On Cookbooks
I have been told that this rant is sufficiently amusing that I should share it with more than just the few people that are on zephyr.
About a year ago, I was recommended Cooks' Illustrated The New Best Recipe, and, upon finding it available on Amazon for about $25, decided it was likely worth the price given their renown.
Conclusion: Every single one of their chemically leavened anythings are disasters and their bakers are fuckups who don't know what they're talking about.
We have tried their zucchini bread, banana bread, blueberry muffins, northern-style cornbread, and cinnamon rolls.
The first was a waste, the second was driven by design decisions we found baffling and undesirable, the third was made today and an unmitigated disaster, the fourth was somewhat too dry, and the last was cloyingly sweet. On the whole, they seem to think that cinnamon is a flavor best limited to faint whispers, everything is an excuse to deliver excessive quantities of sugar in non-crystalline forms, and that their cook times have been consistently off.
For the amount of renown they have, I cannot fathom why we are getting such disastrously awful results.
Their banana bread was driven with an objective to make a banana bread unlike anyone else's. But their objective, a light and fluffy banana bread without chunks of banana ends up tasting like yellow cake (my least favorite) with a faint amount of isoamyl acetate in it. Why would you bother to make a banana bread that doesn't taste like real bananas?
someone mentioned "It is weird to me that these recipes are not working. quickbreads are pretty forgiving." K replied "exactly! I'm like 'how did you guys fuck this up?' I know it's not me; I've been making quick breads for years."
Their zucchini bread wholly lacked any zucchini flavor, despite it being fairly intense in the zucchini juice we extracted. It basically turned out like pound cake. They actually called for only the drained zucchini, without any juice. I suppose, in retrospect, the lack of zucchini flavor should not have been a surprise.
For whatever reason, the blueberry muffins took 1.5 hours (not the nominal 25-30m) before the inside set, at which point it was horrifically overdry.
I'm writing this chapter of the book off.
About a year ago, I was recommended Cooks' Illustrated The New Best Recipe, and, upon finding it available on Amazon for about $25, decided it was likely worth the price given their renown.
Conclusion: Every single one of their chemically leavened anythings are disasters and their bakers are fuckups who don't know what they're talking about.
We have tried their zucchini bread, banana bread, blueberry muffins, northern-style cornbread, and cinnamon rolls.
The first was a waste, the second was driven by design decisions we found baffling and undesirable, the third was made today and an unmitigated disaster, the fourth was somewhat too dry, and the last was cloyingly sweet. On the whole, they seem to think that cinnamon is a flavor best limited to faint whispers, everything is an excuse to deliver excessive quantities of sugar in non-crystalline forms, and that their cook times have been consistently off.
For the amount of renown they have, I cannot fathom why we are getting such disastrously awful results.
Their banana bread was driven with an objective to make a banana bread unlike anyone else's. But their objective, a light and fluffy banana bread without chunks of banana ends up tasting like yellow cake (my least favorite) with a faint amount of isoamyl acetate in it. Why would you bother to make a banana bread that doesn't taste like real bananas?
someone mentioned "It is weird to me that these recipes are not working. quickbreads are pretty forgiving." K replied "exactly! I'm like 'how did you guys fuck this up?' I know it's not me; I've been making quick breads for years."
Their zucchini bread wholly lacked any zucchini flavor, despite it being fairly intense in the zucchini juice we extracted. It basically turned out like pound cake. They actually called for only the drained zucchini, without any juice. I suppose, in retrospect, the lack of zucchini flavor should not have been a surprise.
For whatever reason, the blueberry muffins took 1.5 hours (not the nominal 25-30m) before the inside set, at which point it was horrifically overdry.
I'm writing this chapter of the book off.