ever wanted a better understanding of how each cooking technique (eg., boiling, broiling, sautéing) actually works, this is the place to look. Because of the large amount of information overload, the only thing that I took away from this volume is that when we go grill shopping this summer, we will be looking for a non-dome-shaped charcoal grill -- avoiding the uneven heat distribution of the dome and the flavorless cooking of a gas grill. I wish I could have absorbed so much more from this one!

Volume Three may be the most detailed volume though it is simply called "Animals and Plants". The first half--Animals--presents what the authors believe are the best ways to prepare many of the edible animals out there, from shellfish to duck. I have to say that it was a bit disturbing to see a picture of a live octopus that mentions its "curiosity, cleverness, and mischievousness" (pg. 3-24) on the opposite page from a mention of the many techniques to tenderize their tough flesh. But if you are looking for techniques for anything from squaring a large cut of tuna for sashimi to making sausages, it's probably in here. And then there are the Plants, fruits and vegetables, but this part of the volume is much smaller -- leading me to believe that either the authors are satisfied with many of the existing cooking and presentation methods for them or that they are not as central to modernist cuisine as meat is. Although, it could also mean that the techniques and preparations shown can be used on a wide variety of plant foods and don't need to be repeated in every iteration possible. After reading this volume, I definitely added a vacuum sealer to my kitchen wish list for quick marinades.

Volume Four is called "Ingredients and Preparations" and this is another highly interesting volume. From curing to gels, this volume covers all sorts of daunting techniques. I got a bit lost among the many specialized ingredients used to create gels, emulsions and more. But I now know (theoretically) how to make the perfect cup of espresso. In Seattle, this is a much-coveted skill!

Volume Five finally brings everything together into Plated-Dish Recipes. This is the only volume that I really skimmed. It appears that I'm more interested in the theoretical side of cooking than in the practical side. I guess this is where I admit that I'm much more adept at baking that cooking and that my techniques tend toward the simple, one-pot variety. Still, to see all of the possibilities out there makes me feel just a bit more adventurous and one day I might try a true modernist plated dish.

There is also a final volume--Kitchen Manual--that does not fit in the case but is spiral bound, something any cook will appreciate. This is the volume that most resembles a standard cookbook but without any of the 3500 pictures that grace the other five volumes, as it is the practical companion to the others. If I was to copy out one recipe to try later, it might be the Cantonese Fried Rice, now that I know the true role of high heat in a stir fry. Then again, it might be the Meyer Lemonade -- if I happen to have some fructose, citric acid and gum arabic around. Of course, it could be the Flank Steak Sous Vide with the Sweet Potato Fondant and a Salted Caramel Apple Puree for dessert. Or I could just hire a personal chef. Yes, I think that's the solution.

Modernist Cuisine contains some amazing and revolutionary photography including many "cut-away" shots -- like this one of a pot roast in a dutch oven under coals. I wish I could share more of the photographs with you. They are part of the reason that I took so long getting through these volumes. They are truly works of art in their own way. And I have to say that the authors are surprisingly not snobbish about food at all. They are just as interested in making the perfect burger and fries as they are in the perfect fois gras. This made for a much more enjoyable reading experience than I expected.

I would like to thank Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myrhvold's tech company, for the chance to borrow these volumes for review. I have only two wishes now. One is for six hundred and twenty five dollars so that I can own my own set of these books (only $450 on Amazon!) and the other is for a kitchen lab like the one above so that I can get to trying out some modernist techniques. In the meantime, I will have to be satisifed with the online Recipe Library, the Modernist Cuisine blog and my tiny, poorly-stocked kitchen.

Cooking up plans,
K

New Release: My Father's Daughter

Sometime, in all of the flurry and confusion of the holidays, I won a book on Twitter from Grand Central (an imprint of Hachette). All I knew was that it was Gwyneth Paltrow's new book. I thought it was a memoir (because apparently I didn't bother to read the subtitle) and though I rarely read memoirs, I kind of love Gwynnie so I thought it would be okay. Imagine my surprise last week when the book arrived and I realized it was a cookbook -- My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness.

Though you may remember Gwyneth's macrobiotic phase, she has since returned to more normal dining choices, only avoiding red meat. But in this book, she not only celebrates the food that she makes for and with her children, Apple (who is one day younger than Z) and Moses, but she tells some of why she went macrobiotic during her father's fight against cancer (he passed away almost ten years ago). She tells many stories about cooking or eating with her father, her mother, her adopted family in Spain and her grandparents. It's very sweet and very down to earth. She offers some healthy alternatives for sweetener (ie. agave syrup) or bacon (turkey or duck bacon) but also allows for the more regularly accessible choices in her recipes. Since she doesn't eat red meat and Apple is vegetarian, she has mostly vegetable, seafood and poultry recipes. There are also some delicious looking breakfast and dessert recipes.

