• Eat Your Books

  1997 International Association of Culinary Professionals Award Winner

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Lemon loaf cake

  • sgump on September 09, 2012

    Lacking lemons, I made this recipe with the zest of a navel orange--and added a shot of Triple Sec to boost the orange flavor. Also not wanting to use heavy cream, I used 2% milk with no adverse effects. After removing the cake from the oven, I drizzled a bit of orange juice atop it to add extra moistness. Quite lovely while still warm--but I've read that the cake's even better the next day. (We'll soon see.)

  • sgump on April 18, 2013

    Followed the recipe with one exception this time: I rubbed the lemon zest into the granulated sugar before adding the eggs. After letting the cake rest for a day, I glazed it with icing sugar mixed with a bit of heavy cream and fresh lemon juice: Delicious. When made with cake flour and heavy cream (in addition to butter and eggs), the cake has a lovely fine yet dense crumb--as one might expect.

  • rionafaith on August 28, 2016

    p. 252 -- Made exactly as written with no substitutions. I started making this in the stand mixer but actually switched to doing it by hand as it was easier to follow the instructions and just gently whisk in the flour that way. I might try this in a narrower pan if I make it again, as it was a rather short loaf despite rising with a large hump down the middle. Since the recipe only calls for zest, the lemon flavor in this is pretty subtle, and I would have preferred a bigger punch of citrus personally. However the texture was great and it was completely devoured at the BBQ I brought it to.

• Galette dough

  • Avocet on September 17, 2020

    I made this using a medium grind cornmeal. It was not successful. There isn't enough liquid to hydrate the cornmeal, so the cooked dough is full of hard crunchy bits that give the crust an unpleasant texture without providing much corn flavor. If I were to try this recipe again, I'd use cornflour rather than cornmeal. p. 371

• Challah

  • mfto on December 26, 2010

    I made this two day before I wanted to serve for Christmas dinner. First I was going to choose Martha Stewart's recipe which looked the simplest but now that I have EYB, I looked at several books. Rose Levy Beranbaum doesn't seem to like Challah, maybe bad childhood memories, so how could I trust her. But I did learn a lot from reading her recipes. Julia's book seemed to be in the middle of The Bread Bible and Martha Stewart. But Baking with Julia's recipes are not Julia's but other bakers and they were written while ingredients were often only listed in cups. The bread rose beautifully and looked impressive but Beranbaum is right. The bread is a little dry but still had good flavor. I will try the other recipes and report back.

  • ashallen on July 25, 2019

    This recipe made a delicious, richly flavored challah.

• Raspberry puree

  • bwehner on January 28, 2012

    Easy, quick, and pure, clen taste of raspberry!

• Cranberry walnut pumpkin loaves

  • chawkins on April 29, 2012

    I always use butternut squash puree instead of the pumpkin puree. This is an outstanding bread.

• Finnish pulla

  • chawkins on February 17, 2015

    Very easy recipe, the dough was easy to work with. I halved the recipe to make one braided loaf and baked it in my counter top oven for 19 minutes. I rolled each rope of dough to a length of 18 inches. The baked loaf is about 16 inches. It is slightly sweet and the cardamom flavor is lovely.

  • anya_sf on December 25, 2019

    I had to add about 1 cup of extra flour for the dough to reach the right consistency. I added dried currants to the dough since my family likes them. After shaping the dough, I chilled it overnight, then proofed and baked it the next morning. The wreath was massive and barely fit on my baking sheet. The texture was lovely - soft, light, and tender. Next time I will double the cardamom though, as we love the flavor.

• Rugelach

  • carlenedrake on December 10, 2019

    I made these and took them to work and one of my employees told me that she had dreams about them! They were that good! Absolutely worth the effort to make them!

  • Kojak on December 06, 2016

    Time intensive, but worth the effort.

