I recently reviewed a couple of the above mentioned D&D cookbooks and there were recipes that called for butter, marshmallows, ricotta cheese, fruit curd, buns, bread, potato chips and pop rocks. All reasonable ingredients to build a recipe from, true, but also all things that can be made using recipes within this book. (Seriously.)
Very much in the spirit of encouraging one to become a kitchen alchemist, Christina Tosi's mindset for baking is to make it very approachable, with a "bring what you have" sort of attitude and an openness to substitutions, modifications, variants, and trial and error, suggesting in multiple places that things don't always work the first time and that's just the universe's way of giving you a snack. To review this cookbook, I started by reading it cover to cover, before actually making anything. While that's not required for most (any?) cookbooks, I found that doing this really helped to illustrate the similarities in certain processes that are shared widely across the recipes and I learned a couple of things here and there about the general properties of certain ingredients and why/how they're used in recipes. So, rather than simply learning how to make one recipe (or worse yet, simply knowing that I can open the book to a certain page and follow the instructions to make that one recipe)... I feel like I've learned a little bit of something that's a more generic, reusable piece of knowledge. And I think that's the idea. You make a recipe, you learn a little something, you get an idea of how you might change that recipe slightly and you're off in a new direction. A few bakes later and you've created something novel that you can show off to your friends, family and perhaps your customers at your new bakery / restaurant / food truck*...
I always start my cookbook review process by choosing several recipes to make. Often one consideration is whether I can easily get certain ingredients. Or, in some cases, even get them in a less-than-easy fashion. Sometimes I have to resort to ordering ingredients online. For Bake Club, however, I found that quite a few recipes could be made with a refreshingly small list of ingredients, often with common things I already had in my pantry. Although I feel like I will be working my way through the recipes in this book over the coming year (I absolutely must make pretzels, bagels and English muffins at least once, if only to be able to say I did)... Here are the ten recipes I tried out for the purpose of evaluating Bake Club for this review:
Ice Cream Cones - I didn't really know what to expect here. When I started reviewing this book, I was using a digital form of an early version of the book and I wasn't looking at the color of the expected result when trying to decide when to take my cones out of the oven. I followed the times in the recipe, but I don't know that my oven temperature was necessarily right (despite what it said), so my cones were underdone and didn't harden as well as they should. Additionally, the recipe gave me two options: to use a greased sheet pan or to use parchment paper and I'm partial to parchment paper, so I went that route, but the wetness of the batter caused the paper to wrinkle and in the high spots of those wrinkles, the cones were so thin as to develop slot-shaped holes. Next time, I would just grease the pan to avoid that issue. The flavor was very nice, but it will take a couple of attempts before I get the cones right, I think. Oh, well.... practice makes... a reason to eat more ice cream...The front cover of the book reads, "Bake Club: 101 Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen", but it really is so much more. In addition to the official recipe entries in the book, almost every one has notes on not only substitutions (as in replacing an ingredient that you don't have on hand with something you do or catering to allergies), but also suggestions on variants that could be made from the printed recipe to put a new spin on it, change the flavor profile or take it in a whole new direction. One example of this is the Sprite Cake recipe; the aside on variations makes suggestions of how to change the recipe to instead make a "Coca-Cola Cake", a "Dr. Pepper Cake" or an "Sunkist Cake." And, while the changes are small, these resulting recipes are specific results that someone might want to make. Someone could totally think to themselves... I want to make a "Sunkist Cake." And, with Bake Club, you can. If you consider these "variants" to be actual recipes, then, at my count, Bake Club contains around 343 of these different outcomes. But, truly, even that is just the beginning, because Christina specifically (and repetitively) points out that you can use these ideas as a jumping off point and suggests general guidelines on how to swap out flavors, fillings, flours and toppings to forge your own fantastical foodstuffs. The listed examples are just to get your creative juices flowing. A good number of the examples are actually provided by Bake Club members from around the world, and they are cited and acknowledged for their own spins on recipes.PB Cups - I love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I've tried the Big Cups, some with pretzels, the reverse ones... I've at least liked every version I've tried... and loved several. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers seem to be the chocolates that simply have an amazing flavor profile and I know I'm going to enjoy one when I find a new twist on it. I've had other takes on peanut butter cups, but the peanut butter filling that Reese's uses is one of the aspects of this tasty treat that really does it for me. I was excited at the concept of being able to make my own similar chocolate treats at home, but didn't really know what to expect. When I tasted the peanut butter filling, however, I was thrilled. It was really close to the flavor of the peanut butter filling I'm so in love with. The final result was a crowd pleaser and although the amounts seemed a bit off**... I gladly... ahem... disposed of the large amount of extra peanut butter filling. I thought about saving it for the next day and making a PB&J sandwich, but it didn't last the night.
