Heading into the weekend I noticed that I had picked up a bit of a cold, so I'm taking it easy and catching up on grading I have to finish before I leave for Michigan this next week. I'm also cooking up a nice pot of turkey and wild rice soup. Yum!
Speaking of cooking, I have been playing around with cake recipes after picking up an amazing cake cookbook called Cake Boy by Eric Lanlard and a bit of a gift from my mother, the cookbook Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. Growing up, we always made our baked good from scratch. In fact, most of our recipes came from a little community cookbook of my grandmother's from the 1960s (which contained recipes from the early 1930s on). I cherish that cookbook, but I love looking at other recipes that redo classics or share an updated version.
Cake Boy is this amazing little cookbook that has a British/French flair. Most of his cakes are "sponges" and are smothered in frosting. There are amazing tart recipes, one of which is a wicked looking Bakewell Tart that I'm dying to try my hand at. There are cheesecakes, cookies, and madeleines, all with detailed recipes and quite a few glorious pictures to go with the recipes. In fact, last weekend I made a nice, chocolate sponge. It was very brownie-like in its depth of chocolate flavor, and simply amazing. Honestly, if I was going to recommend a cookbook, this would be the one. You really have to check this out. (Here is a link to Cake Boy boutique in London.)
The second cookbook I've tried out is Vintage Cakes, which I got as a gift. The pictures make "vintage" sound like it equates messy in some way, as some of the pictures feature cakes served on boards with frosting kind of running all over. In their defense, it was mainly the Texas Sheetcake recipe, but I thought it was a pretty messy looking picture that I didn't think represented "vintage" in the way I pictured. The recipes in this cookbook though are really nostalgic. The Honey Bee Cake was one that I remember and I really want to try out, along with the Harvey Wallbanger. There is a nice variety of cakes here and I really do love it. Just look at that sweet cover! Doesn't that speak for itself?
Weekend Cooking is a great, weekly post run by Beth Fish Reads. There are some really great food-related posts there. Stop by to check out other great posts from this weekend.
Two nice-sounding cookbooks. I really love to bake but we just can't eat it every week. Once a month, though! I love the covers of both. Now I'm off to investigate the Cake Boy link.
ReplyDeleteCake Boy cookbook is really great. I can't say enough about it. I've been checking it out for the past three months! No kidding. I think it's time to just buy it so that I can part w/ it. :)
DeleteWho doesn't love cake?! I tend to flip through these kinds of cookbooks and "window shop" so to speak more than actually make the recipes. But I would not push a slice out of the way if someone baked it for me!
ReplyDeleteThese are great "window shop" books then. :) I like to do that too, but I think after I buy Cake Boy, I'll own both of them!
DeleteOh, both of those do look great!
ReplyDeleteAre you going to make your own birthday cake? Those look delicious! I don't eat cake often, but I love love love birthday cake. :)
ReplyDeleteDid you change your RSS feed already? That was fast!
I've heard of the book Vintage Cakes but haven't seen it. I have always baked birthday cakes, but almost never make cake any other time, except for some other kind of celebration. I guess we're not the civilized kind of family that could just keep a cake on hand and have an occasional slice throughout the week. We want to finish it off all at once!
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