A review by mediaevalmuse
How to Cook That: Crazy Sweet Creations by Ann Reardon

inspiring

2.0

 This review hurts my heart to write because I'm a huge fan of Ann Reardon's YouTube channel.

For full disclosure: I haven't made every recipe in this book, but my 2 star review is due to my experiences making two different recipes: the chocolate cake and the heart cupcakes. In both instances, my cake/cupcakes came out of the oven completely raw in the middle even after leaving them in for a few minutes over the suggested time. Once I got the chocolate cake to test clean via the knife test, it was too dry. The heart cupcakes I never got to set.

Now, I'm a fairly competent baker, but it's possible I did something wrong. I want to give Ann the benefit of the doubt and day that there was something that I did in my preparation that threw off the whole process.

I'm sure that if I tried some of the other recipes that can be more loosey-goosey with their ingredients, they would turn out just fine. I also love the photography in this book and the little bits of food science that teach the reader how ingredients work and interact.

But unless I can figure out what went wrong, this book has to be a 2 star read for me. As such, I'll probably use this book as inspiration for experimenting with my more tried and true recipes.