What I'm Reading: Baking from my Home to Yours

Okay, so I've been wanting to do a regular "What I'm Reading" feature, and this is as good a place to start as any.

And while we're starting stuff, let's start with a confession: I read cookbooks in bed. Yes. Cookbooks. It helps me fall asleep. There's a stack of 5 cookbooks on one side of my bed as we speak.

Anyhoo, I added this book to the stack mostly because I decided to start doing Tuesdays with Dorie. This is essentially a group of bloggers who are baking their way through this very book. They choose a new recipe to make every week, and then you bake it, take photos and post your experience with it on your blog. They've already gone through a lot of the book, but I figured starting late was better than starting never, right?

My first recipe was this past week, the sweet potato biscuits; I'll post those tomorrow. This week's recipe, which I hope to make for my birthday party, is a chocolate cherry brownie torte with a mascarpone mousse top layer. (Umm...hello?? Yum!)

Overall, I'm quite enamored with the book. It's one of those few cookbooks where nearly every recipe is something I'd actually want to eat. She doesn't go for a lot of the fancy pants desserts - there are a lot of chunky cookies, mile-high layer cakes and the like. They don't all have pictures, but the ones that do are usually big and bold and delicious-looking. There's a photo of a chocolate brownie cake with a carmel and salted peanut topping that I can't get out of my mind...

I'm not as impressed with her writing in the introductions to the recipes. She doesn't have the graceful pen of a Nigella Lawson or the honest voice of an Ina Garten. But she does seem to write solid recipes and again, the kinds of recipes a home cook could really make.

I'll have to make a few more of the recipes to tell if they're as foolproof as some of my favorite cookbook authors (like Ina Garten), but so far, I'm a fan of Dorie.