Raspberry jam bars, brown sugar glazed cardamon cake, pistachio lover's pound cake, best bran muffins, secret-ingredient vanilla cupcakes, anna banana muffins, and crunchy lime mint cookies are just a few recipes within Sweet Home that I marked as "must-tries."
What I tried first were the best bran muffins, and they were frickin' fantastic. What surprised me first of all was that Rebecca Miller Ffrench had me use two cups of bran cereal as the first ingredient. I didn't find it at my hippie grocery store, so I used wheat bran instead, and the recipe turned out perfect.
The story Ffrench tells alongside this recipe is how she received a bran muffin recipe from her aunt Susie one birthday. Susie shared how the bran muffins sustained her family through tough times. Thus Ffrench relates how the sentiment plus the recipe meant much more to her than any material gift ever could, and she suggests this practice as one that we establish within our circle of friends and family to give gifts that are more memorable than material.
I'm just dipping into Sweet Home, but it's gorgeous and one of those books easy to curl up in bed with and page through night after night. Philip Ficks is the photographer and Roscoe Betsill was the food stylist. They're as much to applaud for the lovely aesthetic of Sweet Home as French for her ideas.
Too many thing have kept me from the kitchen of late, so I hope that this weekend--a long holiday weekend--I can cross off a few of those items I mentioned at the top, especially the cardamon cake. Cardamon floats my boat.
By the way, according to the new FTC regulations, I received a review copy of this book from the publisher, Kyle Books, but received no other form of compensation.
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