The Clueless Baker: Baking From Scratch, Easy As Pie

Baking is fun. Really, it is! Not only does it make your kitchen smell wonderful, but anything you bake at home will taste a zillion times better than something you buy. Plus, you can be sure that there is no monophosphate disodium tetrachloride whatsoever in your coffee cake. Unless you put it there. And why would you do something like that? The Clueless Baker is for anyone who thinks that their oven looms before them, as dark as an abyss, waiting to devour, doom and ruin anything and everything that dares enter its sacred domain. Evelyn Raab, the author of the wildly successful Clueless in the Kitchen and The Clueless Vegetarian, is back again with the latest in the series of Clueless cookbooks. The Clueless Baker, aimed at the timid cookie dreamer and the terrified pastry chef, is a wonderful collection of over 100 tried, tested and true baking recipes. There is everything from a simple, 11-step baking program, the bare necessities, the essential cupboard and basic baking know-how to a collection of truly mouth-water recipes including: - Cranberry Irish Soda Bread - Ridiculously Easy Cheese Bread - Blender Peanut Butter Muffins - Cappuccino Chip Muffins - Better Than Average Chocolate Chip Cookies - Lacy Almond Crisps - Chocolate Walnut Rugelach - Butterscotch Granola Blondies - Lethal Chocolate Cupcakes - Orange Cappuccino Pudding Cake - Killer Pecan Pie - Classic Apple Pie - Strudel with Flaky Sour Cream Pastry It`s amazing what a collection of decent recipes, a good attitude, and a simple, no-nonsense (okay, a little nonsense) approach will do for the fearful baker. And, at the end of it all, there is something delicious to eat. Which will do wonders for the attitude, and is, after all, the point of the whole thing. (2001)