Are you a baker? I like to bake, but I don't really bake that much. The reason is the preparation and clean up. My pantry had a few easy baking mixes for brownies, corn bread, a cake or two, and muffin mixes, but one day this Summer I gave my youngest daughter free reign to clean out the pantry. She took our all the cookies, crackers, and baking mixes. I'd been keeping baking mixes on hand for school events, holidays, and birthdays. It's so easy to add a few eggs, oil, and water to a mix and call it homemade. But what are all those other ingredients in the nutrition panel?
October is baking season in my mind. Pumpkin breads, pies, muffins, and cookies are my all time favorite baked good. The problem now is I don't have any baking mixes to make these yummy Fall treats. And yes, I could go buy mixes, but why would I want to do that and clutter up the cleaned out pantry!
My television viewing of cooking shows might convince me that baking is not as hard as it looks. The baker has all the needed ingredients measured into cute little bowls, and at the ready. I'm not the type to do that, I like to measure as I go and put the food item right back in the shelf or refrigerator. My mom, who was a home economics teacher, taught us to clean up as we go. That is some great mom advice. Put the bottle of cooking oil, the butter, eggs or whatever back where it belongs in the kitchen right after you used the amount needed for the recipe. Don't pre-measure, that's more time and more clean up. My kitchen doesn't have a full staff getting my baking or cooking ingredients all laid out for me, how about yours?
I've been reading ONE BOWL BAKING: Simple, from Scratch Recipes for Delicious Desserts by Yvonne Ruperti (Running Press) this month and love the baking style in the book, it's just like the title states, simple, from scratch delicious deserts. In her book Yvonne Ruperti talks about her Grandmother's style of cooking, as simple without appliances to mix, chop, blend, or fold. Her Grandmother cooked simple because she did not own much, but anything she baked was well received by the family.
One Bowl Baking recipes are designed to use natural ingredients, like flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fruits, nuts, spices and more. The recipes are also designed for one bowl mixing-you don't have to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another, use one bowl and have less clean up too. Using basic kitchen tools to do general mixing methods you'll find simple recipes to make for your family or bake sale at the kids school or church bake sale.
Yvonne Ruperti has listed the basic ingredient to keep on hand and the basic tools to keep in your kitchen pantry to make the recipes in the book. You won't need to haul out your monster size food processor, mixer, blender or chopper. I'm not one for owning extra kitchen appliances because of the space they take up and the infrequent use. Presently we do not have a microwave-we had a small one big enough to reheat a small casserole dish, make popcorn, or melt butter or chocolate. I'm not planning on replacing it. It's been a little inconvenient to the kids, but I think they are getting over the lack of microwave.
So if you have some baking to do this year for school bake sales, holiday get togethers, or even just to warm your house up and let the smells of fresh hand made, home made deserts calling the family to the kitchen then go get your copy of ONE BOWL BAKING: Simple, From Scratch Recipes for Delicious Deserts. Look for it in your favorite book store available this October. There are over 100 recipes covering muffins, scones, cupcakes, layer cakes, cheesecakes, tarts, biscuits, treats, and bars.
I'm planning on making the glazed coconut bundt cake on page 150 this Sunday because we have been so busy this week and are ready for a day at home. The cake batter for this recipe is simple: butter, sugar, salt, eggs, coconut milk, shredded coconut, vanilla extract, cake flour, baking powder, and for the glaze, confectioners sugar, coconut milk, shredded coconut. I already have most of these ingredients so it will actually be simple to mix this all in one bowl and let our house fill up with the delicious smells coming form the oven.
If you like simple, delicious baking, then this book is for you. Most recipes can be mixed and in the oven in 15 minutes. There are pages of beautiful photos of the foods, and pages of baking tools and ingredients used in the recipes. There are no appliances needed to plug in or extra clean up of appliances. Just one bowl, basic kitchen tools like measuring spoons, and cups, baking pans, ( some recipes you can even mix right in the baking pan and skip the bowl) cup cake liners, and a few other tools you probably already have in your kitchen drawer.
Yvonne Ruperti has been on America's Test Kitchen for three seasons, was a recipe developer and writer for Cooks' Illustrated magazine, Visit her on her blog and on the blog: Serious Eats, and follow her on tiwtter @Yvonneruperti.