PB
PretzelFreezer Cookies - This one sounded like a winner on multiple levels. I love peanut butter (as you might have noticed based on the selections so far) and my wife and best friend have the annoying habit of wanting to eat cookie dough. Well, that desire is what led to the creation of this recipe in the first place, so I figured it was worth trying out. Also, in reviewing this book, I figured I would need to make several recipes from it, so the fact that this recipe had only three steps (and the last one is to put it in the freezer for a minimum of one hour) and - at least based on reading the instructions - appeared that it would take about two minutes to whip together... well, that made this recipe that much more tempting. Christina is pretty clear in this book that you can bring what you have to these recipes, but when I used chunky peanut butter instead of smooth and found that my dough wasn't coming together, it occurred to me that chunky peanut butter is smooth, oily peanut butter with dry peanuts in it... so by measuring out the chunky stuff in the place of the smooth, I was getting a lot less of the oily peanut paste component, as it was offset by the peanuts. Thinking back to having read the magic shell recipe and thinking of the PB Cups chocolate component, it occurred to me that I could add a little bit of vegetable oil to the recipe to get the needed oily wetness into my dough. Further, based on the behavior of magic shell and what I saw in the PB Cups, the vegetable oil should help to harden the cookies when they're cold. I didn't measure out the oil, but just added a little bit and worked the dough with my hands, then put a little on my hands and worked that into the dough until it was sticking together a bit better, then I rejoined the recipe already in progress. These came out very sweet, but no one was complaining. Oh - and I love pretzels, but didn't have any, so I just let the peanuts be the crunchy element and it came out just fine.Croissants - (ooh la la!) One recipe that I absolutely had to try out is Croissants. On one hand, I love the flaky goodness of croissants, but typically get them from store bakeries. The idea of making my own freshly baked croissants was one of those mind-expanding concepts. Additionally, all things considered, croissants are involved, multi-step and seemed like a good recipe to gauge how good the recipe instructions are for more complex recipes. When I read over this recipe and started trying to "walk through it" in my head, her instructions had various dimensions mentioned for different steps, but included rotating the dough ninety degrees between rolling steps, during the lamination process, but none of the dimensions mentioned were square and it seemed to me that the dough wouldn't get from where I started to where she said it should. However, when I actually got to that step of the process, it turns out that after the "double book fold" has been completed, the size you arrive at is approximately 6"x6", so it is square, but Christina didn't state that specifically and, for whatever reason, even though my issue was that I needed it to end up in a square shape and mentally walked through the double book fold, somehow it didn't click that I would be arriving at a 6"x6" square. When I got to that point in the recipe, however, it finally clicked and, although there are several steps and a lot of room is required, I managed to successfully make delicious little croissants***.
Go-To Chocolate Chip Cookies - If there's one baked dessert recipe that most people are familiar with, it's got to be the chocolate chip cookie. Yes, you can buy them in the store or buy tubes of dough that are ready to bake, but making cookies at home from scratch seems to be one of those American traditions, especially during the holidays, and chocolate chip cookies seem to be the most popular of those cookies, at least if you're not cutting them into shapes and decorating them. So, I figured it would be a good point of reference to see just how good the included recipe was. When I started to make this one, Psibabe read through the ingredients list, mentally comparing her recipe to this one... "Hmm... more of this... less of that... she uses just one of those... oh, my, that's a lot of vanilla..." (that sort of thing)... and two things that really stood out were the inclusion of milk powder and the use of kosher salt. Both of these ingredients make noteworthy impressions on the cookie; the milk powder gives the cookies a bit of "bite"****, something Christina says multiple times in the book, but I didn't really understand until tasting these. I loved the taste of these. I won't say they're better than Psibabe's recipe, they were just... different, and I liked them as well. Psibabe said that she might consider adding the Milk Powder to her recipe and swapping the table salt in hers to the kosher salt featured in this recipe, as it makes hitting a piece of salt more of an event... a pop of flavor.
Any Flavor Glaze - ...is a follow-up / add-on recipe for Brown Sugar Wafers and/or Chocolate Wafers, but it's mentioned elsewhere in the book, as well and you can put glaze on, well, anything you want to glaze. I tried mixing up a half batch real quick, just to see how it turned out and figured I would glaze a chocolate chip cookie, because, why not? I opted out of using food coloring and, since the milk looked a bit dicey, I used half and half, which, in my book, still qualifies as "any other flavored liquid." This is one of the simplest of recipes, having two required ingredients (plus optional food coloring) and humidity can effect the results in recipes, but I found that I had to almost double the liquid to get the glaze to a spreadable consistency. However, the recipe specifically says that if you want (or, in my case, need) the glaze to be thinner, add a bit more liquid. When you hit the "sweet spot" consistency, you get a nice glaze that can add a sweetness that, quite frankly those chocolate cookies didn't need. (I'm not mad, though...)
