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Author: Linda Lomelino
Genre: Cook Books
Publisher: Roost Books
Date: February 7, 2017
Length: 176 pages
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
With an offset spatula laden with buttercream in one hand and a camera in the other, Linda Lomelino has made her mark as one of the most exciting recipe creators and food photographers in the world. My Sweet Kitchen, Linda's third cookbook, is bursting with many of her favorite recipes for cookies, cakes, pies, cupcakes, donuts, spoon desserts, and other sweet delights.
Linda's desserts are renowned for their elegant blend of classic flavor combinations and unexpected style. Along with nearly 50 original recipes, the book also contains three chapters chock-full of tips on how to bake, decorate, style, and photograph your own creations at home.
Linda Lomelino openheartedly shares her secrets for successful baking, telling us what we should always keep in our well-stocked pantries for best results. What should we prioritize when baking complex cakes? Is it best to use a kitchen scale to weigh ingredients? (Hint: "accurate measurements" and "yes"!) With her trademark atmospheric photographs, every recipe in the book comes to life. Linda also shows us how to pipe icing, frost cakes, decorate with edible flowers, style food to be shared (and "liked") on social media, and even how to tell if we should invest in a new camera to take food photography to the next level. If you have even the slightest sweet tooth, this book will hook you.
Description from Goodreads
This is a delicious looking book and with recipes even a novice banker could tackle. The whole cookbook is just so pretty that I was a little intimidated at first. Was I going to have all of the equipment and space needed while children ran around trying to “help”? Did I need to go to a specialty grocery store to find ingredients? Was I going to have to babysit the bake through each step of the process? Nope, turns out these recipes were totally do-able with limited counter space. I could have half my attention on the baking and the other half on the kids. The ingredients weren’t expensive and could be picked up at my local store. Anything I felt was too "specialty" to bother with was easily substituted. I tried some of the recipes and my family loved them. Kid 2 and my dad especially loved the chocolate chip cookies. (Kid 2 loved everything, I had to take more pictures than anticipated because the corners always seemed to have blurry hands in mid grab.)
Recipes are a range of easy to fiddley, but nothing too overwhelming. I tend to save more involved recipes for holidays when I have more time. My dad is retired, has discovered baking, and LIVES for fiddley. This book is right up his ally and he's now going through Lomelino’s recipe blog. He’s ready for berries to be in season because he really wants to try her Barry Galettes recipe.
Easy alterations & substituions: Lomelino encourages readers to adjust recipes or decorations for whatever fits them. I also like that some of her more fancy ingredients are easily substituted for what you probably already have in the kitchen. For instance I substituted brown sugar for the Muscovado sugar or used whatever chocolate chips I had on hand.
The extras: The cookbook contains baking tips, information on the type of ingredients to use and why (butter vs. margarine), decorating tutorials, food photography and styling suggestions. These are great but it isn’t anything that you can’t easily find online. (However it is nice to have the resource at hand and not have to look things up online.) Her cheat for creating chocolate curls is brilliant, how come I’ve never seen it before? I also liked her piping instructions, they make a nice companion to watching youtube tutorials. (This also fits the type of learner I am, I like to watch demonstrations but also have step-by-step instructions to read.) And the section on how Lomelino creates her beautiful photographs was a fun and informative addition.
I also had concerns with the cookie crust in the same recipe. The final instruction is to "beat until the mixture holds together". But this crust batter didn't look like anything I worked with before. I mean, technically it was holding together, but it was a bit oozy. Shouldn't it be thicker for a crust? I beat it a bit longer but the batter didn't change, but after spreading it out in the pan it started to thicken up. It wasn't until after I baked it that I realized the "cookie crust" was more of a brownie crust. Brownie crust! *dies of happiness*. But a little heads up on the final batter texture would have been great. For the record, the No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake was so wonderful and rich! Loved it.
Recipes are a range of easy to fiddley, but nothing too overwhelming. I tend to save more involved recipes for holidays when I have more time. My dad is retired, has discovered baking, and LIVES for fiddley. This book is right up his ally and he's now going through Lomelino’s recipe blog. He’s ready for berries to be in season because he really wants to try her Barry Galettes recipe.
