Remember when we used to buy cookbooks? Maybe you still do, but I've culled the ones I own and narrowed my collection down to one or two, and now I spend (waste?) a lot of time looking up recipes on the internet. I have a lot of printed out recipes, but the nice thing is that if something doesn't work out that great, I just throw the printout in the recycling bin. If it works, I put a star at the top and put it in my pocket folder of favorites. I especially like the websites that do the math for me when I want to reduce the number of people a recipe feeds (and sure, I could do it myself--and I have/do--buy sometimes I'm just lazy).
Sometimes I just like to look at dessert blogs, because so many of them are downright gorgeous. Here's one I once had a couple of posts about. The author stopped posting a few years ago, but there are still a lot of super pretty dessert recipes there. I'm using this image even though I used it here long ago, because I asked and received permission from the owner of the raspberri cupcakes website (and also because it's just such a beautiful cake). I highly recommend roaming around the website. So many gorgeous desserts!
And of course there's always YouTube for tons of recipes and cooking videos I could watch all day. Like this one for a microwave brownie.
Or this one with all kinds of intriguing and decorative desserts (not sure all the instructions are there, but it's fun to watch).
Of course, some days (most days) I have to actually get to business and find recipes to cook for dinner, and I often turn to the internet for those recipes, too. I have a folder full of great ones I've found and tested, but that's a story for another day. Enjoy looking at (and making?) desserts!
I'll admit that I'm not much of a cook. I don't like spending more time making something than I do eating it, and I always assume (rightly so) that if I start baking, I'll start eating the things I've baked (I think we all know what that would mean).
But I do happen to love reading recipes, and I like to mix things up a bit and get out of my usual cooking routines now and then. So, I used to have a number of cookbooks. For the past few years, though, that hasn't been the case. I own 3 professionally published cookbooks, along with two little cooking booklets my sons contributed to when they were in kindergarten. Of those five publications, three are sentimental (one of the professional versions was given to me as a gift by a friend I haven't seen in years. To its credit, it does have a solid pot roast recipe). As for the other two books, I'm not sure why I have them. One is a book on vegetarian cooking (I'm not a vegetarian, but I like vegetables) and the other is a slow cooker book, and I haven't gone near mine in years.
Today when I need or want a recipe, I either go to a folder where I keep some tried and true recipes along with a few I've decided to try out, or I just hop on the internet, type in what I'm looking for and then cruise around until I've found something that suits my available ingredients, complexity and time constraints. I rarely tear recipes out of magazines anymore, although I have some older recipes I originally came by via newspapers and magazines. I just found that my "to be tried" stash kept growing until it was all but unmanageable, and I hoarded those magazine clippings for fear I would never find them again. That rarely happens with the internet. Once you've found it, you can probably find it again (although I do print the ones I want to try right away).
That said, here are some of my favorite places to find recipes (lately, at any rate. That could change at any time).
I used to follow a blog called Raspberri Cupcakes because the author's baked goods were so beautiful they were almost works of art (or maybe actually works of art). Unfortunately, she's not blogging anymore, but all of her recipes are still there. I highly recommend you click over there. Each recipe is more lovely than the next, and she took great photos as well. Back in 2012 I once did a blog post on her Purple Ombre Sprinkles Cake and she gave me permission to post the photo. Check that post out here. And here's another of her baked goods, a Creative Commons photo from Flickr:
These are raspberry swirl cupcakes, and you can find the recipe here.
Another couple I followed was a husband/wife team who have a company called Tiger in a Jar and they made (make? I assume they're still in business) amazing and very pretty videos, some of which are about food. The most recent one I can find is, unfortunately, a Vimeo video with restrictions on embedding, so I can only provide the link for the Pumpkin Bread Pudding recipe, but here's an old favorite, Beet Cake.
And then there's also this video where 3 teams of chefs attempt to create works of art with food:
I'm just an ok cook. There are times when I enjoy it, but mostly it's just a means to an end (i.e., not starving). On the other hand, I love cooking shows and watching other people cook. There's something almost magical about watching a person (someone not me) taking a few ingredients and transforming them into something edible and (hopefully) yummy.
So when a Facebook friend posted this video (from Tasty), I was mesmerized.
Don't those look good? And they're pretty, too!
And here's a no-bake recipe. I don't even want to think about how many calories are in this, but yes, it does look like a good recipe to make with a child, as seen in the video.
For more recipes (and not just for baking), click through to their YouTube page.
A long time ago I stumbled across a website by Steph at raspberri cupcakes. It's a site I could wander around for hours, just salivating at the gorgeous desserts. Now I'm here to show you more of the site's beautiful, beautiful cakes. All images are sourced from raspberri cupcakes on Flickr. Beneath each one is the link to the dessert on the raspberri cupcakes website. Enjoy looking (and maybe baking, too)!
I just had oral surgery, so I'm on a soft diet for a few days. Not fun, but I can still have chocolate pudding.
This photo is actually of Grand Marnier Chocolate Mousse (yum!) which I don't have the recipe to, but it looks so good and I love the Valentine's Day red. Sometimes looking is almost as good as eating.
I used to make a pecan pie every Christmas, but it's very sweet and rich, and as time went on there were too many people in my family who were no longer allowed to eat such rich fare, so it seemed wrong to put this in front of them and then tell them they couldn't have it. But I still like to indulge in a piece of pecan pie on rare occasions. This is from a recipe called Georgia Pecan Pie (recipe here at Food and Wine). Pecans are very expensive these days, but I have an aunt with pecan trees. Lucky me!
