Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Or by the beautiful photos it has displaying all the tasty recipes inside because that's all they do...look pretty. A few weeks back I was so excited to get two books I had very high hopes for. But lets just say the aforementioned one really fell flat. I do, however, really want to stress how awesome the other one is! Patty Pinner's Sweets is such a fantastic book full not only of interesting and endearing stories about her and her family (the source of her recipes) but the recipes themselves come through like crazy!
Feeling a little burned by the other book, I was a little reluctant to try anything from Sweets but dear Lord am I glad I did. Although at one point after making her Walnut Wonder Cake I thought my husband might be plotting to pull the old "I must have been sleep walking when I ate the whole thing" bit.

SWEET!

So I'm totally excited, I just received via Amazon.com these two books!

If you look closely you can see my traditional torn post-it note marking system. One of the first things I do when I get a cookbook is mark the recipes I have to try first. At first glance I was a little leery of Cake Keeper Cakes just because it seemed a little more like a coffee table book than an actual baking book; beautiful images and somewhat strange and unconventional layout for the recipes themselves threw me off but really was a nominal issue. Patty Pinner's Sweets: Soul Food Deserts and Memories reads more like a novel than a cook book and is completely fun and truly fascinating to read the origins of the recipes she's laid out for you.

That said there are more recipes in these two little books that I can't wait to try than in any other books in my cooking library. Don't get me wrong I cherish the copy my husband gifted me of Dori Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours, and it is in my opinion a must in a full baking armory of books. However, the types of recipes in that style of book can be time consuming and require ingredients that I may not have on the fly. Which is other huge reason I am loving these books, not only are the recipes themselves simple to achieve (yet creative and in a lot of cases elegant) most do not require much other than basic baking staple items.

I generally do A LOT of baking in the fall/winter months. So I've decided that for the coming weeks and months I'll be making (hopefully) at least one recipe from one of these books per week.This week I chose Apple-Walnut Upside Down Cake from Cake Keepers, next week I'm thinking Applesauce Sheet Cake with Walnut Cream Cheese Icing from Sweets. I guess I'm in a bit of an autumn theme...I'm soooo looking forward to fall.
P.S. Sorry about the not so great photo, my kitchen doesn't have the best lighting and it was like 9:30 pm when I took this out of the oven so I had no natural light. Still its not too bad I think :)