When Little D was born I decided to make him a very special gift.
As you may have guessed food is very close to my heart and I love cookery books and read them like novels. Therefore it won't be any real surprise to learn the gift was a recipe book, but one penned by myself and including all our family favourities. Everything will be in there, from my special Spanish rice to great grandma's treacle toffee, interdispersed with stories and snippets of the family history.
It is still very much a work in progress and I have gone from planning a proper published glossy tome to wanting to produce something handwritten and heartfelt. I may yet do both, but recently I have been looking for off the peg solutions for my research. You would think that this would be easy. What's difficult in finding a plain A5 notebook? But to be honest it's been difficult finding one up to the job. I was looking for something good quality that could stand up to the odd spill, without lines so I could add little diagrams and pictures and things, and last but not least it must have a way of indexing entries.
Quite out of the blue I was very lucky to be given a lovely Moleskine Recipe book that was just the ticket from a lovely friend this Christmas. It has sections for starters, mains and desserts and a section just for wine. It is going to be perfect for my research and recipe development. It also has a handy little pocket for cut outs.
Another option I happened on by chance is Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. I was sent an unlined A5 book to try and was really impressed by it. Again they have that handy pocket and a really useful section at the front of indexing. The paper is really good quality and a delight to write upon. Because it is plain it is perfect for including diagrams or pictures of items I have made.
I am really looking forward to using my new notebooks now that the kitchen project is almost complete. I just need to find the perfect kitchen table....
We were given Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks free of charge to review.
As anyone who loves food and enjoys writing about food will tell you, it is a dream to write and have a cookery book published. As food bloggers we taste a little of this dream, we write and we are read (hopefully) but it's not quite the same as being in print.
One of our favorite things at Pig Row is books, not just any books cookery books. Since a teen I have read cookery books like novels, for me they are the ultimate escape.
Photo credit: hotblack from morguefile.com
The Whoopie Pie Book by Claire Ptak contains over 60 mouthwatering recipes for every occasion including seasonal flavours like organic Easter rhubarb, indulgent treats like red velvet buttercream, and cute party snacks like raspberry frosted ruffle. The book even includes alternative cake-cookie recipes such as oreo cookies and easy macarons.
Claire Ptak is of Violet a small cake company based in East London which has a shop on Wilton Way and sells out nearly every Saturday at its stall on Broadway Market. Not only has she developed all the gorgeous recipes in the book she is also responsible for the beautiful image styling throughout.
After we had finished drooling at the pictures we thought that we would have a go at the Salty Caramel Whoopie with Caramel Swiss Buttercream. Perhaps in hindsight the buttercream recipe was a tad advanced for us it wasn't necessarily complicated it just had a quite of lot of steps to follow and we are impatient. Note to self you cannot go off to measure ingredients when boiling sugar ... ahem... it might just burn... It turned out alright in the end though and was delicious. For some reason our whoopie pies also didn't flatten as they should and the finished whoopie pie looked like a walnut. This again was probably our failing as we didn't have the right sugar and substituted demerara for soft brown. However that being said we would definitely had another go as they were still yummy they have disappeared in no time!
The Whoopie Pie Book by Claire Ptak RRP £15 is published by Square Peg and is available from all good book shops.