DID I MENTION I AM UNEMPLOYED?

The dough recipe is from the RAD cookie book Christophile gave me! V Day is around the corner ya know...time to get corny...and hungry.

SITTING ROUND AT HOME

With a new pie plate ( thanks Schnick!)so I made Susan's DOTM, cos let's face it it's too easy not to! I made a few adjustments, pecans instead of walnuts and light brown muscadovado sugar. I also added oats into the crust. Like her coffee cake from last year I really urge you to try this simple and comforting dessert.

JAN DOTM CHASEN'S BANANA SHORTCAKE

Chasen's was open from 1937-1995 in Beverly Hills. During which time, it became THE spot for Hollywood elite to make merry.
If you peruse around the web it is easy to find lots of stories involving
drunken and/or outlandish behavior in the legendary spot. This recipe is both;
A pound cake is soaked in rum and then slathered with whipped cream and bananas over and over, then served with a whipped vanilla ice cream and rum sauce and/or hot fudge! Well once I got to assembling, I could not go for the sauces, it just seemed too much. So I combined some chocolate and Karo(to keep it's shape) and called it done. It was a bit hard to keep together after slicing and I wish I could find an image of what the original looked like (The recipe, from this gorgeous book did not include a picture). However, it was fun coming up with a presentation on my own. I imagine the name comes not from the cake itself, which is a pound cake, but from the components of fruit and whipped cream, the traditional accoutrement to classic shortcake. This dessert much like a star studded Hollywood film was quite epic.

(Y)OUR ARSENAL

Morrissey ref's aside, when you go to battle in the kitchen you usually have a few allies. Here, a list of our gang's favorite and long standing advisers in culinary pursuits. Thanks guys, and I will add more as I get 'em. (Edited when we had repeats).

Nicole (I'm way outdated!!!)
1. Martha Stewart Baking Book (you're shocked, I know)
2. Joy of Cooking I.S. Rombauer
3. The Cake Bible Rose Levy Bernabaum
4.Homesick Texan
5. FINALLY, (just launched) GOURMET
*just got 1080 recipes Simone and Ines Ortega ( thanks Kat!!!) soon to be a favorite and trying to decide between Veganomicon and Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
* I am a SEVERE Gourmet mag junkie, my dad used to subscribed for years, got hooked at a young age.

Kat
1. A Taste of Persia- by Najmieh Batmanglij
2. The Silver Spoon- Italy's Best-selling Cookbook for 50 Years
3. America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
4. Michael Rhulman
5. Smitten Kitchen (esp for the food porn pictures)


Richard
The first 4 are easy:
1. Mes Confitures, Christine Ferber (my bible - probably the single
best book on artisinal jams and preserves I've ever come across)
2. Joy of Cooking, I.S. Rombauer (totally agree with you)
3. Essentials of Baking, Chuck Williams (Williams Sonoma...but it's
really good, actually)
4. Stop and Smell the Rosemary, Junior League of Houston (this book
is gorgeous, and awesome)

I'd probably have to list this as #5 just because I'm blown away by
it, although I've not made my way through it as much as I'd like:

5. Hartstone Inn cookbook, Michael Salmon (a guy who's the chef/half
owner of a B&B in Maine published his own cookbook, and it's also
gorgeous and awesome)

Technically, I've gotten more mileage out of this one, though:

5. Longrain Modern Thai Food, Martin Boetz (when you're up for
spending a weekend making your own curry paste, this is the book for
you)


Molly N.
I love a list.
From Julia Child's Kitchen, Julia Child
The New Laurel's Kitchen, Laurel Robertson +
1080 Recipes Simone + Ines Ortega
Millennium Cookbook (from Millennium Restaurant SF)
How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman
go to sites: Food Network
Epicurious (so dumb I know, but they usually have what I want.)


Hey! Christophile here.
Well here are my top 5, but I have to confess that I have no cookbook library in comparison to the ones you guys have:
1. Great FOOD Fast (Martha Stewart Living); great quick meals! like a globe, you could flip blindly to any page and have an adventure ( a quick & easy adventure)
2. The Perfect Scoop (David Leibovitz); seriously every ice cream recipe in this book is a sure thing.
3. 1080 Recipes (Simone & Ines Ortega); so I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book for purely aesthetic reasons, but I'm also totally intimidated by some of the recipes. I have made a pact with myself that I have to make something out of this book THIS week.
4.TasteSpotting. Awesome user uploaded food photography and links to recipes and food blogs that I would never find otherwise, LOVE it.
5.AT: The Kichen I like that every Wednesday they give a roundup on the NYTimes Food section and they have all kinds of kitchen related goodies (not just Buckeyes ;)
Honorable Mentions:
-Cooks Illustrated
-101 Cookbooks
-Simply Recipes



