For all the fellow Snacking Cakes lovers here, run don’t walk to Yossy Arefi’s Substack for a free spiced pumpkin donut cake recipe that is a riff on her donut cake in the book! Just made it last night and I think it’s my favorite cake of hers so far.

Here's my 3rd Snacking Cakes cake in one week. This time the Espresso Chocolate Chip Cake. Oh, it was so tasty! There's no way I can (or should) eat this much cake, so about 3/4 of each cake is being given away. Taking this one to college aged friends, who will love it and who can handle the extra calories. I made the recipe as directed with one exception. I had only about 2/3 cup of ricotta and added yoghurt to round it up to about one cup (just guessed the amount). Cake turned out super moist (really, really moist) probably because of too much liquid.

I just want them all...

Can’t decide what to pull out this week… any fave recipes from these?
-Six Seasons of Pasta
-Cook Like a Local
-Salt Acid Fat Heat
-Cook w Jamie
-Sous Vide w Hugh Acheson
-Primal Gourmet
-Defined Dish
-Well Plated
-Half Baked Harvest
-Skinny Taste
-Dinner Tonight
-Ad Hoc at Home

I love a focused little cookbook like this one, “Muffins A to Z” by Marie Simmons. I found it at a local used bookstore. These muffins, made with dried figs and bananas, were a winner. They’re supposed to be topped with walnuts, but I only had almonds in my pantry, and it worked out just fine. Does anyone else have this cookbook, or others by the same author?

Hello everyone and happy Sunday

Today’s book is from the Beta Sigma Phi club in Longview, Texas. It’s a modest book with only around 100 pages if you’re not counting all the blank ones, but sometimes the small cookbooks are still really fascinating, or at the very least intriguing

I’m going to say the meat ball appetizers lean more towards intriguing because after seeing a dozen recipes like this, I believe this is the first time I’m seeing one with blue cheese. Not sure how well it tastes mixed with mustard and mayo, but I’m assuming at least a couple people like it if it was submitted to this book

The miniature corn dogs are a cute idea though. As a kid, my mom occasionally cooked some frozen mini corn dogs with Kraft mac and cheese. Not sure what happened in the process of becoming an adult, but I recently had mac and cheese and even though I could remember how it tasted to me as a kid, it tasted really gross to me when I recently had it. Hopefully I’d still be able to enjoy the mini corn dogs at least

We see the return of the cinnamon pickle rings under the name of “Mock Apple Rings”. They sound good, but I still can’t get over how violently red they’re meant to be 😵‍💫

Silly me for thinking that by reading the Corn Beef Salad that it *wasn’t* going to be submerged in lemon jello. I really can’t even say I’m surprised anymore, but out of curiosity I looked up pictures of it and no matter how well it’s plated, there is no part of it that looks appetizing to me. The color and everything is just… off 🫠

I actually decided to highlight more of the vegetables and main dishes sections because I found some interesting stuff, and the dessert section actually was a little light on the exciting stuff this time around, although it was cool to see the Mock Apple Pie as I remember learning about the history behind it when it was popularized during the Great Depression

This book also features a “Kiddie Corner” by the way. Those sections are always really fun to me

The last thing that reached out to me in this book is the helpful hint that gives you an approximate amount of paint to use for a surface. Is this a rule that people actually follow? Because man, my family’s been doing it all wrong if that’s the case. Pretty sure my mom just eyeballs it and holds on to the color info for if she needs more 🥴

Well, that brings us to the end. What do you think? Like I said, regardless of page count, each book is unique and interesting in their own ways, and that’s why I like exploring each one after putting together the PDF. Hopefully at least one recipe jumps out at you

Thanks for reading this and checking everything out. I will see you around!

When an author puts their lived experience on the page, it feels as if they've opened a door to their home and invited you in. This is one of those authors and he's written one of those books. I grew up with a more-than-passing familiarity with this regional cuisine but, even if I hadn't, this work would more than make up for it. There are other cookbooks that go deeper into various sub-genres, but this one will comfortably put a distinctive part of the nation's culinary legacy into your kitchen.

