GENRE: Cookbooks/Baking
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: When most people hear the name Pillsbury, they immediately think of luscious, irresistible desserts. For more than 125 years, the Pillsbury Company has been providing Americans with the best foods, and now they proudly present their extensive collection of exceptional dessert recipes. Pillsbury: Best Desserts has a dish for every sweet tooth, from Golden Pecan Pie to Apple Raspberry Cobbler to Pumpkin Cheesecake with Praline Sauce to Banana Brownie Split Sundae.
The Pillsbury cookbooks are classics because they provide more than just great recipes--they are valuable sources of cooking and baking information. The first chapter of Pillsbury: Best Desserts, Desserts Basics, provides a thorough introduction to making perfect desserts, including general information about common equipment and ingredients, as well as more specific information, such as how to test a cheesecake for doneness and how to distinguish a cobbler from a crisp or a crumble. The remaining chapters cover the range of possible desserts to satisfy any craving--Cakes and Frostings; Pies and Tarts; Crisps, Cobblers and Other Baked Desserts; Cheesecakes; Mousses, Puddings, Trifles and Other Refrigerated Desserts; Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts; Bake-Off® Desserts; Cookies, Bars and Brownies; and (to top it all off) Sauces--all accompanied by 110 mouth-watering full-color photographs.
THINGS I'VE BAKED
INDIVIDUAL HOT FUDGE SUNDAE CAKES
This recipe is pretty much the same as all other pudding cakes. The eggless cake batter is made using a large bowl and whisk, no hand mixer required. The 'pudding' mixture is made from just brown sugar*, unsweetened cocoa, hot water, and is poured on top of the batter and not mixed in. The cake bakes up normally and the pudding mixture ends up on the bottom of the dish and thickens a bit. I chose to make one cake instead of multiple individual ones. I baked mine in a 1.5qt dish for 25 minutes.
These cakes are always firm, a bit dry, but it doesn't really matter because you're eating it with moist pudding. The pudding is bitter because of too much cocoa powder so I'll use less next time, 2.5 T. instead of 4. I added 1/4t. salt to the cake, and to the pudding mixture I added vanilla extract and a small pinch of salt because it's necessary and the recipe called for none.
*You can use white granulated sugar in place of brown in the pudding mixture, as experience has taught me.
OLD-FASHIONED BUTTERMILK BROWNIES
These turned out pretty good. These have a very small amount of cocoa powder in them but enough to taste. I made half in an 8" square pan. I made just 1/4 of the frosting and added lightly toasted chopped pecans to the top. The recipe had no salt or vanilla extract in it so I added 3/8t. salt but it could have used more. I added 1/2t. pure vanilla extract. I soured the milk by adding vinegar to it since I didn't have buttermilk.
SOFT AND CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
I made half the recipe and needless to say the dough hardly spread out. After the first batch baked I formed the remaining dough into a plastic wrapped log so that I could slice the dough. That's what you have to do when your dough won't spread- make this into slice 'n bake cookies. These tasted ordinary.
MY THOUGHTS: This is a very nice hardcover book with dust jacket. The book is in full-color with one to three recipes per page and a lot of photos but not one for every recipe. Some photos are full-page.
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