Ricotta ("cheese") - It's good on toast, it makes your lasagnas better, it's a crucial part of cannoli filling... it's delightful. I grew up on my mom's cooking and she spent a bit of time living in a "little Italy" neighborhood, swapping dishes and recipes with neighbors and learning to make lasagna and even cannoli. Also, as it turns out, ricotta can be made in your kitchen with some common dairy, some salt and some lemon, with a four-step recipe, about ten minutes of cooking and an hour of waiting. Well, according to the book and with a better stovetop. Personally, when I made this recipe, I tried to follow it to the letter and used the times and temperature settings as a guide, but ended up having to increase the temperatures and lengthen the times to get the described results. What should have taken 10 minutes took me closer to twenty. Still, being able to whip up some fresh ricotta cheese at home is a game-changer and soon to be at least a monthly staple in my house.
Fancy Butter - This is a very easy recipe and gives you a quick and easy way to flex your creativity and taste the results without having to bake something, boil something or turn on the stove top. And, while it might not seem like much on its own, it can be the spark of inspiration for a new dessert, or bread... or you can fashion a flavor profile to fit something else you're making. Personally, I cut the recipe in half and then whipped up a garlic, chive and pesto butter for spreading on some croissants to accompany a batch of De Rolos' Revenge Pasta***** (from a different cookbook), which will also be using my batch of freshly homemade ricotta cheese. So, that's going to be a nice meal. And, hey - if adding a flavor profile to store bought butter feels like too much of a shortcut, Christina also explains how to make your own butter.
Chocolate Shell - I had read this recipe before making the PB Cups and that gave me the insight I needed to pivot and correct the chocolate candies when I had taken a bit of a wrong turn. However, when I compared this recipe to the chocolate coating of that one a bit more closely, I realized that the Chocolate Shell actually has nine times the amount of vegetable oil. At any rate, I grew up loving Magic Shell as a somewhat rare treat. I never thought I could have been just making it for myself. Well, except for the fact that I discovered on my own that I could achieve a similar result with heated peanut butter, which is mentioned as a replacement for the vegetable oil in the suggestions section.
Pudding - Who doesn't love pudding? Pudding is another one of those things I never really thought about making from scratch... to me, making pudding from scratch meant using the cook and serve box instead of the instant pudding box. If you were really going all out, you might make (Southern style) banana pudding, which involves a lot of different ingredients... but none of them are actually banana-flavored pudding. However, Bake Club, the book, has a recipe for making your own pudding from scratch. So, of course I had to try that one. The basic recipe is a vanilla pudding, with listed variants to get you the recipes for Banana (flavored) pudding, Butterscotch Pudding, Chocolate Pudding and Rice Pudding. However, Psibabe has a thing for Chocolate Pudding, so there was never a question. Chocolate Pudding it is. Aside from the fact that I really need a new stove top and I'm pretty sure the initial heating level should have been something higher than "low," outside of it taking longer than expected, this recipe went nicely and Psibabe loved the result. When it was first made, it was fairly thin, but pulling some out of the fridge the next day found it delightfully thick and (both times) quite tasty. This also makes for a nice filling for a croissant, if you're looking for a dessert pastry.
In addition to suggestions on variations of individual recipes, there are a few well-placed larger "asides" that give some tutelage on things such as adjusting sizes and baking times, giving you the freedom to change cakes into cupcakes, layered cakes or Bundt cakes and cookies into smaller or larger sized cookies or even a sheet cookie. There are also sections on activating yeast; developing gluten; blooming gelatin; the definition, importance and tips and tricks on Soft Ball Sugar; Brown Butter; and even a section on packaging and/or shipping baked goods for sharing.
I really am enjoying using Bake Club to discover some really cool things about baking and to wow my family and friends with some truly fresh baked goods and desserts. I'm also happy to have the ability to make some bread and pastry items from scratch, which allows me to have complete control over the amount of salt and sugar, as well as the types of flour used. My diet has had a lot more restrictions and a lot less fun since my doctor got a hold of it and I can see homemade whole wheat breads and pizza crusts in my future, thanks to this book. Were there any downsides? Well, yes, a couple of things. First, as I mentioned above, there were a few times when the size, servings or amounts didn't seem to be quite right, although some of this could be due to measurement issues on my part. Also, I found that cooking times listed in the recipes are always much less time than it actually takes, but, again, that could be in part due to my oven/range top; your mileage will vary. Finally, there was one error that Psibabe pointed out in the Pudding recipe; Step 3 starts with heating "over a low heat"... then later in that same step, it says that once it's at a boil, "reduce the temperature to low"... which is what it started out at. We assume that the first temperature is supposed to be something closer to Medium or so, to actually get it to boil, which is what we ended up having to do. With the exception of that one step and some confusion over performing the double book fold in the Croissants recipe - which was right, just a bit confusing - the instructions seem to be well written and - more importantly - give you a bit of an understanding of what's happening, so that you can actually pivot a bit if things start to get off track.