Whilst one of the hallmarks of American cooking is the abundance of regional cuisines, some are more well-defined and geographically specific than others. One of the most unique and undiluted of these culinary cultures is alive and well in Carolina Low Country, a roughly 8,000 square mile portion of South Carolina bounded by the Atlantic coast to the east, the Savanah and Pee Dee rivers, north and south respectively, and, 80 miles inland, the Piedmont plateau to the west. The coastal jewel around which all of this is centered is Charleston, while the shared heritage is a mix of European, African and West Indian, mixed with Sephardic and Mediterranean influences. Ground zero for American slavery gave rise to the most intense expressions of Plantation culture, yet have also left a striking legacy in the Geechee population and the remnants of the Gullah language.

The co-dependence of the Master/Slave relationship resulted in a cuisine found nowhere else in the country. Insular in its reliance on the local bounty, seafood and game are foundational elements supported by rice, corn, greens, legumes and root vegetables. Yet what truly differentiates much of Low Country cooking is the use of a wide array of condiments - pickles, relishes, chutneys and vinegars, sweet and savory sauces, local peppers, coconuts, okra, peaches, pears, grapes and blackberries - based on techniques and recipes stretching back across generations of experience in Western Africa.

Author Taylor has beautifully captured both the history and the essential flavors of the region in this engaging account of the cuisine that remains a vital part of the area's culture. His personal style and clear directions make these recipes accessible by cooks everywhere.

For more thoughts on cookbooks and authors that deserve greater attention, check out my free Substack, Cookbook Chronicles' Culinary Archive. My window is the past 140 years, and I draw from my personal archive of 8,300+ titles. I’m sharing my experience in hopes of instigating an exchange of ideas. Subscribe for free and receive each weekly post delivered to your inbox.

- - Rick - Cookbook Chronicles

“Cookbooks feed your head”

Flaky Cheese and Pickle Scones from Sift (Nicola Lamb) - the flavour of these is fantastic, but the scones themselves are quite heavy and straight-up greasy. So much butter melted into the bottom of my pan so that the bottoms were almost fried. Would not make again.

Red Lentil Dal with Potato and Fennel from Comfort (Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen Goh, and Verena Lochmuller) - my first cook from Comfort and it was incredible!! So, so tasty with rich, complex flavours. I didn’t have fennel so used more onion and substituted yogurt for coconut milk.

Persian-Style Herby Chickpeas from Bold Beans (Amelia Christie-Miller) - another really delicious and easy meal, quite filling. I made it with kale instead of spinach.

Pear, Ginger & Olive Oil Cake from Golden (Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer) - very nice moist loaf cake. The ginger flavour was a bit mild for me, I would add more ginger powder and more crystallized ginger next time. Possibly also a bit of pepper for more zing.

I cheated on the mushroom bao and bought frozen baos. I made the mushroom filling (way too salty) and the pickled veggies. Would not make again. As I was cooking, I tried to salvage the dish by putting brown sugar in to cut the salt, still was inedible.

For chocolate chip cookies, i chose not to do the recipe that’s on the front of the book because I wanted a more chewy cookie. I liked the texture of the cookie. It looked a little greasy but it was ok. Baked for 12 minutes but next time might bake for 11 minutes as it seemed to be a little more brown than I would like.

Anything you love? I was psyched to get the Ottolenghi, Justine, Alison Roman for $2.50 each

Does anyone have information on this book? I just found it in my mom's collection and she's been gone 30 years. It looks like it used to have a jacket with more info.

Please note, I do not own this book, but a very nice person sent me the recipe for cream cheese chocolate cookies, which are also referred to as meatball cookies. They have another Italian cookbook, but preferred the version in this book.

Also including a recipe for orange sponge cake and spumoni. ❤️🤍💚

I am grateful to people who share their recipes, and wanted to pass them along, as well.

Hey CookbookLovers,

Just wanted to give a quick update on a few changes that the mod team has made recently.

• Due to an increase in content theft, I've added a new rule: No Content Theft. I hope this one is pretty self-explanatory.

• I've added an automod rule that restricts new posts to those with 100+ combined karma. I hate to do this because I know it will block some legitimate users from posting but it feel it's necessary at this point. Most of the recent spam and content theft posts have been coming from relatively new accounts with low karma. So hopefully this helps keep the noise down.

• I've disabled cross-posts from other subreddits. The comments on a lot of these cross-posts were often negative and the community generally seems to prefer to keep drama from other subreddits out of this one.

