relatively delicious

the owner is having a party and i get to do the food. double yippee for me for the mass cooking and i also like shindigs, lol. with some time on my hands these days, i noodled extensively on the menu and realized that it's been ages since i've bought a cookbook. i donated dozens when i moved and only kept my proven and most dirty and dog-eared volumes. if i'm not riffing off something i saw at work or eating out, (yes, stealing is perfectly acceptable here!) most often now i am trolling the web.

i don't do dessert much so log on often for that. the chemistry involved in baking is fascinating to me and it requires an exactness for the proper result that savory cooking simply does not.

upside is many professional chefs and bakers have websites and blogs these days, so you can easily find recipes from dorie greenspan, david lebovitz or even the god pierre hermes.
the downside to the netz free-for-all is the explosion of untrained cooks and hobby bakers blogging. they get a camera and imagine themselves the new martha. some of these have actually scored book deals, so persistence can pay, but i don't put in much faith for a few reasons. first is they rarely are producing an original (which is probably a good thing) but most often just copying a cake from the food network or some such nonsense. second there is a puppy-at-your-heels syndrome to certain sites, like chocolate & zucchini, or posh & becks, who seemingly are linked to every cooking blog i've ever seen. "i saw this something or other on clothilde's blog and just HAD to make it!!" i can almost hear her shrilly girly-girl excitement. then a stampede ensues and every blogger on the planet is making gramercy tavern's ginger bread or nigella's clementine cake. (which is awesome, actually.) this same tiny circle winds around enthusiast sites sites like chow too. if i see one more obsequious prostration about ina garten or zuni (i mean, c'mon, you need a fucking recipe to make a caprese salad?) i'll claw out my eyes with an icing spatula. lastly a staggering number of web recipes begin with supermarket product, like boxed brownie or yellow cake mix. simple baked goods like these come together usually in 2 bowls (sometimes even 1), in a matter of minutes, and lack chemicals, stabilizers and stuff you can't pronounce. if i'm in the kitchen, why do i want betty crocker in there too?

a few promising goodies made my list. another bonus of the web is you can search and compare. if the ratio looks unbalanced you save yourself wasted time and no product has to be an epic fail. unless of course, you are clueless, lol. cornbreads and muffins have endless variations, regional preferences, and some are better suited for certain uses -- like you don't want a really moist version as turkey stuffing but it will rock toasted with good butter. a prolific and photo-abled lady has a dorie greenspan that looks right and i have infinite trust in d.g. sometimes the recipes can be sloppily transcribed and corrections come from readers, so as a double-check, i scrolled through the comments. one i'll paraphrase:

"these were the worst muffins i've ever had. i didn't have corn meal, so subbed out jiffy muffin mix. i wanted them to be healthy, so used whole-wheat flour instead of white. i didn't have canola oil so subbed in extra virgin olive oil. i omitted the sugar. my arm hurt, so i mixed the batter in the food processor. they were like hockey pucks and went in the garbage."

lady, really, you should have mixed dog turds in there too because you are, yes, that clueless.

i made it last night and it was exactly what i wanted, and yeah, i followed the recipe.

my final rant comes from the over-the-top gaga reactions to stuff readers have yet to make. they see the picture and go all pavlov's dog. my head starts thinking, "well, sub out some brown sugar for the white, add ginger, more blueberries... oh! and nuts!" the beauty of this kind of adjustment is that none of it will upset the balance of the ingredients. ratio. ratio. baking is ratios.

on the cornmuffin blog, the woman dissed the 1-2-3-4 cake baking ratio numerous times. it's ancient and simple: 1 cup butter; 2 cup sugar; 3 cup flour; 4 eggs. that's it. it's foolproof and housewives and cook-servants could remember it even if they couldn't read or write. if it ain't broke, ya know?

without leaving my house, i went to france. i found the simplest of cakes. it's the first cake french children learn to make. little kids can do it because you can use a yogurt cup. dump the yogurt in a bowl and then use the cup to measure out everything else. and, yeah, it's a 1-2-3-4. i made it lemon instead of plain and will gild the lily with blackberry preserves, lemon curd and lemon cream. but it's from some old french lady a million years ago who could make it in her sleep. it's foolproof and it's a keeper.