Disclosure: I received a copy of One Bowl Baking: Simple, from Scratch recipes for Delicious Dessert for this review. The comments and views are my own.
October is baking season in my mind. Pumpkin breads, pies, muffins, and cookies are my all time favorite baked good. The problem now is I don't have any baking mixes to make these yummy Fall treats. And yes, I could go buy mixes, but why would I want to do that and clutter up the cleaned out pantry!
My television viewing of cooking shows might convince me that baking is not as hard as it looks. The baker has all the needed ingredients measured into cute little bowls, and at the ready. I'm not the type to do that, I like to measure as I go and put the food item right back in the shelf or refrigerator. My mom, who was a home economics teacher, taught us to clean up as we go. That is some great mom advice. Put the bottle of cooking oil, the butter, eggs or whatever back where it belongs in the kitchen right after you used the amount needed for the recipe. Don't pre-measure, that's more time and more clean up. My kitchen doesn't have a full staff getting my baking or cooking ingredients all laid out for me, how about yours?
I've been reading ONE BOWL BAKING: Simple, from Scratch Recipes for Delicious Desserts by Yvonne Ruperti (Running Press) this month and love the baking style in the book, it's just like the title states, simple, from scratch delicious deserts. In her book Yvonne Ruperti talks about her Grandmother's style of cooking, as simple without appliances to mix, chop, blend, or fold. Her Grandmother cooked simple because she did not own much, but anything she baked was well received by the family.
One Bowl Baking recipes are designed to use natural ingredients, like flour, sugar, butter, eggs, fruits, nuts, spices and more. The recipes are also designed for one bowl mixing-you don't have to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another, use one bowl and have less clean up too. Using basic kitchen tools to do general mixing methods you'll find simple recipes to make for your family or bake sale at the kids school or church bake sale.
Yvonne Ruperti has listed the basic ingredient to keep on hand and the basic tools to keep in your kitchen pantry to make the recipes in the book. You won't need to haul out your monster size food processor, mixer, blender or chopper. I'm not one for owning extra kitchen appliances because of the space they take up and the infrequent use. Presently we do not have a microwave-we had a small one big enough to reheat a small casserole dish, make popcorn, or melt butter or chocolate. I'm not planning on replacing it. It's been a little inconvenient to the kids, but I think they are getting over the lack of microwave.
So if you have some baking to do this year for school bake sales, holiday get togethers, or even just to warm your house up and let the smells of fresh hand made, home made deserts calling the family to the kitchen then go get your copy of ONE BOWL BAKING: Simple, From Scratch Recipes for Delicious Deserts. Look for it in your favorite book store available this October. There are over 100 recipes covering muffins, scones, cupcakes, layer cakes, cheesecakes, tarts, biscuits, treats, and bars.
I'm planning on making the glazed coconut bundt cake on page 150 this Sunday because we have been so busy this week and are ready for a day at home. The cake batter for this recipe is simple: butter, sugar, salt, eggs, coconut milk, shredded coconut, vanilla extract, cake flour, baking powder, and for the glaze, confectioners sugar, coconut milk, shredded coconut. I already have most of these ingredients so it will actually be simple to mix this all in one bowl and let our house fill up with the delicious smells coming form the oven.
If you like simple, delicious baking, then this book is for you. Most recipes can be mixed and in the oven in 15 minutes. There are pages of beautiful photos of the foods, and pages of baking tools and ingredients used in the recipes. There are no appliances needed to plug in or extra clean up of appliances. Just one bowl, basic kitchen tools like measuring spoons, and cups, baking pans, ( some recipes you can even mix right in the baking pan and skip the bowl) cup cake liners, and a few other tools you probably already have in your kitchen drawer.
Yvonne Ruperti has been on America's Test Kitchen for three seasons, was a recipe developer and writer for Cooks' Illustrated magazine, Visit her on her blog and on the blog: Serious Eats, and follow her on tiwtter @Yvonneruperti.
Disclosure: I received a copy of One Bowl Baking: Simple, from Scratch recipes for Delicious Dessert for this review. The comments and views are my own.