My Dog-Eared
My Dog-Eared, Scotch-taped and Generally Well-Worn Cookbook List
By an Amazon.com customer
By an Amazon.com customer
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The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum Buy new: $23.10 / Used from: $9.58 My copy is falling apart, but I won’t part with it. I use this book at least once a week. Great discussions on the science of baking.
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The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook by King Arthur Flour Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $14.80 My favorite cookie cookbook. Chapters are arranged according to the type of cookie, with the first few chapters covering the basics (chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter, etc). The brownie recipes are wonderful, with recipes for cake-like brownies, fudgy brownies, and “on-the-fence” brownies. Would make a good gift for a beginning baker.
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The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook by King Arthur Flour Buy new: $23.10 / Used from: $20.99 An excellent all-purpose baking book, with just enough food tech to make a cut above the usual baking cookbook, yet not quite as detailed as The Cake Bible.
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Sweet Serendipity: Delightful Desserts and Devilish Dish by Stephen Bruce Buy new: $13.57 / Used from: $3.99 A fun read, and my favorite cheesecake recipe.
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The Complete Cooking Light Cookbook Buy used from: $3.18 This is my favorite of the Cooking Light series. It is an older book, but I find the recipes less pretentious than those in some of the later editions.
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Top Secret Restaurant Recipes: Creating Kitchen Clones from America’s Favorite Restaurant Chains by Todd Wilbur Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $2.48 Both Volumes 1&2. Another fun read, with do-able and close clones of favorite restaurant dishes. While I have no desire to re-create a Big Mac, I have used the recipes from the Olive Garden, Applebees and other chain bistros to satisfying results. Tongue-in-cheek “diagrams” of constructing the dishes accompany each recipe, as well as some background info on the restaurants.
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Desperation Dinners by Beverly Mills Buy new: $11.16 / Used from: $1.25 Working-mom friendly. Using a combination of fresh and prepared foods, you really can get dinner on the table in 20 minutes (but you must be able to multi-task). A lot of one-dish, pasta, Tex-Mex, Italian and Asian-inspired meals, so if that’s not your thing, this may not be for you. But if you’re sick of take-out and want to know how to dress up a deli rotisserie chicken, then give it a try.
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The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy by Nanci Slagle Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $14.98 This was the first OAMC (once-a-month cooking) cookbook that I bought, and it’s a good introduction to buying, cooking and storing meals for a month. I’ve been doing my own version of bulk cooking for quite some time, and it really does help keep the food budget down. Not a glamorous book by any means, but very useful.
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Make-a-mix by Eliason Buy used from: $7.42 If you are into once-a-month-cooking, get this book. The title pretty much says it all.
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