Customer Reviews

Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved the first Baked cookbook and bought this one when I saw it in a bookstore a week ago. I've already had occasion to try out a couple recipes and WOW they're great! The Grasshopper Bars were awesome, as is the Caramel Apple Cake made for a friend whose birthday was this past week. We also tried the malted waffles (I'd been looking for a recipe for these -- yay!) and they were great.

The one problem I've run across is in editing. For example, in the grasshopper bars, one of the butter measurements is given first in tablespoons, with the stick equivalent in parenthesis, while another butter measurement is opposite. If I weren't paying attention that could have caused a goofup.

Then I was thinking about making the speculaas, and read through the recipe/instructions. The instructions mention cardamom, which is not listed in the recipe. A careful editor would have caught that. I haven't done an in-depth read of many more recipes, but this is slightly disappointing. But only slightly. If I could, I'd rate this a 4.5. Very fun recipes overall, and inventive combinations of flavors/textures/etc. Two thumbs up!

I received my book yesterday, and it looks promising. I already had Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, and have enjoyed the recipes I've made from that book. This book has many recipes I cannot wait to try, like; Sweet & Salty Brownies. I made their Sweet & Salty Cake from the last book, along with many other recipes, and adored them. Baked: New Frontiers in Baking is my favorite baking book, and I own about a hundred cookbooks, and also a member of several cooking websites, so that speaks volumes about how great I think it is.

Baked: Explorations list of recipes does not disappoint. I book marked recipes I can't wait to try out. Baked recipes are not the boring , same-old-same-old stuff that has nearly identical results in most cookbooks. They have such a fun variety, with cute recipe twists. Like 'Nutella Scones', 'Orange Creamsicle Tart', 'Almond Joy Tarts', 'Chocolate Mint Thumbprints', Chocolate Salt & Pepper sandwich cookies, a bunch of cakes, and candies like a recipe for homemade 'Mallow Cups'. I am going to make their Sweet & Salty Brownies this weekend, and maybe for Halloween. I also bookmarks Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake w/ Cream Cheese Frosting, Muddy Mississippi cake, and Chocolate Hazelnut Spread.

I was worried this book would have repeat recipes, or recipes that would take the back seat compared to the first book. My worries are over, I think I'll celebrate with some homemade Baked brownies!

P.S.- I'll let ya'll know how they turn out :)

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Update:

I made the Sweet & Salty Brownies a lil' while ago. I couldn't wait for them to cool to room temp, and I cut into it while they were still warm (not hot). I have to say, I am a darn good cook! ;)

The brownie is fudgy, chewy, and has good chocolatiness. It isn't too chocolatey, like how some recipes are that call for bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate, and the recipe turns out a bit too bitter. These are spot on in there depth of fudginess. I think the saltiness may even reduce the chocolate perceived bitterness. The Salty Caramel Sauce by itself, tastes like a nice toffee, or butterscotch, even though there is no butter in the caramel. The flavor reminds me of Crunch n' Munch toffee coated popcorn, or Poppy Cock. I have made this caramel sauce before, for Xmas when I made their Sweet & Salty Cake, and only put in 3/4 of the salt that was called for. For me, reducing the salt a smidge tamed it, so my family's picky eaters won't say "it's salty", 'like it wasn't supposed to be salty?'

There was about 1/2 cup of caramel sauce left over after putting a caramel layer in the brownies, I poured about a tablespoon on top of my, still warm, brownie. A brownie and carmel baby.

I really like this recipe, maybe next time I'll add a cup or two of toasted pecans with the caramel layer. I think I'll be making these brownies again for Halloween :)

I am just begging to try my hand at baking and picked up this book after seeing it discussed on a few blogs. At the moment, I am still digging around in the breakfast section only as I am a little weary of trying cakes too soon - and I have to say, everything I have tried is fantastic and easy. The olive oil bundt was a big hit (made it twice) and the chocolate loaf is already becoming part of my weekend routine. Made the Nutella scones for a friend's brunch and they were the most popular item on the table. I will update the review after I delve into other sections of the book, but right now, I am extremely pleased with this book.

I read this book from cover to cover the day it arrived. not only did almost every recipe appeal to me, it is masterfully written and hilarious to read! These guys put a great deal of care and detail into their book and may I just say that the Devils Food with Angel Frosting is the BEST devils food I have ever baked (just watch the bake time). I have already recommeded this book to several friends, and they all agree it is a winner! Bake on people.

