I Love Desserts: The Weekend Baker

I Love Desserts

The Weekend Baker
Irresistible Recipes, Simple Techniques
and Stress-Free Strategies for Busy People

by Abigail Johnson Dodge

Hectic with occasional insanity—does that describe your life? It sometimes feels like there's little time to breathe, let alone bake. The Weekend Baker is anyone who loves to bake but finds it difficult to fit in. The Weekend Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge is the cookbook for all those home cooks—single, married, male, female, with or without kids—determined to fit baking into their busy lives and know that the taste of homemade desserts can't be replicated.

The Weekend Baker includes 150 scrumptious recipes for everything from savory rolls and stovetop quickies to layer cakes and no-bake favorites. It includes a complete introduction to baking with helpful time-saving tips and time management strategies, a list of must-have-on-hand equipment, and essential ingredients for your pantry.

Divided into three sections categorized by the time the recipes take to make. The Weekend Baker is the first cookbook designed to help people with busy lifestyles. "Baker's Express" recipes can be made in under an hour and include: Emergency Blender Cupcakes with Fudgy Frosting (ready in minutes), Big-Time Peanut Butter Cookies, Buttermilk Biscuits, Supermoist Banana-Nut Muffins, Warm Cinnamon-Spiced Blueberry Cake, and Lemon-Poppy Seed Squares.

"Baking in Stages" are the recipes that can be divided into a few short stages (for instance, make cookie dough, freeze it, and make the cookies themselves another time) and include Three-Bite Whoopee Pies, Ginger Crackles, Old-Fashioned Berry Ice-Box Cake, Buttery Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls, Big Batch Scone Mix, Never-Fail Pie Dough, and Mocha Swirl Cheesecake. Finally, "Productions" are recipes for any occasion that calls for an impressive dessert (for example, a No-Bake Graham Cracker Mini-House, a fun and tasty family project). Like all the recipes in the book, the instructions are easy. Other productions include Chocolate-Chip Double-Deckers, Overnight Brioche Braid that can be left to rise in your refrigerator, and Apple Cider Pie with Toasted-Walnut Lattice Crust.

Founder of the test kitchen and contributing editor at Fine Cooking, Abigail Johnson Dodge has had to answer a lot of questions from readers about how to turn out desserts that look good and taste wonderful. She realized the need for a book with recipes and strategies for time-pressed contemporary cooks.

The streamlined recipes in The Weekend Baker are not just great for weekends, but they're also right for weekdays and any time you can find some extra minutes. As an added bonus, the book contains an added section to teach beginning bakers and to get old pros who have lapsed baking again.

You'll see that baking can be broken down into do-able parts so that it slips into time pockets between carpools, work, school and errands. Whether you need a mousse for an hour from now or a peasant boule for next week, there's a recipe to suit your tastes and schedule, and the results will be stunning. You too can bake with stress-free efficiency no matter what your time constraints are. It's not difficult. It just takes a little planning. And The Weekend Baker can help.

Buy the Book!

The Weekend Baker
Irresistible Recipes, Simple Techniques and Stress-Free Strategies for Busy People
by Abigail Johnson Dodge
W. W. Norton & Company
Hardcover: 352 pages; $30.00
ISBN: 0393058832
Information provided by the publisher.