June Thrifty - One from "The List" ~ Patti La Belle and The Art of Fine Baking

Patti La Belle's Lite Cuisine, published in 2003. The second cookbook from Ms LaBelle, the 100+ recipes combines down home cooking with a healthy twist.

The recipes open with Salads, Soups & Sandwiches, a few of the salads include Cajun chicken Caesar, watercress salad with balsamic vinaigrette, luscious lobster and crab Louie, with chili, beef stew and spring carrot rounding out the soups.  A few of the sandwiches consist of shrimp & salmon melts, tuna wraps, lemon-basil chicken pitas and Greek gyros.

Fabulous Fish and Seafood offers quiche, halibut with lemon & cilantro, scampi, catfish nuggets and champagne scallops, while Melt in Your Mouth Meat Dishes gives us veal chops, Swiss steak,  pork crown roast, lamb chops and roast tenderloin. People Pleasing Poultry is all about the bird with turkey pasta casserole, chicken cacciatore, oven fried chicken, curried chicken & rice, Jamaican jerk chicken and chicken Florentine.

Scrumptious Sides include stove-top sweet potatoes, succotash,vegetable medley, corn pudding and minted snap peas. Last are the Dreamy Desserts featuring brownies, parfaits, pound cake, banana pudding, pies (silk lemon-lime, chocolate pecan or blueberry), berry trifle, mousse, cakes (blueberry, spice, buttermilk chocolate almond) and chocolate tapioca.

The Art of Fine Baking, published in 1961. One of many cookbooks on my "wish list", I was very happy to fork over my $1.56 when I found it at a local thrift store. The book is filled with numerous illustrations depicting various baking techniques and methods. Most of the recipes in the book can be made ahead and frozen until they are needed, then assembled quickly with little fuss. 

The first chapter, General Information, expounds on baking terms, techniques (kneading and making a pastry bag), ingredients and several pages on "make and keep" dishes that can frozen or refrigerated.

We get the party started with Basic Cakes & Mixtures, featuring Genoise with variations (lemon or chocolate), golden velvet cake, sponge cake and cream puffs, followed by Frosting, Filling and Decorations offering up fondant, royal icing, glazes (currant or bitter chocolate), butter cream (mocha, walnut rum, coffee), lemon curd and a wide variety of fillings (frangipani, almond cream or apricot custard). A few of the decoration options are liquored cherries, chocolate truffles and crystallized flowers.

Pound Cakes and Loaf Cakes delivers a basic pound cake recipe with variations (ginger, raisin), plum cake, a melting tea cake (1/2 pound & 1/2 sponge) and a white or English fruit cake. In Puff Pastry and Strudel, there is a basic recipe for puff paste, plus papillons & palmiers, jelly tarts, apple turnovers or chaussen and strudel (apple, plum, cheese, walnut & raisin).

Gateaux and Torten are the elegant desserts, a few of the highlights include a chocolate ring or roll, linzer and dobash tortes, a Swiss cripse torte, truffle cake and the maestro gateaux. For Petit Fours, Glaces and Small Desserts, there are heavenly chocolate cubes, orange slices, Viennese balls, lemon logs, cream puffs and eclairs. Cookies consist of drop (cat tongues, florentines, almond drops, madelines or poppy seed bars), brownies, chocolate crescents, shortbread, molded (chocolate puffs, ginger slices and praline balls) and Polish butter.

A few Tarts in the book are apple glazed, German sponge and lemon cream, which are followed by A Few Breads - Many Coffee Cakes in which we find the usual yeast bread, plus Cuban, rolls, broiche and croissants, kuchens, jelly doughnuts, babka, cinnamon buns and panettone.

The last chapter covers Pastry Appetizers and hors d'oeuvres which are mostly savories ~ poppy seed straws, nut wheels, cheese bites, sausage crescents, potato puff sticks and pizza pennies.