The recipes I've tried from this book have all turned out good, with the exception of the malted sandwich cookies. The texture of the cookies was all wrong but that may have been due to having no weight measurements to go by. Measuring by volume dirties up more utensils, takes more time, and most frustratingly, gives inconsistent results. I don't see why the weights couldn't have been listed in addition to volume. It shouldn't be a hassle at all considering most, if not all, of these recipes started out as weight based commercial recipes anyway.

I like this book but I could have liked it a lot more. If weights were included, this likely would be a 5-star review. As it is, 3 stars.

OK, I am a chocolate lover but yesterday I made the soft candy caramels and they are OMG unbelievable. I am not really a baker but it looked easy so I tried it.

They are the best ever, you must make them today. Nothing like the caramels you get in the store.

I had some friends over for apples, cider and home made caramels last night. Everyone was crazy about the caramels.

It made me actually want to try to make something else. I think my next adventure will be Oprah's favorite (The Pistachio Cake).

It looks so good, I cannot wait to taste the batter, ha ha.

This book is a must buy for sure.

Bakery owners Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito's dream was simple: they wanted to create a classic American bakery. Their flagship Baked store opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn in 2005, and the second opened in Charleston in 2009. In their first cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, Matt and Renato focused on recreating classic American desserts like cobbler, red velvet cake, apple and pecan pies, and diner-style desserts tempered with more modern touches like matcha (green tea powder), chipotle, and generous sprinklings of fleur de sel. Chocolate stout milkshakes and green tea smoothies rubbed elbows with espresso martinis. It was main street diner meets Dean and DeLuca's, and added numerous crowd-pleasers to my repertoire, including the classic Baked brownie and the pumpkin chocolate chip loaf.

In their second cookbook "Baked Explorations," Matt and Renato focus on comfort foods rather than innovation; there's a much more retro feel in the photography and recipe selection, one that pays tribute to grandma's kitchen and heirloom recipes in general. It's like a culinary time capsule: the PB&J bars taste like grade school lunches, the no-bake peanut butter cookies bring back memories of time spent "cooking" with Mom in the kitchen, while the orange Creamsicle tart will take you back to childhood summers spent drinking orange soda (pop, Coke) on the front steps. Classic shortbread cookies, thumbprint cookies, and grasshopper bars (my grandmother used to make a very similar confection) conjure up memories of "high tea" with grandma and her neighborhood friends. That's not to say that you won't find any surprising combinations in here; there's always the chocolate salt-`n'-pepper sandwich cookies, tomato soup cupcakes with mascarpone frosting, or rosemary apricot squares.

The breakfast section features the lion's share of recipes, with guest appearances by monkey bubble bread, pumpkin cheddar muffins, farm stand buttermilk doughnuts, Nutella scones, malted waffles, crumb cake, baked French toast, and baked cheese grits. For those who prefer their breakfasts to induce sugar comas, you'll find oatmeal chocolate chip cake with cream cheese frosting and the sinfully decadent double-chocolate loaf with peanut butter cream cheese spread. Imagine biting into a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for breakfast, and you've got the general idea, although this is gussied up with Valhrona cocoa powder and Ghirardelli bittersweet chips. I found that the included amount of sugar for the peanut butter cream cheese spread was a tad too much for me (1/3 cup for 5 oz. cream cheese), so you may want to start with ¼ cup of sugar and sweeten to taste.

Regional desserts, especially those rescued from the musty depths of community cookbooks, are featured prominently, including offerings from the Northeast (Maine's Joe Froggers, NYC's black and white cookie), buckeyes and heartland turtle bars from the Midwest, and strawberry Jell-o salad (even before I became a vegetarian, gelatin and I were on dubious footing). Southern cuisine gets a definite nod, with honey corn muffins, buttermilk pie, cowboy cookies, pudding bars, lady praline chiffon cake, and burnt sugar Bundt cake with caramel rum frosting. To appease the various factions of mud pie purists, there are two different versions of Mississippi Mud Pie; the first is a chocolate-drenched, bourbon-laced coffee ice cream tart, while the second, Muddy Mississippi Cake, is a flourless chocolate cake "inside a cookie crust topped with a layer of silky chocolate pudding and whipped cream." Both are good enough to make you jump up and witness.