Jodi VB's list:
1. Prudence Penny Cookbook
An anniversary gift given to my grandmother in 1939. These were not decadent times and there's a lot about food preparation and preserving that is fascinating. I can adapt any of the baking to my eating preferences. This summer I hope to make some of the pickle recipes. OK, there's a recipe for aspic with braised tongue but I avoid that page.
2. Martha Stewart
Search for any recipe and you'll find it. I'm a tart when it comes to web recipe treasure hunting. I'll go to anyone or anyblog that will help me make what I have in mind.
3. Chuck Williams Simple Italian Cooking
Especially for the soups and deserts.
4. Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pritchford
A bible. The congee recipes helped me survive the summer... literally.
5. Millenium Cookbook, Tucker, Westerdahl, & Weiss
I'm not surprised I share an entry with Miss Molly!
The recipes are flamboyantly delicious and the basics are the result of innovation and a very scientific test kitchen.
Speaking of test kitchens, I submit this Cooks Illustrated recipe as extra credit:
(V) Chocolate Cake With Creamy Chocolate Frosting
I love the science behind it and it's one of my favorites.


Agatha
1. Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen
Every recipe I make from this book is incredible. perfect for entertaining.
2. Tartine (Bakery Cookbook)
3. Desserts by Pierre Herme
4. Baking: From My Home Home To Yours (Dorie Greenspan)
5. Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes
my vegeterian favorite
blogs I incessantly return to:
La Tartine Gourmande
Scent of Green Bananas

THE YEAR OF CAKES

So far it seems, there is a whole lotta cakin'goin on in this, our very new year. Last night was my last pastry class and this is what I came home with. It is a: coconut cake with grated coconut in the batter, fresh lemon curd filling, and cream of coconut and rum buttercream. It is now hibernating for a few days in my freezer and I intend to eat it on my birthday, this week. That chocolate rose adorning it was my first one! Pretty good I thought 'cept for that teeny bite out of it, a chocolate bug must have bitten it, a lil candy aphid perhaps?

Above the cake is the incredibly decadent VEGAN rice pudding from my first (failed) attempt at rice pudding fritters -what was to be my January DOTM. Not this time, but maybe when I am more adept at deep frying. So simple and so luscious it was!! Will post the recipe- if you can even call it that- tomorrow.

New Year's Resolution Cake

Chiffon cakes are my new favorite thing. My fiance REQUIRES a lemon-flavored cake of my own choosing for his birthday, which was this past weekend. Usually I go all out, but this year he wants to be healthy.

I had like three seconds of internal grumbling that went something like "Oh, sure, I have to curb my cake, but you can go to Chipotle every day for lunch," before I remembered that this also benefits me, since I usually am forced to push baked goods on people just to get them out of my house so I can retain my girlish figure. Also, sure, I don't want him dying of a heart attack while he's bagging leaves.

(Seriously, he bagged leaves the entire time I was making this cake. Leaves I had walked past for months on my way to my front door with a shrug and a raised middle finger.)

My point is: chiffon cakes. I mean, it's still cake, so it's not like eating celery or anything, but it's a lot better for you than, say, the Myer Lemon Anniversary Cake I made for him two years ago. Although not quite as healthy as an angel food cake, a chiffon cake doesn't have that cotton candy sweetness that sometimes bothers me about angel food. The only downside is that you will start to just cut giant chunks of the cake and cram it into your mouth before realizing that you are defeating the "everything in moderation" purpose that you were trying to instill.

Oh well, while we're defeating the purpose, need I mention that it goes fantastically well with champagne?

(This is the Lemon Glow Chiffon Cake from the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum)

NEW. HAPPY.

Hello Dessert Makers!!! I have been living without the Internet at home so the holiday break from work has left me with almost no Internet time WHATSOEVER. Which is like a form of torture! "Internet Witholding". Yikes, I'm sorry, not funny. OK.......
So below you will see last nights pastry class results. I am calling the genoise cake, Raspberry Nipple Whip. HA. I love how hilarious and frilly it looks, classic and garish at the same time. The other is an angel food spiked with orange oil and orange zest and some ginger to give it some bite. I have to say I liked the angel more...not a huge fan of genoise. The class is an overview of pastry/bakery standards though so we end up trying our own variations on these classics to update them. Whipped cream icing is so dreamy- look at the close up, let's go frolic in there!!! Be on the lookout for my DOTM....coming soon to a mailbox near you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR DOTMC!!!!!!!!!!!!

First DOTMC vlog!

OK, so here is the first attempt at vlogging for DOTMC. Before you criticize my filmmaking skills, I'll have you know I shot this and baked at the same time on a camera I barely use. So excuse the bad/erratic lighting and shakiness. (things I usually abhor!)
Enjoy!