It's All About the Food

No longer do people avoiding eggs and dairy have to accept second-string (or third-string, or ...) cupcakes, thanks to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I'd bought this to bake birthday cupcakes for a toddler with severe and extensive food allergies: no one realized they were egg- and dairy-free. This is a great book for anyone baking for vegans, those with food allergies, or anyone who likes cupcakes.

At first, I was hesitant to commit to a full vegan cookbook and tried the sample chocolate cupcake recipe. It wowed everyone, I bought the book, and baked over a gross (a dozen dozen) of vegan cupcakes this summer.

So far I've made the chocolate (with chocolate, mint and coconut icings), lemon-lemon, vanilla, and carrot cake (with cream cheese) cupcakes. All were yummy. The carrot cake is the leading favorite: a few bites of intense, carrot-cakey goodness, perhaps even better than Dorie Greenspan's carrot cake. I am determined to make the green tea cupcakes before winter. Additionally, there are low-fat and gluten-free versions of the basic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.

Complaints are few: I upped the cocoa content from 1/3 to 1/2 cup in the chocolate cupcake recipe; Republicans will want to skip the sections where the authors write about "cruelty-free" baking.

Because the recipes usually use oil (rather than margarine) as the fat, each cupcake recipe is super-easy, requiring only two mixing bowls and a whisk. (Icings usually require a mixer to beat the margarine.) Soy cream cheese is the most exotic vegan ingredient I've used so far (green matcha tea the most exotic non-vegan ingredient). If you aren't baking for vegans or the dairy-averse, I see no reason not to use dairy ingredients in the recipes. Plus — import for the parents of toddlers — without raw eggs in the batter, small children can lick beaters and bowls without anyone fretting over salmonella. (I eat raw batter, but certain short household members will need to be much older.)

One important thing: if you are baking for someone who doesn't eat dairy, check your margarine: most margarine contains milk products like whey or casein. Makes sense to me too. You may need to find the vegan section or or make a special trip to the vegan grocery store.

Will I bake from it again? Yes!

Posted by SusieJ at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Baking: From My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan, Houghton Mifflin, 2006

Dorie Greenpsan has written what should be the defining home baking book for the beginning of the 21st century, as important as The Joy of Cooking was in the mid-20th Century. This book is for the home baker, not the pro-wannabe or over-exacting baker targeted by Martha Stewart and Rose Levy Birnbaum. There are a few recipes from her French training and her professional career, but most are American classics (biscuits, apple pie, chocolate layer cake). It covers breakfast through dessert.

This book first entranced me as I read it on my train ride home from work. It is a readable cookbook, more than simply directions. Greenspan discusses what makes each recipe special to her, and outlines basic techniques. By the end of the ride, I was hungry.

I wanted to bake every recipe in the book. I still do.

Her directions are excellent. At critical stages, she tells you what to expect. After cutting butter into flour for biscuits, she says the butter should be size of peas down to flakes of oatmeal, and everything in between. She recommends placing a cookie sheet under most baking pans to prevent over-baking the bottom. Each recipe includes appetizing variations.

Final results have been consistently good, although some recipes have had some easily-recoverable errors in the directions, such as forgetting to include the poppy seeds in the directions for the lemon poppy seed muffins or stating that a melted-chocolate hot-water mixture would be smooth, but actually seized (and un-seized when beaten into the buttercream). With luck, a corrected second edition will be published.

If you have only one book for baking, this is the book to have.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That was the title of my birthday present from my husband.

We're still married.

This cannot be what I think it is, I thought. He's not a jerk. He's not stupid.

No-one's face could hide the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me thoughts on receiving that title as a present, and Jorj quickly explained that this book was recommended by a co-worker as the only book with recipes of the foods her native Japanese mother makes. He'd mentioned this book (without title) before, and I'd told him to track it down.

Japanese Women (and yes, author Naomi Moriyama admits the title is derived from French Women Don't Get Fat) beats you over the head with how fat Americans (and soon Europeans) are, how skinny and long-lived Japanese (especially women) are, and how it's all due to diet (not a lack of medical coverage for 30 percent of the American adult population) and lifestyle. Eating like the Japanese do at home (not at the sushi bar) will correct this.

She might have a point, but for this book to be a keeper, the recipes need to be very good and quick to prepare. Everything I tried was both good and quick. The recipe for teriyaki fish alone is almost worth the price of the book. Rather than pre-making a teriyaki sauce reduction, Moriyama quickly marinates the filets in soy and sake, sautes the filets, deglazes with soy and mirin, and finishes with quickly poaching the filets in the soy-mirin mix.

The recipes all rely on quick techniques using widely available ingredients -- if not in your grocery, check the sources list in the back of the book. I spent the most time cutting vegetables (hello food processor). The recipes I've tried -- teriyaki, soba noodles, "Tokyo" salad, beef over rice and vegetable stir fry -- are all winners and I've made them all more than once.

Posted by SusieJ at 01:11 PM | Permalink