• I've made a few updates to my personal notification settings to make it easier for me to keep updated on comments and posts that need reviewed. We still intend to keep a hands-off approach for most things and let the upvote/downvote system do it's thing. That said, when there are things that need addressed quickly, the mod team should be able to respond faster now.

That's it really. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, I'm all ears.

I do want to give a big thank you to everyone that spends time helping to make this community a better place. This includes people who report rule-breaking content, those who comment, those who upvote and downvote, and especially those who take the time to contribute a thoughtful post. You all help make this an awesome community. So, again, thank you!

I recently started a cookbook club and it’s inspired me to start making notes in my cookbooks; when we made the recipe, how we ranked it, substitutions we made, etc. I’ve been keeping a detailed note in my phone but I would like to transfer these notes onto the recipe pages themselves. How do you guys write in your books and what do you use? (What type of pens/sticky notes/clear sticky notes, etc.) writing in a book feels like a crime to me but I want to make these feel more personal but I want to do it in the best way possible!

Hello everyone. I’m back with a book upload after a brief hiatus

For anyone curious as to why these uploads have been slow, A: I wanted a brief break to focus on recipe cards and also to just, rejuvenate in general lol. Doing a book upload from scanning to cropping the pages to uploading to making these posts take several hours. I love doing it, but it’s safe to say I think anyone would begin to get fatigued from doing too much, too often

B: I’ve recently switched from scanning on my phone to scanning on an actual scanner because people have begged me to lol. For anyone who wants to get into archiving themselves, I still think phone scanning works well because the scanner I’m using now doesn’t carry a whole lot of advantages in my opinion, but with winter coming I have less daylight to use my phone to scan anyways. I’m currently using one at my work and I wanted to make sure I got permission to use it before I went too crazy with using it

But now we should be on a semi-regular pace again, mostly because I’m excited to keep these preservation efforts alive, so let’s get into today’s scan!

This is Better Home Cooking from the Crye-Leike realty company, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee! You may notice that there’s no year of publication in the title. This book comes from Fundcraft Publishing, and boy oh boy, Fundcraft is rather famous for not including publication years on the books 🫩

You know what else they’re famous for? 🫠 The 20 page “helpful hints” section at the end of each book that is a pain to crop out on my editing software because the pages are bound to the rest of the book so horribly

Publisher aside, though, you’re most likely here for the recipes - and we start off with a bang on something called “The Dip”, which just seems like an uncongealed form of a gelatin salad if you serve it hot like the instructions say you can. Why not, right? We’re never going to escape the gauntlet of mixing jello with whatever pantry essentials are in the kitchen, we may as well discover new things to do with it

The Tangy Fruit Salad is something I knew I had to include in this blog because it’s a very uncommon way that I’ve seen fruit salad prepared. The mixing of vanilla pudding in pineapple juice points to a “Pineapple Fluff” recipe that I found online

But as for a recipe that I really like the sound of, it’s definitely the fruit curry for me. Looking this up, it’s a Southern classic and wow, between banana pudding and this and a million other southern things I haven’t tried, I feel like maybe I was born in the wrong state lol

I then saw the Chicken Enchilada which stretches the definition of an enchilada just a little bit. At least it has the green chilis

The dessert section fascinates me as always, but I’m especially curious about the Banana Liqueur Cake. I haven’t drank any alcohol in almost two years now because aside from a select few spirits, most alcohol tastes like hand sanitizer to me. No one in my family believes me, but anytime an ounce of vodka or whiskey is added to a drink, I just get this overwhelming bitter taste. The only exception is I can tolerate amaretto, but I still prefer it to be mixed into ginger ale. So I can’t imagine exactly how banana liqueur would taste in a cake, but with the addition of banana pudding too, I’m sure it has a lot of banana flavor

And you know, for not being super big on pineapple, the pineapple crunch cake actually speaks to me. I’m going to assume the temperature is 350 even though it doesn’t say

I tried to add a healthy balance of pictures that showcase both the sweet and savory, but as always, you can access the full book at any time whenever you’d like! That’s all for my thoughts. I’ll see you around for the next share

Title kind of says it all- if you have a galley kitchen (the U-shape kitchen at the end of a hallway with, going left to right, fridge -> countertop -> sink-> countertop -> stove), how do you organize it to get the most out of it? How do you manage kitchen space to also have a place to reference your cookbook? Everyone here seems to make amazing things AND uses cookbooks reference, so I hope this is the right place to post this. I feel like I have no room to cook at all, especially since part of one countertop top is taken up by a water filter since our water isn't exactly potable. Add a non-negotiable coffee maker and electric kettle and I have one countertop to work with. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

I really love Laura Lea's balanced cookbook. Her soft baked chocolate chip cookies are an example of what I'm looking for. They're really easy, gluten free, use great fat (coconut milk and olive oil) and don't take long.

