Cookbookmaniac
  • Pecan Pie from Baking by Dorie Greenspan
    Pecan Pie from Baking by Dorie Greenspan
    American Recipes

    My very first job was at a sandwich store called Gourmet Fast & Fresh. It wasn't any ordinary sandwich shop, it was like a supermarket of sandwiches and baguettes. It was housed in a two storey building. The top level was where the sandwiches were made and packed, then downstairs was were they were displayed and sold. Customers simply came in and chose their pre-made sandwiches, selected a drink, picked up a sweet dessert and paid for them at the register. The managers were a married couple and they were very charitable and kind. At the end of every night they allowed the employees to take home whatever they did not sell and if there was anything left after that, they gave it to the Salvation Army. It introduced me to combinations of fillings that I had never seen before: Turkey + Cranberry Sauce + Camembert Chicken + Avocado +…

  • Madeleines – Marcel Proust and his heavenly cookies
    Baking Recipes

    Marcel Proust unintentionally immortalized madeleines in his novel Remembrance of Things Past. He vividly describes the moment in which he dips these sweet scalloped-shaped cakes into his tea and how it magically brought back warm memories of his childhood. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters…