• Eat Your Books

  2000 James Beard Award Winner

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Cottage cheese-dill bread

  • vickster on September 04, 2018

    I wanted to try a dill bread, since I had some dill to use up. Haven't used my bread machine in ages, preferring to make bread by hand. This came out wonderful. I will definitely make it again!

• Glazed zucchini bread

  • TrishaCP on August 24, 2017

    I'm not going to rate this because I didn't make the glaze, just the bread. Everyone enjoyed this and it was a fairly standard zucchini bread preparation, but I didn't think it was better than other zucchini breads I make that use less sugar, eggs, and fat. The bread itself held up fairly well, but is best eaten straight from the oven, or 24 hours later. Cooled the same day it had a bit of an oily aftertaste that wasn't desirable.

• Irish soda bread with caraway and Drambuie

  • dinnermints on March 24, 2018

    Drambuie-soaked raisins? Hello! Excellent flavor combo with the caraway. Some walnuts wouldn't be amiss, and maybe a sub in a little cornmeal and/or wheat germ for added texture. Next time I'd try skipping the kneading step and instead shaping it directly on the pans with just a little extra flour.

• Italian walnut-raisin whole-wheat bread

  • dinnermints on July 11, 2022

    This bread has good flavor, but I would find a different recipe for it. I think 2 tablespoons of yeast is way more than two packages, so that must’ve been an error. Also, I had to increase the amount of all purpose flour by about 2 cups for a total of 3 1/2 cups, otherwise it would’ve been more like a batter (and the dough was still quite sticky). I also don’t think the author’s method of incorporating the walnuts and raisins was the best. The loaves browned nicely, but then were kind of doughy. Also, dusting the baking tray with a bunch of whole wheat flour and brand makes no sense to me, it just made the bread messy to slice because flour and wheat bran got everywhere each time.

• Raspberry braid

  • dinnermints on April 13, 2021

    Delicious, but I would do a few things differently...the raspberry filling called for 1/4 cup cornstarch, which seemed like too much - would reduce to 3T next time. Also, I baked this for the full 40 minutes, but 35 probably would have done the trick. Lastly, I'm not a huge fan of the streusel topping (would have been better if the loaves had been brushed with an egg wash first), and next time would do an apricot glaze instead.

• Steamed pecan corn bread

  • dinnermints on December 17, 2017

    Excellent. I took the extra step of toasting the cornmeal (and the pecans), but not sure if it made a difference. I also substituted a cup of whole wheat pastry flour for the all purpose flour. This is the first steamed bread I've made, and the texture and flavor are worth the 2.5 hours of steaming. Unique and delicious, and guests loved it.

• Steamed brown bread with dried blueberries

  • dinnermints on February 11, 2018

    Fantastic. This is something I've wanted to make ever since I was a child - my mom would wax poetic about, but it wasn't in her repertoire. For such a long build up, this recipe delivers. The flavor is rich and cakey, something I'd serve for dessert. There's no fat in the recipe aside from the one egg and the buttermilk, but the rum-flavored dried blueberries add decadence (as does the moist texture). The one drawback is that the batter overflowed the tins. Next time I'd put parchment paper up the sides of the tins as well, and possibly use larger tins.

• Old-fashioned prune muffins

  • dinnermints on April 25, 2015

    Good! Would cut back a bit on the sugar and replace some of the butter with applesauce, but the recipe worked out well. The eggs did not get "thick and light" as she specifies (and the batter was pretty splattery), but that didn't seem to affect the outcome.

• Kulich with almonds and ginger-Russian Easter coffee cake

  • dinnermints on April 01, 2018

    This was good - and about as dry as I remember it from several Easters spent in Russia/Ukraine. I used one 7" brioche pan and divided the second half of dough between 2 1lb coffee cans; could've just used one coffee can for the second half. If I made it again, I'd try the second-to-lowest rack, as these got a little overly brown on the bottoms. I'd also try making it by hand instead of in my KitchenAid, as I think the dough got a bit overworked and wasn't as airy as it could have been. I do love the dried fruit soaked in Grand Marnier; am up for adding booze to baked goods at every opportunity.

• Banana bread

  • Rinshin on April 11, 2014

    My go-to banana bread. No need for me to check other cookbooks for this basic quick bread since it's perfect. Never fails even when I have only 2 bananas instead of 3, I just add extra 15 - 20 min to baking.

