New to the Blogroll: Baking

As we head into cooler weather, it's time think about baking in earnest.  Warm kitchen, warm house! I've added these new Baking blogs to the blog roll.

Real Baking With Rose 

Call Me Cupcake

Broma Bakery

Hint Of Vanilla

Butter and Brioche

The Vanilla Bean Blog

My Five Favorite Cooking Blogs

I've grown to love cookbooks as much for the writing and stories that are told about the recipes.  My favorite cooking/baking blogs also tell stories.   There are three "retro" cooking sites here.  I find them entertaining and appealing for the bit of historical information they present.  Some recipes seem sort of gross, but different times, different eating habits.  I do like that many of the recipes were aimed at wowing dinner guests, and presentation means much.






A Cake Bakes In Brooklyn

 This is the first retro baking blog I found.  I loved that she would buy old recipe boxes on ebay and at estate sales searching for interesting recipes to try.  She presents the mostly hand written recipe cards, sometimes with little or no instructions and her own effort to recreate the recipe.  It's just such a treasure hunt.

Smitten Kitchen

 Smitten Kitchen is one of the first cooking blogs of any sort I read. Everything looks and sounds so good.  There are sweet and savory foods, many fun recipes to try.

TheEnglish Kitchen

If I could get a dinner invitation to any food bloggers home, this would be the one I'd go to.  She has very few things I wouldn't want to try.  

TheMid Century Menu

Recipes of all sorts, that she has found and tried out.  Something to please and sometimes scare anyone.


VintageRecipe Cards

Foods with bizarre names presented with such care from old recipe cards.   In this blog, you are more often put off by the accompanying picture than you are about the ingredients and directions for recreating these gems.

Cookies & Cups Blog Bake Along

The Cookies & Cups blog is hosting a Bake Along.

She'll post a recipe, then she encourages you to join and post your picture of the recipe on her baking Facebook Group.   I'm not sure how often the recipes will be offered, and I'm hoping she notes the new ones on her blog as well as on Facebook, so I can try some then post my results here.

The first recipe is for her Perfect Cheesecake

Cooking and Baking Blogs

I've updated the Cooking and Baking blog section of my sidebar with new blogs!  Just as we all snuggle inside for the winter, the desire to cook and bake becomes overpowering!  The warmth from the oven, the smells, the lovely new flavors.   These are some favorites of mine which I never got onto my blogroll, but here they are. I've moved the Cooking and baking category to the top so you can start cooking.

Cookies and Cups

Bakerella

Oh, Sweet Basil

Brown Eyed Baker

12 Tomatoes

Slow Roasted Italian

Mid Century Menu

Taste of Home

Life in the Lofthouse

I am Baker

Love and Olive Oil

My Baking Addiction

The Kitchn

Bon Appetit

Vintage Recipes

I Wash...You Dry

D.O.A. in the Kitchen: A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn

My favorite blog from the Smitten Kitchen's Blog Roll is "A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn:

Join me on my delicious journey revisiting American home cooking in the era before convenience foods became popular (1919 to 1955), as I bake and cook from old cookbooks and recipe cards of home cooks purchased at estate sales in Akron, Ohio, and other exotic locations."

Not only are the recipes a ton of fun but the author makes you want to start hunting garage sales and eBay for old recipe boxes full of quirky and delightful recipes you may want to make! 

She demonstrates the recipes with photos and shows the handwritten or mimeographed recipe with tips for working without a net on some of these old gems.  There are stories behind each recipe, which I love.

I found myself going back to the blogs beginning and reading through the entertaining posts.  Honestly, if you're looking to relax and fill your mind with pleasant thoughts at the end of the day, read this cozy and inspiring blog.

Smitten Kitchen Cookery

Tis baking season!  Just when we get all snuggly and extra sedentary, the oven beckons!  Cookies! Cakes!  Interesting meals!

A person can find themselves swinging through the web looking for recipes that tempt.  There are tons of baking blogs out there.  As with any blog, I like baking blogs that not only have recipes for foods I would like to make (some have god awful recipes that you would rather DIE than even know about) but I like when there is a little essay about the food and the writer's experiences with it.

The Smittten Kitchen Blog is just lovely.  There are plenty of new things to try and the essays are wonderfully written and sound as if Deb Perelman, the site author, is speaking just to you.

She has a huge blogroll of other interesting sites on the left under Good Reads.  I've been working my way through the list.

There is a new cookbook out with recipes that have not appeared on her site.  (She says 85% have not).  Beautiful mouth watering photographs, lovely stories about the food and extra tips for preparation success make this a lovely book.

You know a cookbook is a good bet when there are more than one or two recipes you want to make and are likely to make many times.

I was intrigued by:

Brownie Roll Out Cookies   (Perfect chocolately slices)

Gooey Cinnamon Squares (like Snickerdoodle Bar Cookies)

Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats  (an intriguing take on Rice Krispy Treats)

Tomato-Glazed Meatloaves with Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes  (Tiny individual meatball sized meatloaves)

Flat Roasted Chicken with Tiny Potatoes (Golden chicken baked to perfection with little potatoes)

All Butter, Really Flaky Pie Dough  (she confesses she once had trouble with pie dough and it kept her from being the pie baker she dreamed of being.  I'm all over that).


As a small librarian side note, I was talking with another librarian about this cookbook on the desk this weekend when a woman came up and asked why we were talking about the Smitten Kitten, something she had heard discussed on the radio.  It is possible I kept saying Smitten Kitten when I meant Smitten Kitchen.  After Googling Smitten Kitten (don't do it!) I see why she may have been concerned!