It was my birthday in September and as a result, I am now loaded down with baking goods/cookbooks that I’ll be reviewing. So I thought that this month, I can give you a bit of a preview of the stuff I’ll be reviewing, as well as mentioning what I’m thinking about and coveting in the baking world!
Cookbooks:
Joanne Chang’s Flour: I saw the recipe for Homemade Oreos on the Bakerella website (going to give them a try one day this week) and this motivated me to have a browse through the rest of their cookbook. With things like pop tarts, it’s definitely not the same old, same old cookbook, so I’m really hoping to give it a go!
Julie Richardson’s Vintage Cakes. I spotted this in Anthropologie when I was poking around the Christiana Mall with Beardy Mum and Boyfriend. I liked that it had (as described) a lot of old fashioned, vintage recipes. I love my exposure to British cakes (as I mentioned, I am a Great British Bake Off addict), but I still think it’s weird to put jam in a cake. Luckily for me, I have this assortment of non-jammy cakes! It’s also supposed to be a fairly advanced cookbook, which I think will be useful. I’m hoping (fingers crossed, anyway) that I’m becoming a bit more of an advanced baker. But definitely looking forward to this!
Then for the cookbooks I received and will be reviewing…
Lindsay Landis’s The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook: I do not have the words to describe how excited I am about this cookbook. I loved the chocolate chip cookie dough truffles and I’m excited for a whole book of cookie dough! I’m eyeing up the chocolate peanut butter cookie dough cups, so I think this one will have a lovely recipe attached to it.
Shauna Sever’s Marshmallow Madness and Gesine Bullock-Prado’s Sugar Baby: Both of these amazing candy recipes (Marshmallow Madness, obviously, focuses on homemade marshmallows, while Sugar Baby has a wide variety – everything from rock candy to homemade fudgesicles). Both required corn syrup (an ingredient that is fairly horrible for you and thus way easier to find in the US than in the UK), but I returned from my American vacation armed with a bottle. So I can now make foods that are horrible for me. Excellent.
Paul A Young’s Adventures with Chocolate and Micah Carr-Hill’s Green and Black’s Ultimate Chocolate Collection : There books are all about pure unadulterated chocolate. I actually can’t wait to share them with you!
Other Things I’m Coveting…
This Jack-O-Lantern cake pan: I want one which will be easy to pull out of the pan (so the 3D one was vetoed, because I require one with no bits which will result in me pulling the cake out piece by piece!). This Nordicware pumpkin loaf pan: how autumn-y is it? It’s amazing! I cannot get over how cute my loaves would be if I baked them in that! These Candy Corn Oreos (only available at Target in the US, so odds of getting them are nil, but I think using them to bake into something would be absolutely wonderful.) These Marvel Superhero cookie cutters and these Star Trek cookie cutters (because I am pretty much the biggest science fiction nerd ever).
Man, I really hope Beardy Boyfriend doesn’t see this post. He’s already trying to impose a moratorium on me bringing more baking equiptment into our little flat kitchen!
The Baking Beardy 
I really like this feature – I’m always coveting cook books…maybe writing them down would get it out of my system! Or maybe not…