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A review by sssnoo
Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, Mark Weinberg
4.0
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Jump to the bottom to see my take on three recipes I made from the book.
I own a couple of Dorie Greenspan's cookbooks and jumped at the chance to be an early reviewer. This volume is classic Dorie.
- The photographs are as good as they get in a cookbook, and almost every recipe has an image.
- Every "genre" of baking is represented: bread, cakes, cookies, bars, pies, pastries, and more. Sweet and savory are broadly covered.
Are the recipes simple? Some are (coffee shortbread, cheese puffers, walnut-maple pie) and others are daunting all day or two-day masterpieces (lemon meringue layer cake, brioches). I've shortlisted about a dozen recipes I plan on making (easy and challenging) and will update my review after I test them. I'm starting with the easy coffee shortbread, and can't wait to test out some of the savory dishes.
Several recipes use ingredients I don't routinely stock in my (well-stocked) kitchen. Rye flour, for example, is used multiple times. In general, though, if you have a kitchen stocked for baking you will likely have most of the items you need to cook from this new book.
If you love well-done, beautifully illustrated cookbooks, or if you are looking for a general baking cookbook this will do nicely. Baking With Dorie will likely appeal more to the experienced baker, but Dorie's notes and general methods sections are well done, concise, and will help less experienced bakers. I've made three recipes now and found the directions excellent.
I plan on buying a hard copy version of this book as soon as it comes out, and that is about the best praise I can give a cookbook that I already have in e-book format. The book is slated for publication October 19 -- just in time to get ready for your holiday baking. I'm for sure making the maple walnut pie for Thanksgiving this year.
Recipes made:
The coffee shortbread is a super easy recipe for a standard shortbread that has the most unexpected flavors. A bite starts with a flush of lemon/cardamon and finishes with an aura of coffee. It’s sublime. This recipe alone is worth the cost of the book.
I drooled over the image of the Lemon Meringue Layer Cake and tried it as my second recipe. It looked pretty complicated, but the directions were easy to follow and everything came together to result in a cake that looked just like the image. But it just didn’t taste great. No one in my family or my neighbors' liked the cake. I ended up throwing out the last quarter because no one wanted it.
The cake was dense. I baked it for just short of the minimum time in the recipe, but it was still dry and dense despite the syrup soaking. By the amount of browning, it didn’t seem overbaked, but it tasted so. The lemon cream was the one delicious part. The frosting? This was my first time making an egg white-based buttercream and no one in my family liked it. I double-checked the ingredient amounts and compared them to other similar recipes online and everything seemed to check out. And the frosting looked just right and handled just right as I frosted the cake. But it tasted like a slab of (hard) butter surrounded the cake. It was barely sweet, too firm (and didn’t soften up to be any tastier even after the recommended room temp rest), and just not good. I was very disappointed. I would try a seven-minute cooked icing if I did the cake again -but I won’t.
If you like Swiss buttercreams you may like the cake more than we did.
The Lisbon Cake (on the cover) is a winner. The bottom is an intensely chocolate flourless cake, and the top is a delectably soft and luscious ganache. The cake was devoured in record time.
Jump to the bottom to see my take on three recipes I made from the book.
I own a couple of Dorie Greenspan's cookbooks and jumped at the chance to be an early reviewer. This volume is classic Dorie.
- The photographs are as good as they get in a cookbook, and almost every recipe has an image.
- Every "genre" of baking is represented: bread, cakes, cookies, bars, pies, pastries, and more. Sweet and savory are broadly covered.
Are the recipes simple? Some are (coffee shortbread, cheese puffers, walnut-maple pie) and others are daunting all day or two-day masterpieces (lemon meringue layer cake, brioches). I've shortlisted about a dozen recipes I plan on making (easy and challenging) and will update my review after I test them. I'm starting with the easy coffee shortbread, and can't wait to test out some of the savory dishes.
Several recipes use ingredients I don't routinely stock in my (well-stocked) kitchen. Rye flour, for example, is used multiple times. In general, though, if you have a kitchen stocked for baking you will likely have most of the items you need to cook from this new book.
If you love well-done, beautifully illustrated cookbooks, or if you are looking for a general baking cookbook this will do nicely. Baking With Dorie will likely appeal more to the experienced baker, but Dorie's notes and general methods sections are well done, concise, and will help less experienced bakers. I've made three recipes now and found the directions excellent.
I plan on buying a hard copy version of this book as soon as it comes out, and that is about the best praise I can give a cookbook that I already have in e-book format. The book is slated for publication October 19 -- just in time to get ready for your holiday baking. I'm for sure making the maple walnut pie for Thanksgiving this year.
Recipes made:
The coffee shortbread is a super easy recipe for a standard shortbread that has the most unexpected flavors. A bite starts with a flush of lemon/cardamon and finishes with an aura of coffee. It’s sublime. This recipe alone is worth the cost of the book.
I drooled over the image of the Lemon Meringue Layer Cake and tried it as my second recipe. It looked pretty complicated, but the directions were easy to follow and everything came together to result in a cake that looked just like the image. But it just didn’t taste great. No one in my family or my neighbors' liked the cake. I ended up throwing out the last quarter because no one wanted it.
The cake was dense. I baked it for just short of the minimum time in the recipe, but it was still dry and dense despite the syrup soaking. By the amount of browning, it didn’t seem overbaked, but it tasted so. The lemon cream was the one delicious part. The frosting? This was my first time making an egg white-based buttercream and no one in my family liked it. I double-checked the ingredient amounts and compared them to other similar recipes online and everything seemed to check out. And the frosting looked just right and handled just right as I frosted the cake. But it tasted like a slab of (hard) butter surrounded the cake. It was barely sweet, too firm (and didn’t soften up to be any tastier even after the recommended room temp rest), and just not good. I was very disappointed. I would try a seven-minute cooked icing if I did the cake again -but I won’t.
If you like Swiss buttercreams you may like the cake more than we did.
The Lisbon Cake (on the cover) is a winner. The bottom is an intensely chocolate flourless cake, and the top is a delectably soft and luscious ganache. The cake was devoured in record time.