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!

A Few Good Questions

It isn't all requests for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels for your librarian on the street.

Question One:

Today I had a lady looking for the Cake Lover's Bible. We didn't own it, but while trying to make sure the title was correct I found the author's website which is lovely.

Real Baking With Rose Levy Beranbaum is about baking with forums and a blog and lots of recipes.

Over on the side I noted a link to another site with 78 Mouth-Watering Baking Blogs you need to Bookmark. Yummy!

Question number two:

A guy gets a wierd popup on his laptop whenever he tries to use Microsoft Word. As it turns out, the laptop was purchased used and the popup was asking for a Product Key. This unlicensed software let him create a document but not print or copy and paste it elsewhere to print it. Lesson to be learned, make sure if you buy a used pc, that you get any documentation that went with it.

Question Three:

Printing from Windows Live Word App

You have to make sure you use the print icon within the onscreen window for the application. If you try to use the File menu or the Print icon on the Explorer Toolbar, you will get nowhere.