Book: Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Pages/Format: 514/Hardcover

What I Thought: I kept hearing about this book on different food blogs I follow, including Tuesdays With Dorie, and I figured I might as well check it out from the library.

I loved the random tips scattered throughout the book, and in general, I liked how the the book was organized.  There was a breakfast sweets section, cookies, cakes, spoon desserts, and a few other sections I’m forgetting.  The only issue I had with the organization of the book was that each section had different subdivisions.  Like, the cookie section had one part for bars, and two different sections for cookies.  Actually, a better table of contents would have been helpful.  At the very least, each section could have had a listing of the different categories.

Another issue I had was her usage of the chocolate baking bars instead of cocoa powder and/or chocolate chips.  There’s nothing wrong with the bars, but spending a few minutes chopping up chocolate when I can just use a bag of chocolate chips?  Really?  Granted, she does offer chocolate chips as an option for some of the recipes, but why would I want to buy 12 ounces of chocolate (in bar form) when I can get the same amount in chocolate chips for the price of one bar?  I think she said that the quality of chocolate chips isn’t very good, which is why she prefers to use bars, but I haven’t noticed any difference between the 2.

Like I said a couple paragraphs ago, there were random tips scattered throughout the book, and those were pretty helpful.  With a lot of the recipes, there were different variations you could do, and it had instructions for how to freeze and store the desserts.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  There were a lot of good recipes, but I felt like the table of contents could have been better.  The amlount of recipes and the sheer number of variations and add-ins were slightly overwhelming.

Still, I definitely want to get my own copy, because I loved it.