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| Snatching hands aren't staged. Also, that copper colored table was not the best background for a chocolate cake. |
What I liked
The pictures: Lomelino's gorgeous, atmospheric Instagram style photos are impressive and a bit intimidating. But she walks readers through decorating suggestions and I think even my dad could turn out a beautiful desert.And, certainly, isn’t it a bit more fun when you can document something beautiful that you’ve created? That combination - good baking with lovely styling and photography - is what I am so happy to be sharing through this book.Order of preparation: I'm accustomed to prepping a recipe in the order that works best for me, i.e. chop this now, mix that together then, do that bit later, THEN starting to cook. But Lomelino's order of preparation in her recipes works well. When she tells you to melt the butter first, she means it. That way you aren't piddling around waiting for it to cool because you saved it for last. Oops.
Easy alterations & substituions: Lomelino encourages readers to adjust recipes or decorations for whatever fits them. I also like that some of her more fancy ingredients are easily substituted for what you probably already have in the kitchen. For instance I substituted brown sugar for the Muscovado sugar or used whatever chocolate chips I had on hand.
The extras: The cookbook contains baking tips, information on the type of ingredients to use and why (butter vs. margarine), decorating tutorials, food photography and styling suggestions. These are great but it isn’t anything that you can’t easily find online. (However it is nice to have the resource at hand and not have to look things up online.) Her cheat for creating chocolate curls is brilliant, how come I’ve never seen it before? I also liked her piping instructions, they make a nice companion to watching youtube tutorials. (This also fits the type of learner I am, I like to watch demonstrations but also have step-by-step instructions to read.) And the section on how Lomelino creates her beautiful photographs was a fun and informative addition.
Here I’ve collected my best recipes along with tips on how to make sweet food look so tempting that sharing these treats with your family and friends will leave them over the moon. If you also want to photograph your creations, try some of my tips on styling and photography. I hope you find this book both inspiring and enriching!
What I'm on the fence about
Instructions need more detail: I worry that some of the instructions aren't as detailed as they could be. Generally the recipes I read were great, but a few could have used a bit more description. For the No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake, Lomelino instructs the reader to "whip the cream and then fold it into the cream cheese mixture". Now I have never made anything like this filling before, but I have made traditional cakes that used whipped cream and specified whipping the cream until it peaks. I've also seen similar cakes made on Cupcake Jemma and The Great British Bakeoff, so I was pretty comfortable with my assumptions. However, I know my dad would have called me to double check how thick the cream should be.I also had concerns with the cookie crust in the same recipe. The final instruction is to "beat until the mixture holds together". But this crust batter didn't look like anything I worked with before. I mean, technically it was holding together, but it was a bit oozy. Shouldn't it be thicker for a crust? I beat it a bit longer but the batter didn't change, but after spreading it out in the pan it started to thicken up. It wasn't until after I baked it that I realized the "cookie crust" was more of a brownie crust. Brownie crust! *dies of happiness*. But a little heads up on the final batter texture would have been great. For the record, the No-Bake Chocolate Cheesecake was so wonderful and rich! Loved it.
What didn't work for me
There was nothing about this book that didn't work. The extras aren't earth shattering or new, and I would have liked a bit more description in the instructions, but as a whole this is a good cookbook with accessible recipes and quality tips and tricks.Rating: 5.0
This isn’t a must for the home baker but it is a nice addition to your cookbook collection. My Sweet Kitchen would make a great purchase or gift for anyone interested in creating their own blog or Instagram feed dedicated to cooking. It’s definitely worth getting from your local library, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. (My dad has already asked when I'm going to buy it so he can borrow it.)
Don’t get thrown off by recipe titles like “Bundt Cake with Elderflower Glaze” or “Portuguese Pasteis de Nada”, most of the recipes are easy to make with readily available ingredients. The Portuguese Pasteis de Nada, in my opinion, is the most difficult recipe in the book. But I might have an unnatural fear of working with puff pastry.
You can check out Lomelino's gorgeous blog here.
Was I being too picky on the instructions or do you think these are common sense assumptions most readers would make? Have any of you tried Lomelino's recipes before? Reviewing My Sweet Kitchen was the first time I'd ever encountered her but now I'm a fan.
OOOOOHHH! This post made me SUPER hungry! Good review, I love how you were so HONEST all the time. You don't see that very much with reviewers now, Glad I found one that is! Have a Happy February!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked, if you like baking this is definitely a good book to try from the library. My family is already asking about the next cookbook review. :)
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