  • ashallen on December 26, 2019

    Delicious. These invert the typical rugelach pastry-filling ratio - more filling than pastry! I also really liked the extra crunch/flavor from coating the pastries with cinnamon-nut-sugar just before baking. I used whole almonds, Medjool dates, chopped golden raisins + homemade apricot lekvar (Rose Levy Beranbaum recipe) - worked well, though walnuts vs. almonds might've been better. Made a half-batch yielding 28 substantial pastries that were 2 inches across and 1 inch thick + some smaller pastries from re-rolling dough scraps. Recipe calls for more nuts & fruit than can fit inside dough - I measured everything carefully but had a heaping 1/2 cup leftover from my half-batch. There was also 3/4 cup leftover cinnamon-nut-sugar mixture. That's a lot of leftovers so I'll rework those quantities. To make sure pastries didn't open up and leak filling during baking, I firmly pinched outer end of dough strip to adjoining dough edge. Insulated cookie sheets worked well for baking.

• Chocolate truffle tartlets

  • Kojak on December 06, 2016

    Delicious! Warm, it was almost like a rich brownie. Used store-bought ladyfingers in place of the biscotti.

• Chocolate dough

  • Kojak on December 06, 2016

    Made crust by hand. Turned out very well using the instructions given.

• White loaves

  • Kojak on December 06, 2016

    Turned out perfect. Almost too much dough for my mixer so I ended up kneading by hand.

• Fresh rhubarb upside-down baby cakes

  • Alowishs on April 17, 2016

    My daughter and I were watching Food Network's Spring Baking Championship. When she saw pineapple upside-down cake, she knew she wanted to make it. Julia's cake recipe is amazing! I even messed it up a bit and the cake still turned out phenomenal. Will make this again!

• French strawberry cake

  • Jviney on June 21, 2021

    I was surprised at how well the Perfect Genoese stood up to being cut into three layers. For those who enjoy whipped cream as a frosting, this is a great cake with fresh summer strawberries.

• Hungarian shortbread

  • ashallen on November 26, 2019

    This is a really cool and delicious pastry. The shortbread layers are puffy - almost cakelike - and separated by a thin jam layer. Flavor was very nice. My bars had a few texture issues, however. They seemed a bit greasy - maybe it would help to cut back a bit on the butter (these contain a *ton* of butter!). Also, the center of my pastry was actually soggy while the outer bars were well-baked. I like this recipe overall, so it'd be worth tweaking to try to fix the texture issues. The recipe specifies making your own rhubarb jam - perhaps the sogginess was from too much moisture in the jam and cooking it down more would help. Or perhaps the ingredients were too cold or the oven temperature too high (or both!). Or perhaps this pastry would do better cooked in two pans (better heat distribution) or in a larger pan (thinner pastry!).

  • TinyCitiKitchen on July 21, 2023

    These are rich. So much so that after the bake cools, I like to cut it in bars, wrap them up, and freeze -- then nibble them right out of the freezer. The grating gives a nice crunchy texture to the top layer. I usually take the shortcut of using a jar of some kind of jam -- strawberry rhubarb has been my favorite, but raspberry works pretty well too (not blueberry though!)

• Vanilla-hazelnut cheesecake

  • ashallen on November 26, 2019

    Great cheesecake - the combination of vanilla and hazelnut flavors is wonderful. It's a particularly impressive cheesecake given that it's lower in fat than most (uses neufchâtel and cottage cheese) - nothing about either the taste or texture suggests that anything's missing. It's not, however, a quick recipe - there are several steps, some of them fiddly. Removing the cake from the oven once the center reaches anywhere from 160F to 180F works well - the lower temperature creates a smoother textured cake and the higher temperature creates a slightly fluffier texture. I didn't like the recipe's approach of pressing cookie crumbs onto the cheesecake exterior to form a "crust" so I've modified the recipe to use a more typical cookie crumb crust baked with the cheesecake (with some toasted, finely ground hazelnuts mixed in!) - works well. Don't worry if hazelnut praline doesn't form a paste during grinding - finely ground powder works fine and is actually easier to blend into the batter.

• Hazelnut biscotti

  • ashallen on September 13, 2019

    My mind usually divides biscotti into 2 groups: those that are good to eat on their own (e.g., the ones with the thick chocolate layer on the bottom) and those that are at their best dipped in tea/coffee/wine. This recipe is in the second group for me. Hazelnut flavor is pleasant though not very intense - baking soda flavor also comes through a bit. I originally made a batch of these to serve as material for a cheesecake crust - they did a fine job there.

• Mocha brownie cake

  • KCKB on January 16, 2022

    Very rich and chocolatey! Not difficult and didn’t require ingredients that I didn’t already have on hand. I will be making this again in the future!