March 2014 cookbook review

The cookbook that I reviewed for January was a specialty cookbook, with recipes for different types of candy.  The  cookbook for February was a cookbook in the style of a 'church cookbook' and contains lots of different types of recipes.  The contributors were business owners in an area called Aggieville near the campus of Kansas State University.  The cookbook chosen for March is a book called   Debbbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Cookbook.

Debbie Macomber is an author of romance novels and the Cedar Cove series is a group of her stories set in the fictional town of Cedar Cove.  In the series is a group of characters that have recurring roles in many of the stories.  One of the characters takes the reader of the cookbook on a tour of some of the kitchens in Cedar Cove with a few recipes from each location.  It is a different presentation for a cookbook and along the way the main character shares little tidbits about the other characters in the series.

The book is attractively put together.  Where the Aggieville cookbook had photos of Aggieville but no photos of food this cookbook has is full of colorful drawings and photos of the recipes.  Each recipe page has a border on it and each new chapter has a new pattern and color to the border.  Each chapter is about a different eatery or hostess from the town.There are lots of illustrations of kitchen or food items and each chapter has several full page photos of a prepared recipe from the chapter.  The last four chapters are a chapter on Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas with a group of recipes suitable for holiday meals. 

February 2014 cookbook review

I have a large variety of cookbooks.  I collect all kinds.  I have a few by famous chefs, a few by celebrity chefs, a few that are more off beat, some serious, some educational, some new, some 'antique', some with sentimental value because they belonged to my grandmother, some themed cookbooks. 

The cookbook that I am reviewing today is  a cookbook that around here is known as a 'church cookbook'.  I have quite a few of this type of cookbook.  They are all pretty similar in that they almost always have a paperback cover and a spiral type binding holding the pages together.  They rarely have pictures of any of the foods, no glossy pages with foods artfully arranged by food stylists.  These cookbooks are always a collection of recipes contributed by a group.  The group might be the ladies of a congregation, hence the nickname 'church cookbook'.  But they could also be some other group.  I have cookbooks published by an elementary school and a nursing home.  Sometimes they are a group raising funds for a cause.  I have a cookbook published by a Relay For Life chapter and an Eastern Star chapter and I recently contributed some of my recipes to a cookbook being put together to benefit ALS.  And sometimes they promote a region.  My mom knows that I love cookbooks and between us we have purchased three copies of the Wall Drug cookbook.  One more trip to Rapid City South Dakota and I will have enough copies for myself and each of my children.

The cookbook that I am reviewing today is one of those regional cookbooks.  My younger daughter spent her college years at Kansas State.  Go Cats! And adjacent to the campus is a six square block business district known as Aggieville.   It is the oldest shopping district in Kansas.  It is a great collection of bars, restaurants and shops.  Before K State was the Wildcats it was the Aggies and the name stuck.  You can read about Aggieville on Wikipedia and a quick Google search finds 82,000+ hits.  While on one of our visits to campus I purchased a cookbook published with recipes contributed by the merchants of Aggieville. 

Aggieville Appetites has on its cover a photo of Varneys bookstore in Aggieville.  The cover is edged in Wildcat purple and it has 250 pages of recipes.  There is a nice recipe index at the back of the book and the dividers between the chapter contain black and white photos of Aggieville. 

I have perused the cookbook and have a list of great looking recipes to try.  I look forward to sharing them over the next year.

first cookbook review

A few years ago in a kitchen shop in Wyoming my mom bought me this cookbook:

Rather than just a collection of recipes this book is an education in candymaking of many kinds. The book starts out describing the ingredients that will be used and explaining how to select quality ingredients.  Seven pages alone are devoted to chocolate.

The author then goes on to talk about the tools and equipment that are used in candymaking. She follows that up with a chapter on techniques.

Next she gets to the recipes.  Each recipe chapter has its own index of the candies found within that chapter.  Following the index is a page or two talking about the candy type found in that chapter.   The first recipe chapter is on truffles and there are recipes for 26 different truffles.  Each recipe has several variations using different chocolate.  The first truffle recipe classic chocolate truffles is made with bittersweet chocolate but there are instructions to make a white chocolate version as well as a milk chocolate version.

Following the chapter on truffles is a chapter on more chocolate candies, a chapter on caramel candies, as well as chapters on nut brittles, marzipan, fudge, nougat, divinity and fruit candies.

The title page of each recipe chapter has a full page photo of a candy from that chapter and there are other full page photos as well within the chapter.  The photos are beautifully styled usually depicting finished candy but occasionally a step in the candymaking process is shown.