Dorie and Julia-what a perfect combination!

I swear we're not obsessed with Dorie Greenspan! This will be the last time we review one of her books/recipes for at least one posting :) An overall favorite cookbook among us bakers, we decided to try some recipes from Baking with Julia written by Dorie Greenspan. For those of you who do not own this book, buy it! The breath of recipes alone makes owning this book worthwhile. It has everything from breads to pastries to fancy desserts (and everything in between). This would be a great book to give to a new baker as the recipes are very easy to follow.

Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

These are the kind of muffins that even the most pickiest eater would like. Sit down with a coffee, newspaper and one of these muffins. Life doesn't get much better.

Fresh Rhubarb Upside-down Baby Cakes & Sage Upside-down Cake

These cakes were truly delicious. The bourbon caramel and pecans complimented the rhubarb fantastically. The picture of the rhubarb cakes doesn't do them justice. When they were flipped out of the cake pans, they were a beautiful pink and glistening. For the sage cakes, I decided to cook down some pineapple juice, and use that in lue of the vanilla extract. The flavor of the sage and pineapple was nice, though the rhubarb cakes were the standout.

Hungarian Shortbread





If you love shortbread these bars are for you. Our baker used a strawberry jam instead of the rhubarb, and the results were great. The baker commented that grating the dough was time consuming and (I assume) grating on her nerves :) Also, the shortbread took much longer to cook than the recipe suggested.



Best-ever Brownies

The recipe name says it all. These were the best brownies ever. They were delicious both right out of the oven (who can wait?), and once cooled.