Cookbook Review: All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book

Who can resist picking up and perusing a book entitled "The Rosie's Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book"?  Not me, and since its the baking season, bring it on.  There are 17 chapters with over 250 recipes in this tome and every single one looks delicious; however, these are not for the faint of heart. Along with solid advice on cakes, cookies, bars, pies, and puddings, author Julie Rosenberg also classifies cookie types exactly as they should be - just check out these chapter titles: Chewy Crunchy, Crispy Chompy, Cakey Cookies, Sandwiched Together.

My perusal resulted in a desire to hop on a plane to head to Boston to visit her bakery in person.

Since I don't have that opportunity, I am going to start baking from this book today. First up - Ginger Shortbread from her Crispy Chompy chapter. After the initial crispy chomp, I expect a melt-in-the-mouth experience coupled with a pungent sweetness from the two kinds (!) of ginger. My expectations were right on. One thing to note, if you can find baker's cut crystallized ginger about 3mm size, this will make the recipe even easier since you won't have to chop the cyrstallized ginger, which can be tedious since it always wants to stick to the knife. One thing I might do post-baking is to dip them in chocolate - who wouldn't love that?

Here is the recipe:

Ginger Shortbread

Ingredients

• 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons 
all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon 
(lightly packed) light brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons ground ginger
• 1 cup coarsely chopped candied ginger

Preparation

• Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a small bowl and set aside.
• Cream the butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and ground ginger together in a medium-size mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer once or twice to scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula.
• Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until the mixture is fluffy again, about 
45 seconds. Scrape the bowl.
• Remove the dough from the bowl and place it on a work surface. Work the candied ginger into the dough with your hands.
• Divide the dough in half. Place two 16-inch lengths of waxed paper or plastic wrap on a work surface. Shape each half of the dough into a rough log about 10 inches long and 1K inches in diameter, and place it along one long side of the paper. Roll the log up in the paper and twist the ends like a hard-candy wrapper.
• Refrigerate the log for 1 to 2 hours.
• Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Using your hands, gently roll the wrapped dough back and forth on the work surface to smooth out the logs. Refrigerate again for 4 to 6 hours.
• Fifteen minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Remove the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap the logs, and cut them into slices that are a generous L inch thick. Place the cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies until they are golden and firm to the touch, 28 to 30 minutes. Let them cool on the baking sheets.

Makes 60 cookies

It's the holidays - if you need new inspiration for your holiday baking - pick up a copy.  Go ahead, give yourself an early Christmas present!

The Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter, Cream-Filled, Sugar-Packed Baking Book (Workman Publishing; December 2011).

French Menus

I am in heaven. All my cooking geek sensors are going off.  I am deep into The French Menu Cookbook, by the late Richard Olney, just re-released by Ten Speed Press with a new introduction. The original book is from 1970, but there are parts of it that could have been written yesterday. The subtitle is: "The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season - in Beautifully Composed Menus for American Dining and Entertaining by an American Living in Paris and Provence".  One of my pet obsessions is creating menus and I don't know how I went so long without reading this book. To quote my friend, Joy, "I love, love, love" this book.

Now, if you are expecting a traditional cookbook you will be sorely disappointed. You actually have to *read* this book. I've read many a fine cookbook, but this is one of the best. Did you know there are three different cooking surface skimming types and techniques?

Olney has a wonderful section on French wines - making them accessible to the un-initiated. The turns of phrase he summons make me almost giddy, "...it is difficult to touch with words the soul of a wine" (p. 39).  Maybe one day I'll figure out this writing thing and come within 1/32 of the quality of his work.

Now the menu and recipe portion of the book will throw you back to the 1970s and before.  It reads like a delightful history book and evokes a time when cooking was about the food and less about artistic interpretation. Imagine yourself living in New York trying to impress your friends with your knowledge and skill of French cooking - these are the menus you might have tried to make.  A warning - they are not easy menus if you are looking to lift one for your next dinner party, nor are they composed of dishes that find their way on to many menus today (e.g., stuffed calves' ears, organ meats of various animals -  lamb kidneys, beef tripe, etc.), but they are thought-provoking.  They make the micro/emulsion/sous vide (boiling-a-bag) trends seem positively space age.

If you're a cooking geek like me, this is an important book to have in your library.  It's a testament to the fact that cookbooks can be about much more than recipes and pictures.