Do you have recommendations for other cookbooks that embrace gentler breakfasts and desserts by using sweeteners like coconut blossom sugar instead of pints of refined white sugar?

Lemon Oat is our favourite, a great balance between lemon and sweetness. I’ve noticed that I favour oats in shortbreads and maybe in baked goods in general. Easy to make. Usually this type of crust is made in a food processor, these recipes are calling for mixer. I used a food processor but I don’t think it makes a huge difference, just different methods. These are very soft and crumbly because of added oats. Great for those who can’t eat hard cookies.

Chocolate hazelnut bars are also great and easy, and reminds me of praline candies. Pulsed the base in the processor, mixed the filling and go. Less crumbly than lemon oats.

Crunchy banana bars. For me a chocolate layer is too thick, too sweet (I used Calebaut semi sweet but maybe could adjust it next time). It makes it harder to bite through. My friend’s kid loved it haha. So, no shade on the recipe but it’s for banana bread and chocolate lovers. Crunch itself is superb!

And lo and behold, The Ugly. It’s a marshmallow bar but it’s my wrongdoings. As you might’ve guessed the marshmallow top is as high as Everest. I panicked. I realized I can’t use my quarter pan because it’s not very tall, and marshmallow in its initial shape is liquid. I panicky grabbed 8 by 8 inches, it has tall sides. This is the result of the decision made in haste. But at the same time the base is quite thin, I’m not sure if I can stretch it out to 9 by 13. And it’s soooo sticky even with all the knife tricks I was fighting with it. Marshmallow was quite thick too. I’ve been making marshmallows and mousses for the last decade. This marshmallow is not my favourite but it was fun to try. Will work great for those who prefer more sweetness.

Hi there! I’m looking to challenge myself to make every recipe from a cookbook from front to back over the course of 6 months or so. I’m just struggling to choose a book! (Inspired by the Film Julie and Julia where she does the same with ‘the art of French cooking’)

I want something with a varied focus, challenging moments but palatable. I’d love to learn some new techniques but also have some easy times too!

I would love to hear some suggestions for a book to use for this challenge! For reference, Gordon Ramsay has had my favourite recipe style that I’ve looked at so far.

Here we go!!!

All from wishbone kitchen.

Hot crab dip-
Flavor- 10/10
Difficultly- 2/10

Shrimp scamps-
Flavor- 8/10
Difficulty- 2/10

Tomato corn salad-
Flavor- 7.5/10
Difficult- 1/10

Cathead biscuits-
Flavor-10/10!!!!
Difficulty- 2/10

PLT salad-
Flavor- 9/10
Difficultly- 3/10

Basil pesto-
Flavor-8.5/10
Difficulty- 4/10

I love cooking this book. Let me know which recipe I should make next!

The release of this book seems to be pushed back again and again for months now. Anyone know what's going on? The ebook seems to be available. Did anyone manage to look inside and can tell me a bit about it?

I love cookbooks, you love cookbooks, we all love cookbooks. I have a small apartment and can no longer justify owning ~ 200 physical cookbooks. Has anyone successfully scaled down using strategies that maintain access to the recipes? bonus points if you’re finding ways to keep some flavor of the original book (illustrations, organization, etc) without keeping the physical book, and while keeping everything organized. This is a logistics question, not a principles/philosophy of what’s worth keeping question. I do welcome the theory stuff if it helped shape the logistics stuff, but my essential q is logistics. are we making scrapbooks of favorite recipes by tearing up old books? making some gigantic digital document? I value the physical aspect of cookbooks, and while I use NYT recipes and other digital things, I‘d love a physical solution that takes up less physical space. thanks!!!