The photographs in this book are gorgeous and there are pictures for maybe a quarter of the recipes. There are also some beautiful family photos from her childhood and even some with her kids (though very few that show their faces). And Gwyneth isn't afraid to have less than glamorous photos in the book -- in one you even see a bra strap! That's my kind of gal.

I always like to make something from a cookbook before reviewing it to make sure that it's not a chef's cookbook. Last night, I chose to make Maple-Dijon Roasted Winter Vegetables to go with our steaks. I used carrot, sweet potato and butternut squash. They are cut into strips tossed with a dijon mustard/pure maple syrup/oil/salt/pepper mix and baked for a relatively short amount of time. This is what they looked like before baking. Just the colors were enough to raise my mood!

So how did they turn out? Absolutely delicious. I happen to strongly dislike dijon mustard (and I considered using mustard powder instead) but chose to go for the full flavor and I don't regret it. Z isn't a big fan of squash or sweet potato but he ate a good amount of both. The only thing was that I wished there had been a little more caramelization because those parts were super delish!

What else am I looking forward to making from this cookbook? There's a miso soup recipe that looks really simple and delicious. I always enjoy eating it when we're out but have never made it at home. I will definitely try the corn chowder and the polenta with fresh corn this summer. And the Spaniard in me has always wanted to make paella but I don't like most seafood so I'm very happy that she has a vegetable paella recipe. But probably the next thing I will make are Bruce Paltrow's World-Famous Pancakes. With a bit of sugar and buttermilk and an overnight set-up, I expect greatness. I am really so happy to have this book and I will read it regularly for the anecdotes as much as the recipes.

A little bit drooly,
K

A Gift That Keeps on Giving

What is the true gift that keeps on giving?  A cookbook, of course!  When I was placing an order of Christmas gifts from Chronicle Books, I decided to buy a cookbook for myself.  I was tempted by many of them but ultimately decided on one that I thought I would use regularly and that would make part of my home duties easier.  Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever by Diane Phillips might not actually be the best cookbook ever but it's a very useful book with easy to follow recipes for one of the most underused appliances in the kitchen.

I don't think I've ever reviewed a cookbook before and I have to admit that it's because I rarely make recipes from them so I don't feel I can review them.  I buy cookbooks, spend an afternoon or two looking through them and daydreaming about better meals, and then promptly put them in the kitchen cupboard and forget that I even own them.  The only two that sit out on the counter are The Joy of Cooking (which I use to check on baking temperatures for sweet potatoes and trivial things like that) and Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook which I have actually used a good number of times.  But now I will need to find an accessible spot for this slow cooker book because I've used it twice and had great results so far!

The first recipe I tried was for Christmas and was the "Not-Your-Mom's Cranberry Orange Sauce".  Well, any homemade cranberry sauce is not my mom's because she's an Ocean Spray canned sauce devotee.  When she wants to class it up above and beyond the gel log, she buys the variety with whole berries in it!  So, this was a big experiment for me.  It was very easy to throw everything in the crock (berries, orange zest, sugar, orange juice and spices) and three hours later I had a beautiful sauce.  We ended up serving it both at Christmas dinner (the Ocean Spray can is still in the pantry) and at Christmas dessert where we spooned it over a vanilla bean bundt cake.  It was a bit tart for my taste because I'm a flavor wuss but Z and the husband loved it.  It was something that I would have never stood over the stove to make but putting the ingredients together and then walking away made it worth the experiment.

(my bread and the cookbook)

Then last night I made the cover recipe, "Old-Fashioned Beef Stew with Vegetables".  One of the true tests of any recipe is if your finished product looks like the picture in the cookbook.  I frequently fail that with my Martha Stewart baking book (although the flavor of the lopsided cakes is always exceptional) so I was very pleased to serve up my first bowl of this stew, hold it up next to the book and rejoice in their identicalness.  It tasted great too!  And because I didn't have to spend a lot of time watching the pot, I decided to make bread to go with the stew.  I made this oatmeal bread from the recipe on the King Arthur bread flour bag and it was absolutely delicious.  I will be making that more often now too!  The only issue I had with the stew recipe was that I didn't know the size of my slow cooker and even though I made a reduced-size recipe (because we didn't need 8 servings), it still barely fit in the pot and there was not really room to move things around in it.  That's my fault though and not the fault of the book.  Each recipe actually says what size cooker you should use.  When I buy a new one (which I want to do now), I will choose based on what size the recipes that I want to make are.

Next, I think I will probably try making a pork loin or tenderloin (I never make pork except for faux-Kalua pork roast) or maybe my own baked beans.  Do you have a favorite slow cooker dish?

Stuffing some bellies,
K


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