Have you longed for the days when as a child, you walked into your Grandma’s kitchen and enjoyed one of her home-baked pies, cakes, or cookies? Can you taste them?
Just close your eyes and imagine….
Your Grandma spent much time in the kitchen, baking sweets and treats for her family—all from scratch—and all from the heart.
The only difference was that Grandma had more time than we do—and she … Grandma had more time than we do—and she sure didn’t use Cool Whip (if she baked like her Grandma did)—and neither do we!
An “anthology” is a collection and we hope that we’ve brought to you a smattering of Grandma’s best desserts (along with newer varieties) from the “classics”, along with some exotic desserts thrown in—spiced with helpful and beneficial tips to make these culinary delights all the more enticing.
We selected only those dessert recipes that use natural ingredients. We also noted in our research that many so-called “30-minute desserts” were created using store-bought items like ladyfingers, which were then covered with canned fruit and chocolate and the ultimate—Cool-Whip and Voila! Dessert in less than 30 minutes! While this may be fine for some, this is not CakeChatter’s idea of a made-from-scratch dessert.
Our desserts are fast and are made-from-scratch (and we mean from scratch!) in 30 minutes (some a few minutes more, so forgive us). We also edited “the way” to put a recipe together, making the directions much simpler and easier to follow, so that your desserts will “sing” your praises when devoured.
Enjoy the baking and the reward! Grandma would be proud!
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What a great little cookbook. The recipes include old favorites along with some new ones. I remember my grandmother making Scotheroos. The French-Toasted Angel Food Cake is just plain yummy. I found the Almond Joy cookie recipe last year in time for Christmas cookie baking, gluten free a real plus and a real treat. I still need to try more of the recipes, but they all look good. An added appeal are the notes and tips, very helpful. I received this eBook from NetGalley for an honest review.
Displeased and Alarmed
As a lover of cookbooks and a writer of some myself, I find myself alarmed and displeased by some of what I see in this book.
Let’s talk about the “displeased” part first. I have never heard of CakeChatter before; this is the first cookbook I’ve read by them. This group has trademarked their name, which is of course their right, as well as the term “dough-puncher,” which they stated at the very beginning is an old-timey, old West word to describe cooks on the trail. It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when someone trademarks a historical word or phrase. If a word belongs to history, it belongs to all of us—or should. Annoyingly, throughout the book whenever their name or this phrase was mentioned, they put the digital equivalent of the trademark symbol. Every. Bleeping. Time. As they mention their name and this phrase throughout the introduction and in every recipe several times, we see this over and over. In the introductory section, it certainly breaks up the flow of reading.
Another thing I didn’t like is that the ingredient list was not always given in the order of the directions. It often was, but not always. I think that is because these recipes come from multiple sources, so whether or not this book has them in the correct order depends on whether the source had it so. Some recipes head directions that weren’t logical. For instance, in a recipe that required a chilled Bowl, we weren’t told to do so first, getting that going before starting to work with the cold ingredients. Some recipes had nutritional information while most did not.
On the cover, these editors made a lot of promises: totally from scratch, made in 30 minutes or less, and recipes like Grandma’s. Even though there are only 30 recipes in this book, the authors couldn’t keep any of these promises. They readily admit to a few recipes not being from scratch completely (like ones that use a premade angel cake or pudding mix) and that some recipes will take a little longer than 30 minutes. Whether you see these recipes as being like Grandma’s depends on how you view that. Personally, though, I don’t consider a dessert made with wonton wrappers to be an old-timey, “Grandma” recipe. My nana actually loved to bake and make desserts, and while wonton wrappers were certainly around, she never used them in baking. There are so many desserts out there that I cannot understand why they were not able to find 30 that filled all these criteria.
One more complaint before I move on to what I believe is alarming. I found the recipes themselves to be strangely done. It is as if the authors felt they just couldn’t provide a simple recipe, and so they added more sections and more words than are necessary; I don’t think they necessarily added much for the would-be baker/cook. There isn’t just a recipe headnote (there are none), the ingredients, the directions, and any hints from the original recipe creator. They’ve added illustrations that don’t have to do with the recipe, quotes, comments from other people who have tried the recipe (though some of these extra comments are interesting and even helpful). They even put these extra comments in two separate places within the recipe, one meant to tempt you into the recipe with a larger section of more comments at the end. The way they labeled some sections was just too wordy. They couldn’t just call it directions; it’s called the “How-To-Do-It!” section. One other annoying thing about the recipes themselves is the ingredient list. For whatever reason, whenever there is a fraction, they put a dash between the fraction and the measure instead of a space. I’ve never seen a recipe book that did that, and I didn’t like it.
But let’s move on to what’s alarming about this book. In the first pages, I noticed that they had some gorgeous photos of recipes that they did source to blogs that didn’t have anything to do with CakeChatter(TM). One of my first thoughts was that I hoped they had permission from these blogs to use these photos. Photographs are copyrighted; they just can’t be used by anyone for any purpose. As I started going to the recipes themselves, I realized that CakeChatter(TM) isn’t the creator of the recipes in this book. The recipes themselves are also taken from blogs and other big-name recipe websites, like AllRecipes, BHG.com, and Taste of Home. I find myself wondering if they have permission from all of these blogs and bigger websites to use their recipes in a book like this. I know from experience that recipes cannot be copyrighted, but it is still bad form—at least in my eyes—to fill a book with recipes from sources besides yourself. At least include a few of your own recipes and your own specific tweaks to others’ recipes you’ve put in your book. Certainly, taking the recipe’s comments from that website is wrong. Those words are copyrighted to those individuals who wrote them; they may even be considered to be the property of the individual website. For people who are so concerned about their own trademarking as mentioned above, I hope they have done the right thing by getting permission to use other people’s work and words, especially when copyrighted, like photos.
I received a free copy of this cookbook, but that did not affect my review.