Baked or Petersons Holiday Helper

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

Author: Matt Lewis

As featured on The Martha Stewart Show and The Today Show and in People Magazine!
 

Hip. Cool. Fashion-forward. These aren’t adjectives you’d ordinarily think of applying to baked goods.

 

Think again. Not every baker wants to re-create Grandma’s pound cake or cherry pie. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito certainly didn’t, when they left their advertising careers behind, pooled their life savings, and opened their dream bakery, Baked, in Brooklyn, New York, a few years back. The visions that danced in their heads were of other, brand-new kinds of confections . . .

 

Things like a Malt Ball Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting, which captures the flavor of their favorite Whoppers candies (and ups the ante with a malted milk ball garnish). Things like spicy Chipotle Cheddar Biscuits that really wake up your taste buds at breakfast time. Things like a Sweet and Salty Cake created expressly for adults who are as salt-craving ?as they are sweet-toothed.

 

Which is not to say that Lewis and Poliafito sidestep tradition absolutely. Their Chocolate Pie (whose filling uses Ovaltine) pays loving homage to the classic roadside-diner dessert. Their Baked Brownies will wow even the most discriminating brownie connoisseur. And their Chocolate Chip Cookies? Words cannot describe. Whether trendsetting or tried-and-true, every idea in this book is freshly Baked.

Judith Sutton - Library Journal

Lewis and Poliafito left their advertising careers to open Baked, a small bakery/cafA© in the Brooklyn, NY, Red Hook district, in 2005. After a slightly rocky beginning, their delicious treats began attracting national media attention-their brownies appeared in O magazine, and they baked their Sweet and Salty Cake on the Martha Stewart Show-and things haven't slowed down since. Their recipes, many of them traditional favorites with a twist, range from Milk Chocolate Malt Ball Cake to Butterscotch Pudding Tarts. The authors have a nice style, and whimsical drawings and full-page color photos add to the book's appeal. For all baking collections.

Peterson's Holiday Helper: Festive Pick-Me-Ups, Calm-Me-Downs, and Handy Hints to Keep You in Good Spirits

Author: Valerie Peterson

“How to recapture those blissful holidays of yore? What’s the secret? I searched and searched and –after a whole hour on the Internet– I found the answer: liquor.”

Yes, says Valerie Peterson, the antidote to holiday stress is, quite simply, to keep good spirits in you. Whether you need to ease the friction at the Thanksgiving table, dull the guilt of smashing one of Great-Grandmama’s heirloom Christmas ornaments, or take the bite out of a New Year’s Day hangover, the collection of cocktails and tips in Peterson’s Holiday Helper will keep you afloat. With festive, original concoctions (such as Pilgrim Sangria and the Ginerous Regift) as well as time-honored classics (Mulled Wine and Eggnog), Peterson administers easy and delicious pick-me-ups for holiday humbugs and soothing calm-me-downs for the inevitable celebratory crises.

Whatever your seasonal malady, Peterson’s Holiday Helper has the cure:

Heading home for the holidays stuffed  into a coach-class center seat?
Fly the skies in a friendlier fashion with Whatever Gets You Through the Woods, prepared with $10 of onboard liquor and other ingredients handily available from your cooperative flight attendant.

Run out of transparent tape with  twenty-seven more presents to wrap?
Hold yourself together with a Double-Stick Scotch Coffee, made with Drambuie, butterscotch schnapps, and piping-hot coffee.

Memories of Christmases Past have you wishing you could change a few things (your choice of an ex-husband or your high-school hairstyle, perhaps)?
Skip the ghastly recollections and go right for the spirits with acitrus-and-spice-infused Dickensian Smoking Bishop.

In addition to these tasty and therapeutic cocktails, Peterson’s Holiday Helper is filled with vintage photographs and holiday ephemera that capture the jolly old days, as well as helpful tips to further your merry frame of mind. With easy instructions for making basics such as simple syrup and infused vodka, along with more than fifty scrumptious recipes, Peterson’s Holiday Helper will help you maintain that old-fashioned feeling of peace and tranquilization–er, tranquillity–for the entire season.