It seems like every time I know exactly what I want to make, I can’t find the recipe. This problem is, of course, aggravated by the fact that I have literally over one hundred cookbooks focused on baking. In reality, there are only a handful of these cookbooks that I use on a regular basis so the difficultly in searching for a specific recipe is not due just to the volume of my volumes.
Most of the cookbooks that I have are beautifully laid out with gorgeous photographs of as many items as possible. But when I need a recipe that is tried and true, I almost always start with Betty Crocker. These are the standard recipes that I grew up with and I own not one but two or three Betty Crockers. Why would anyone need more than one Betty? Often if I am looking for a recipe that I recall from when I was young, something old fashioned, I need to look in the Betty that I inherited from my grandmother. Those recipes aren’t always in the paperback Betty that I took with me to college in 1988. That Betty got dropped in the sink once and is a little worse for the wear so I picked up another Betty at a lawn sale afterward.
Recipes, like clothing, fall out of fashion due to new health concerns, new methods, new lifestyles, etc. So if you want a recipe for Molasses Crinkles, you better have more than one Betty Crocker on hand. Molasses Crinkles are a ginger and molasses cookie that require mixing, chilling, shaping and baking. With so little extra time on our hands these days, cookies like this are not often made. People barely bake, it needs to be easy.
Sometimes I find myself looking for a recipe that never was in my collection. Those recipes are usually all in one place, my mom’s kitchen cabinet and I have called her on more than one occasion for just such a recipe. Then she begins the same treasure hunt among her cookbooks that I had started with mine, searching for that one gem of a recipe we tried one Christmas from the Pillsbury Cook Off booklet bought impulsively at the grocery store checkout.
I have a blank book now just for writing down the recipes that I always seem to have to hunt up. Once I look for a recipe and find it, I try to write it down there so it will be easy to find next time. If I forget to do this, I will be kicking myself later. This little cookbook of my own making would be pretty hard for anyone else to follow since the recipes are minimal and usually only list the ingredients. I have made them all so many times and don’t need the methodical steps band if someone asks me for a recipe I’ll have think about how to write it for the novice baker.
If it came down to it, the house was burning down around me or someone had me at gunpoint, this would be one of the cookbooks I would fight for. I would probably want to keep my older Betty Crocker, too. The newer one would be easier to replace. And in case my opinion of cookbooks matters, I will tell you that Alton Brown’s, “I’m Just Here For More Food” is another of the regulars that comes off my shelf. It has some good basic recipes and a lot of darn good know how. If you consider baking a science, then Alton is a scientist. If you consider baking an art, then I am an artist. And if I am an artist, my cookbooks are my palette.
No comments:
Post a Comment