One thing that I find very important in a cook book is the index. The index is the way you can find that thing you saw earlier... when you know something about what you're looking for - and you're fairly certain it's in the book - but you don't remember the name of the recipe or even what section it was in. It can happen. For example, let's say you're going to make a double batch of pudding. (Yum... Pudding!) That calls for six egg yolks, but eggs also have whites in them. But wait! You remember there was some recipe you wanted to try in the book that uses egg whites. Perfect! Just look up "Egg white" in the index and... oh. It's not there. (And, no, it's not under "albumen", either) Also, it's not under "Egg"; there's just a reference to a section that talks about eggs. Likewise, there's nothing under "Yolk" either. This part felt like a definite shortcoming of the index. This isn't just some made-up scenario, either... I made pudding and currently have a small storage container of egg whites awaiting use. I know I could make Sprinkles, but I don't need cups and cups of sprinkles. Also, I mentioned above the Sprite Cake and its variants including a Sunkist Cake. Well, if one loves Sunkist and isn't big on Sprite, they might not remember that the original (main) recipe was called "Sprite Cake." So, they run to the index and search for Sunkist. Nothing. Oh, wait! I remember there was also a Coca-Cola one... search for that... Nope. Dr. Pepper? Nada. If you look under "Cakes," you will find all of the primary/main cakes listed and "Sprite Cake" is the last one on that list. If you remembered that it was called "Sprite Cake" and searched for that directly in the index, you would find an entry for it. However, index entries aren't necessarily limited to the primary/main recipes. Chocolate Pudding is a variant, but has its own index entry (well, under "Chocolate"), while Chocolate Shell is listed as a sub-entry under Chocolate and has its own entry, which immediately follow the end of the sub-entries under Chocolate. Additionally, there's an entry for "Pudding" and a sub-entry for Chocolate Pudding appears under that, as well. Furthermore, there is an entry for "snacks" that has forty-three things listed under it, which includes different popcorn variants, candies and even fudge. I say all that to say this: Due to the multitude of variants proffered in this book, making a stellar index would be a challenging task. It does seem that some thought was put into the index, but it leaves so much room for improvement, in ways I've described above. This will make it a bit challenging to find your options for what to do with leftover egg whites, or to figure out which recipe your friend wanted you to make again when all they remember is it had corn meal in it. I would really love to have a more all-encompassing index for this book, but ultimately, it's not going to tell me what recipe I made using Hot Cocoa melting chips if that was the twist I brought to the recipe (Chocolate Shell. It was Chocolate Shell.) ...so the index for this book would also need a blank section in the back for writing in. And, actually, that might be a great addition to consider for Bake Club 2. I wouldn't be mad at a blank page for writing notes on variations tried after each recipe... oh, and I do hope there will be a Bake Club 2: 101 MORE Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen in the future...
If you (or someone on your holiday shopping list) are interested in trying your hand at baking, whether as a hobby, to level-up your holiday meals, start new holiday baking traditions or to simply take control of what goes into your food... I would highly recommend a copy of Bake Club: 101 Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen. And, while you're at it... joining the Bake Club, itself (link below).
* Who am I to say... this is your dream...
** I will readily admit that during the making of the recipes, things happened on occasion and I might not have measured as accurately as I would have liked in some cases. However, in the PB Cups recipe, I found that I had just enough chocolate to make the cups the size I was intending to, while having way too much peanut butter filling. The pictures indicated I should have been making them taller, but that would have used even more chocolate and I would have run out, although it might have used up the peanut butter filling I had made. The Ice Cream Cones recipe is supposed to make four cones. I tried to follow the recipe closely, but only had enough batter to make three cones... and those were so thin that they had holes in places, so some of the measurements seemed off in my experience.
*** And I do mean little; I made the recipe with the standard measurements, but when I got to the point of the last rolling of the dough, which is supposed to be into 6"x40", it was going to be too big for the area I had set up with parchment paper for working dough up to 6"x24"... so... instead, I rolled it a bit so that it was a little less than 24" long, but uniform, then cut it in half and individually rolled those halves to be 6"x20", so that they totalled 6"x40." I cut the first half into triangles and proceeded, but I accidentally measured and cut 12 out of that first half, so they were half-sized. They were cute and about the size of a dinner roll. With the second half of the batch, I made six (full-sized) and froze them to heat them up later.
**** "Bite" is, essentially, "heft"... it's like adding resistance when biting, but without actually making it more dense... it makes the cookie feel more... "substantial", I suppose.
***** De Rolos' Revenge Pasta is from Exquisite Exandria: The Official Cookbook of Critical Role. (Our review is linked below).
