Cooking the Book

I am embarking on a new adventure as of today. I am going to be cooking my way through a cookbook I recently received from my sister. There is a story behind this book for me. Last January my sister gifted this exact book to a friend of her's that I had just met. I fell in love with this book on first glance, beautifully photographed, simply written, wonderful recipes. I exclaimed my love for this book to my sister. She informed me that she had a copy for me but that I would have to wait until Christmas 09 to receive the book. Christmas 09 came, and the book is now in mine!

First published in 2000, The Essential Baking Cookbook, hails from Australia. Hence it includes discussions of ingredients that are not common in the US, available, but not always available at my local Safeway. Caster sugar, vanilla sugar, creme fraiche, copha, frangipane, treacle, etc. I will find them however in my adventure. There is an extensive discussion at the beginning of the book that explains what each of these are and a variety of other ingredients and terms that the recipes call for. For instance I did not know that one should not use confectioners' sugar for making royal icing. Apparently in confectioners' sugar there is a small amount of starch added to prevent lumping. The starch does not provide for the correct mixing of royal icing, sure it works pretty well, but it could be better. What is needed is icing sugar, I hoping that this is what is in my cupboard labeled powdered sugar. We will find out.

At 302 pages the book covers teatime, cakes, biscuits, slices, sweet pies and pastries, savoury pies and pastries, bread, and celebration cakes. Teatime includes scones, muffins, friands, cupcakes, buns, and traditional tea cakes, and sweets in general. Cakes covers well - cakes. Chocolate, ginger, carrot, pound, angel food, fruit, nut, and roll cakes. Biscuits are what we call cookies. Slices are what we stateside call bar cookies. We then enter the crazy world of sweet pies and pastries, tarts, puff, choux, eclairs, and baklava. Savoury pies and pastries are up next. Beef, chicken, vegetables, eggs and cheese rule in this world. Bread is the next baking staple served up. From sour to rye and rolls, the basics are all covered and then some. Celebration cakes finish us up in the book. These are the difficult, impossibly beautiful, layered, decorated, delicious and most daunting of recipes in the book. This chapter scares me. From the Rose Petal Cake, which is covered in candied rose petals, to the towering craziness that is a Croquembouche.

I will not be obsessive about completing every recipe in the book, unlike Julie Powell of Julie and Julia fame. There are simply some things I won't eat. Fish! Yuck! I have never cooked, or liked fish. Try as you might to convince me otherwise, I won't do it. I have tried eating fish in my life. Someone will say "oh but this doesn't taste like fish at all" but I disagree as I spit it out.

One of my favorite sections of the book is that with each chapter comes a "what went wrong" page. It shows pictures of correctly finished recipes and pictures of the various things that can go wrong with the recipes. Too much flour, yeast was dead, baking soda was old, the oven was too hot, the oven wasn't hot enough, the fruit isn't evenly distributed throughout the cake, etc. It gives you an explanation and a fix for each of these problems. This section I see as the most valuable the book has to offer. It tells me, the novice baker, the mistake I've made and how to avoid them in the future.

My goal is to complete one to two recipes a week. If I am feeling particularly punchy I might get to three recipes every once in a while. My co-workers and friends will be my guinea pigs. I will test the results with them. There is no possible way that I could eat as much as will be produced. I will attempt to do a Pioneer Woman Cooks style post for each recipe. If you don't know who she is, check out her blog at http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ If nothing else there will be commentary on the process and pictures of the final product, hopefully the steps in between will also be captured in digital. I plan on skipping around through the book, starting with what I believe to be the easier recipes. Should be a lovely adventure.