Cookbook Challenge # 1 - Betty Crocker’s Old-Fashioned Desserts
My husband and I have a lot of cookbooks. Like, they almost fill a full-sized Billy bookshelf. Sure, astute observers may notice that not every single book in that image is a cookbook, but they for sure predominate.
It’d be one thing if we consulted them on a daily or weekly basis as we plan our meals, but we don’t. I have favorite recipes in a few of them, easily identifiable by spill-stained pages, but usually if I want to cook something specific I’ll just google “vegetarian chili” or “recipes with boneless skinless chicken thighs” or whatever. And at a guess, I’d say I’ve never made anything at all from at least half of them.
I feel a bit guilty about that, but somehow the cookbooks always stay on the shelf whenever I’m having a downsizing fit. And I think Marie Kondo would approve, because having them there to look at, and occasionally pull off the shelf and page through, sparks joy.
So one of my resolutions for 2026 is to begin cooking my way through this bounty. In a fit of nerdy hyperfocus, I made a list of all the cookbooks and randomized it. For each book, I’m going to try to cook two recipes, at least one of which is new to me. While the goal is to do a cookbook per week, I know I’m going to miss weeks here and there between travel, holidays, and life and general. Which is fine by me—this is supposed to be a fun project, not a chore!
And the randomly selected first book is Betty Crocker’s Old-Fashioned Desserts (1992). I picked it up off the bargain counter at the Border’s in Center City Philadelphia in ‘93 or ‘94, and I’ve often paged through it lovingly, admiring the color photos and the sidebars on baking history…but somehow I’d never actually MADE any of it.
My two chosen recipes were Eggnog Pound Cake and Maple-baked Winter Pears, which I combined into a single plate and served as dessert tonight after a simple dinner of chicken caesar salad and garlic bread.
Both turned out…pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but sweet and soothing. Old-fashioned, you might say. I might make the pear recipe again, since it’s a super-simple way to make something of a treat out of a fruit I’ve never much cared for in its raw state. As for the cake, it’s way better than any grocery store pound cake, but it lacks the rich buttery density and moistness of my mom’s favorite recipe (which is in one of those cookbooks on the shelf, and I dearly hope I either remembered to mark it or one of my brothers or sisters-in-law did in their copies).
Maple-baked Winter Pears
6 pears, pared, cut in half and cored (I used half this amount but the full amount of the sauce ingredients)
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/3 c maple sugar
1/4 c water
2 tsp grated lemon peel
1/8 tsp ground ginger
Heat oven to 350. Place pears, cut sides down, in ungreased rectangular pan, 13x9x2 inches. Mix remaining ingredients. Pour over pears. Bake uncovered, 20 to 25 minutes, brushing pears occasionally with syrup, until tender. Serve warm.
Eggnog Pound Cake
1 c sugar
1/2 c butter, softened
2 Tbsp rum
1 tsp vanilla
5 egg yolks
1 3/4 c all-purposed flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 c milk
Heat oven to 350. Grease and flour loaf pan, 9x5x3 inches. Beat sugar, butter, rum, vanilla, and egg yolks in large bowl on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 5 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat in flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg alternately with milk on low speed. Pour into pan.
Bake 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely.
My 2025 reading
Going into 2026, I’m planning to do monthly updates on what I’m reading. But for now, here’s a list of the books I loved best out of the 150 I read this year, listed in the order I read them. (Yes, I really do read that much, though the count includes novellas and even novelettes.)
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams. This is on the surface a paranormal romance, but a unique one, written from a semi-omniscient POV that's unusual in modern genre fiction but gives a certain mythical once-upon-a-time feel that really works for it.
How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz. A rare self-help book, in that I’ve actually been applying its lessons on how to thrive and find joy in wintertime as I go through what we in Seattle refer to as The Great Dark. Currently, 10 days or so after the solstice, the sun is rising around 8 AM and setting before 4:30 PM.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. This science fiction novel is the only case I know of where my fiction tastes have overlapped with Barack Obama’s—it made his Summer 2024 reading list. (In nonfiction we’re more alike.)
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. Just your average horror-fantasy monster-slaying romance written from the perspective of the monster.
Who Is Government? ed. by Michael Lewis. A beautiful look at some of the extraordinary yet ordinary employees of the US government. Unfortunately it was also a depressing look, given the current state of things.
The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko. I really enjoyed this YA fantasy novel with an ordinary, humble heroine who (mostly) stays ordinary even as she comes into her voice and confidence.
The Scapegracers and its sequels by H.A. Clarke. What a fun, twisty, chaotic YA horror-fantasy!
The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. A lovely novella in the long-running Penric & Desdemona fantasy series, and an excuse for a comfort re-read of most of the earlier entries in the series.
Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher. While I will read Kingfisher's horror novels, I'm always happiest when she writes books like this, fantasy with a nice thread of romance and just a smidge of horror here and there.
The Wildings by Nilanjana Roy. A fantasy novel about a band of feral cats in Delhi--it reminded me of the Warrior Cats series my son loved as a child, only much more elegantly written and grounded in its setting.
The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis. A delightful and rather cozy fantasy about a mundane mother who has to try to make a place for her family in a snooty, competitive magical town after her daughter is bitten by a werewolf and can no longer attend a "normal" school.
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan. A portal fantasy where a young woman on the verge of death from cancer is granted a chance to live in the world of a popular dark fantasy series, only to find herself playing the role of one of the main villains. It's dark, bloody, and often hilarious, and I've already preordered the sequel that's due out next spring.
You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian. An utterly heartwarming m/m baseball romance set in NYC in 1960.
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry. What if the French and Haitian Revolutions, but with necromancers, vampires, weather mages, and the like, many of whom will be very familiar from the pages of your history books or your hours spent listening to Mike Duncan’s podcasts?
A blog? In THIS economy?!
I realized recently that I really miss blogging—having a public journal where I can talk about topics that interest me (and hopefully other people!) at greater length than I can on BlueSky or similar sites. I considered vlogging, since I certainly enjoy watching other people’s YouTube and TikTok videos. However, I don’t really want to learn video editing or to have to worry about the best lighting and most flattering camera angles just to be able to talk about what books I’ve read lately or the really cool bird I saw at the arboretum…so blogging it is, even if that makes me something of a (non-avian and therefore extinct) dinosaur.