A prime example of how the books lie to you was made painfully evident to me this baking season when I made the Cranberry Cherry Stripes from All American Cookie Book. Tender pale cookies with lovely ruby red stripes of preserves running between them. Yummmmmmmmmm. I followed the instructions to the letter. I waited impatiently to get the dough out of the freezer so I could start baking. I took my sharpest knife to the block of dough – wham! WTF? Nice straight lines, my butt! You got to be kidding! These look like crap!
Reviewing the instructions with the gang, it was decided the only way to make those lovely even stripes was to roll the dough out before placing it in the pan instead of patting it into the pan as directed. For fairness’ sake, I present to you my results - and the food porn that convinced me to try this recipe.
I then started looking at my other pictures. Hmmmm - I see an alarming trend. Am I that bad a baker? All my food tastes great, even the cranberry cherry bars tasted wonderful. I guess I am just going to have to work on my porn skills. (Funny, that is a phrase I NEVER thought would come outta my lips.) So for your viewing enjoyment, I have contrasted my pictures with those of the true food pornographers. Enjoy!
7 comments:
Nice post! Just found you off kipblog! Love the site :) Where have I been??
From the looks of your blog, you get around a lot more than I do!! I get hungry looking at all the great food you've been knoshing on. Last time I ate at a real restaurant was.... ummmm... hmmmm... so long ago I can't remember. Does that make me a bad person?
Hi Rosie,
I love your phrase "food PORN" I never thought of it that way but you are right. There is no way to get cookies to look the way they do in the photos. I think theirs are plastic.
Finally cleaning up my email I found your email about my pumpkin cookies. I couldn't find a pumpkin cookie recipe so I searched my "organization" cookbooks and found a recipe from the feinstein years that called for applesauce and substituted pumpkin. They weren't very good. Your Icing is to sweet because you followed the recipe you goof! Whip the cream cheese with a few drops of heavy cream then start adding the sugar. Taste it after each addition and stop when it tastes good. I also put a touch of cinnamon in my icing for the pumpkin cookies, yummy. Hope this helps.
Love ya; Gail yer cookie bakin, krappy cookin, eatin lovin,granny friend
Silly me! Following the recipe! I just picked up 8 15oz cans of pumpkin on sale at Kroger's - so we have plenty of fodder for future experiments. Pumpkin Bread...yummmmmmmmmmmmm...
I'm with you on things seldom looking like the pictures in the books. But yours probably tastes better!
I hope so!I think it's fun trying to cook food that looks good - but there are limits. I have come to expect the first time around to look terrible but taste good.
When I am at a restaurant, I expect things to look sort of like they've jumped off a page in a cookbook. The sauce distributed just so, the focus of the plate this way, the garnish trying to say a subtle word or two.
I'd rather eat my grandmother's unceremoniously plated, doesn't lend itself well to studio photography fried chicken any day.
Some of the photos from the books look like plastic models. Your baked goods look tasty.
Post a Comment