  • Rinshin on February 15, 2022

    Made this again with getting too ripe leftover bananas. But as usual, only had two bananas and this time, I added 1 C frozen mango chunks to make up for the third banana. Worked great. As always with this bread, needed extra time. This time it was 10 min more. This is such an easy bread to make and although we eat very little sugar if any, we do not find this bread too sweet for our taste in banana bread. Photo added

  • sarahawker on August 04, 2019

    There is a LOT of sugar in this recipe. I don't mind sweet, but it does mean the bread gets very dark very quickly. I covered with aluminum foil half way through the recipe but it's still super dark. My kids are wary of it. Pretty basic.

  • Annemarie0609 on October 02, 2016

    I added 1 tsp salt and walnuts.

• Mile-high popovers

  • Rinshin on April 11, 2014

    Perfect popovers every time. Love these.

  • HalfSmoke on December 31, 2017

    These break all of the popover rules, but turn out great! Most recipes call for room temp ingredients and preheated pans. This recipe has you refrigerate your batter and put the cold, filled pan into a cold oven. I was sure it would fail. It didn’t. This is a great baseline recipe that supports multiple variations.

• Classic buttermilk biscuits

  • moose42 on April 13, 2023

    Includes egg

• Quinoa whole-wheat muffins

  • Rradishes on November 09, 2021

    So bland that it made me question whether I forgot and ingredient or there is a typo. Also lots of baking soda, that has to be a typo. I hesitated but put the whole amount in and you could taste it. Won’t be making again.

• White mountain bread

  • mamacrumbcake on May 18, 2020

    5-18-20 I made this bread for the first time in nearly 20 years. It is very nice—soft, springy, and moist. The crumb is fairly fine, but light. I baked it for the full 40 minutes at 375°. No need to brown the bottom. It was sticking to the pan so be careful next time with pan prep. I mixed this bread up yesterday and let it bulk ferment for 18 hours in the fridge. No problem! It turned out perfectly. I used the 9x5 pans, but would be interested in trying this in the Pullman pans, with lids.

• Banana-pecan muffins

  • mamacrumbcake on April 09, 2015

    This recipe was just right for us--not too sweet, not too rich, not too fussy, with good banana flavor. The streusel made for a nice crunchy muffin top. Although the recipe says the yield is 10, I got 12 full-size muffins.

• Everyday maple bran muffins

  • Frogcake on June 05, 2018

    Great muffins! Intensely bran flavoured - I enhanced this by adding chopped roasted walnuts (about quarter of a cup). Also made a streusel with brown sugar, crumbled walnuts, and a pinch of sea salt.

• Sweet vanilla challah

  • rionafaith on September 22, 2016

    I've made a lot of challah, but this one is truly delicious. Flecked with vanilla bean, it was almost like cake. I'll have to make again... too bad I borrowed this book from the library!

• Blueberry buttermilk coffee cake

  • bwhip on May 05, 2020

    Delicious cake. Love the crispy top, with just a hint of lemon. Much like a big blueberry muffin.

• Seven-grain honey bread

  • bwhip on July 18, 2020

    Great bread recipe! Pretty quick and easy, clear instructions. Fairly light, but not too light. A little bit of sweetness from the honey, but not too much. Excellent flavor and crunch from the cereal grains. I used Bob’s Red Mill 8 Grain cereal, I figured one extra grain wouldn’t hurt :). I used bread flour - recipe gives option of that or AP. We’ll make this again for sure, only takes a few hours total with great results.

  • JASARAM on March 06, 2021

    Delicious and not complicated to make. Used Bob’s Red Mill 7 grain. It’s one of my go-to recipes.

• Fresh lemon muffins

  • bwhip on May 25, 2020

    Delicious, and VERY lemony. Not too sweet. Lovely, light and delicate crumb. I added a cup of blueberries. Recipe says it only makes eight standard sized muffins, but mine made 14. The blueberries added volume, but not that much. Baking time shown in recipe was much too long at 400 degrees. Thankfully, I checked them at about 15 minutes and they were done.

• Cracked wheat bread

  • bwhip on January 10, 2021

    Great bread recipe. Excellent flavor, soft and chewy texture. I used bulgur (as the recipe said would be a good option for the cracked wheat), and bread flour (shown as option to all-purpose). We formed into two standard sized loaf pans.

• Whole-wheat blueberry buttermilk pancakes

  • deirdrereid on July 14, 2019

    This recipe illustrates why Eat Your Books is such a great tool. I wanted to make pancakes with the blueberries and buttermilk I had on hand, and was hoping to use whole wheat flour too. Voila, a recipe. I made these a while back. The pancakes were excellent, fluffy and tasty. I froze the leftovers and we just had them for breakfast. Still delicious.

• Serious Eats

  ...geared towards both a food processor and a bread machine. While you can adapt most recipes from one process to another, some people are skittish about doing so; it's useful to have both recipes...

  Full review