As with their previous cookbook, "Baked Explorations" is beautifully laid out on high-quality paper. The endpapers are printed in a gorgeous gold-accented design that brought to mind Lomonosov porcelain. The eye-catching photography by Tina Rupp really pops, and this time around there are staged vignettes featuring antique china, vintage books, weathered bakeware, and various antiques scattered about. Reading each recipe's introduction is part of the fun; ingredients and instructions are clearly laid out and broken into manageable steps, while Baked notes and variations are also featured. You'll find a handy metric conversion chart and list of sources at the back, while helpful hints on ingredients, preparation, and storage can be found throughout. One note of warning: Matt and Renato don't believe on skimping on quality ingredients, so you'll see recommendations for Valrhona cocoa and other premium items. Use the best you can afford (or find), and your recipes will turn out memorably.

This is one cookbook that more than lives up to the high expectations of its predecessor, and will make the perfect gift for any foodie on your list.

(Review copy generously provided by Abrams)

Let me say that I love this book. I am all about it. I find the recipes to be very interesting and classy (just LOOK at that coffee cake!), not to mention scrumptious. That being said, 5 out of 5 stars is a perfect rating, and I feel this book is not as good as it could be.

Most notably I feel (as others have said) that there should be weights. scooping a cup of flour can be slightly different from scoop to scoop and although this may not seem like a big deal, but I just cannot get my Nutella Scones to match the picture in the book. I'm sure the scene in the picture is just that: a chosen scene, but I cannot get that same dark color which annoys me. Despite that, however, they still taste great.

This is more so a personal complaint, but I wish the recipes did not rely almost exclusively on top shelf chocolate. I live in a small city (if it can be called that) and there are no specialty stores of any kind. I had to search high and low for Scharffen Berger cocoa which is the book's bottom tier chocolate. Yes I could order it but honestly, who wants to buy $15-20 of chocolate when trying recipes here and there? Also, in regards to the aforementioned scones, the recipe calls for hazlenuts. Now, I can't speak for other areas but I could not find any hazlenuts of any kind anywhere. I ended up using Frangelico (hazlenut liquor) and adding some flour to compensate. I just would have liked if there was a little 2 page section on substitutions for potentially hard to find ingredients, especially since these recipes supposedly come from hand me downs in small towns.

Overall, a great book with great ideas that I read more as a novel than a recipe book. I just don't think it's perfect.

I agree with everyone who finds the lack of weight measurements a negative for this book. For example with flour, if you scoop & level, you get a different weight for flour than if you spoon the flour into a measuring cup. I have no idea if a recipe's per-cup weight of the flour should be 5 ounces or 4.25 ounces. The second problem is the lack of description for the finished product. For example, the Salty Sweet Brownies I made came out very gooey. Is that the way they are supposed to be? Was the caramel filling supposed to saturate the brownie or remain a distinct layer? I don't know if the gooeyness of the brownie was due to too little flour (4.25 ounces vs. 5 ounces) or if the gooeyness of the brownie was a complete success. Does anyone who made this recipe have a clue? Charley

The book begins with a quick introduction to some of the kitchen equipment, terms, and ingredients used in the book. Then, it moves right into recipe portion of the book. As the title suggests, most of the recipes seem to be a twist or play on classic recipes. For example, there is an Almond Joy Tart, and there are Salt-n-Pepper Sandwich Cookies, which are along the lines of OREOs.

Each recipe throughout the book comes with a "Baked Note" that gives some sort of extra tip or hint for that recipe. Many of the recipes have a picture accompanying them, and they're the kind of pictures that make you want to bake everything in the book all at once. One note - there are volume measurements, but there are no weighted measurements.

The first three recipes that I made were the three that I bought the book for and all three were sweet/savory or salty combinations: the pumpkin cheddar muffins, the cowboy cookies, and the sweet and salty brownies. The pumpkin cheddar muffins were very good. They were moist and had a nice, mostly savory, flavor to them.

The cowboy cookies were good oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I made a batch after they had been in the fridge for four hours, and they were on the crisp side. I let the dough sit in the fridge overnight before I baked the second batch, and the cookies were chewier and weren't as thin.

The sweet and salty brownies were a disappointment, though. I made them three times, and they didn't turn out well any of the three times. They were fine, but they weren't as exciting as I'd hoped they'd be. After reading other people's rave reviews, I'm not sure what went wrong when I made them, but they weren't as good as I'd hoped that they would be, and, while I like salty and sweet, the saltiness was a bit overwhelming. However, there are enough good recipes in this book that I still felt like it deserved a 4 star review.