Today we are talking cookbooks. Our firsts and favorites.
It is like first kisses and dates….but less awkward.
Mom and grandma both had very similar if not identical versions of The Betty Crocker Cookbook. Red, with what I imagine were once white pages but now light brown with age and use. Pages torn and lost and re-found and replaced out of order, page 57 following 135 without anyone ever correcting…as we just became accustomed to searching for that cake recipe among the cold salads. Grandma stored hers in the cabinet below the microwave and allowed me to dig it out with each visit. Mom’s was in the hutch, in the cabinet on the left hand side and always jammed in just so because I was normally the last person to put it away, and well, organized I am not. I wrangled mom’s out when I wanted to make the chocolate chip cake that she once made dad when they were first married or when we ran out of pancake mix and my bro was determined to have pancakes for breakfast, come hell or high-water. Betty and her cookbook … we had some good years.
All this cookbook talk began when Colleen of Souffle Bombay, one serious food blogger and friend , gathered up 17 food bloggers and asked us one of the hardest questions EVER…favorite/most inspiring cookbook? Gah! Seriously!?! And before we knew it and with a bit of generosity, #CookbooksandCalphalon was birthed. Or born. And a mad search for my favorite cookbook began…
Nowadays, I find myself jumping back and forth between cookbooks and the Internet. However, if I had to choose…cookbooks would be my ultimate choice. I like the physicality of a cookbook (plus, I like to romanticize their worn, stained pages). In my house, right now, the most used cookbook I own is one of pies and pies alone. It’s back is broken and pages are smudged and smeared and are beginning to fall out. Recipes are dog eared and there are notes scribbled in the margins. It has been shown a lot of love.
Those same 17 amazing bloggers, myself included (yippee!), are posting today our favorite or inspired recipes from cookbooks that have kept our culinary fires burning. As I mentioned above, I based my final decision on the cookbook that was stained and broken beyond any others. So, today…I have a dessert inspired by an entire book of pies.
And the best part of this whole shindig? A GIVEAWAY! You can’t cook without cookware and you can’t use cookware unless you can cook…right? That is why the first prize winner will win 6 (yes, SIX!) amazing cookbooks and a Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick 14×16 Roaster Set.
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//widget.rafflecopter.com/load.jsLike, whoa! Right? The second prize winner will win 3 equally fantastic cookbooks (one full of booze!?! Dear winner, I will invite myself over for Happy Hour – you have been warned!) and a lovely Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick Panini Pan and Press. OK…I am coming over for booze and a panini. 
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So take a moment to enter our awesome Cookbooks & Calphalon Giveaway! I wish you all the luck in the world!!
I hope these cookbooks become a source of inspiration for you, in your kitchen, as so many of mine have become in my kitchen.
When you pick a book of pies as your favorite cookbook, it slowly dawns on you – crud, you will need to bake a pie… in the midst of summer … when sprinklers and popsicles are much more enticing than a sweltering kitchen. Thankfully we have a few tricks up our sleeves allowing us to cut a few corners and still have a dessert that is at its core, a pie. We are talking all the flavors of pie – flaky buttery crust and sweet jammy fruit filling, without the fuss. The fuss that I totally love in October, but want very little of in August.
Plums and pluots are shoved, crowded, and layered into a roundish pie crust, that is folded up and around the fruit, holding all the jammy sweet goodness in with its crisp yet flakey edges. Plums are plums…we all know about them and their gloriousness … but pluots? A simple (ha!) hybrid of plums and apricots and they are downright delightful. So damn juicy and sweet that I feel like I am cheating the diet gods and sneaking a piece of forbidden candy. I would recommend buying more plums and pluots than is recommend for the recipe, because if you are like me…you won’t be able to resist the urge to eat just one (or two or three) plums or pluots while perched over the sink with deep purple juice dripping off your chin.
- Pie Crust
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
- 2 to 4 tablespoons ice cold water
- Filling
- 6 tablespoon sugar, divided
- 2 tablespoon almond meal or ground almonds
- 2 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 2 plums, pitted and thinly sliced
- 2 pluots, pitted and thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
- Begin by making crust. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and sugar. Cut cold, cubed butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter, two knives, or your fingertips. Work until butter pieces are the size of large peas, while others will be the size of rolled oats.
- Sprinkle ice cold water over dough, tablespoon by tablespoon, and stir dough together with a fork or fingertips until it begins to form into a ball. Add extra water, one tablespoonful at a time, if dough seems too dry. Shape dough into a round flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in fridge for at least one hour to rest.
- Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out into a 13 inch circle (rough approximation). Transfer crust to prepared baking sheet and place in freezer for 20 minutes.
- In a small bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons sugar, almond meal, and flour.
- Evenly spread almond/flour/sugar mixture over dough, leaving a 2 inch border. Place plum and pluot slices over almond/flour/sugar filling – layering and squeezing slices to create an overlapping pattern. Fold the edges of the dough up and over the filling, pleating the dough every few inches. Dot fruit with diced bits of butter. Sprinkle remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar over filling and crust.
- Place in preheated oven and let bake until filling is bubbly and crust is a deep golden brown, about 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool before serving.
A big thanks to Calphalon for making fun blogging paarrrrtaaay a bit more fun with such a fantastic giveaway!
Head on over to the following blogs for more great recipes and cookbook inspiration!
Cooking:
Pecan Encrusted Chicken with a Creamy Dijon Sauce – Souffle Bombay
Pasta with Chopping-Board Pistachio Pesto – Little Kitchie
Tomato Jam – Healthy. Delicious.
Roasted Salmon with Peanut Sauce – Tiny Farmhouse
Lemon Basil Chicken Thighs – Mind Over Batter
Pesto Pasta and Peas with Grilled Shrimp – The Suburban Soapbox
Homemade Spinach and Cheese Ravioli – Food Lust People Love
Spaghetti Parmesan – Food Ramblings
Baking:
Classic Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting – Urban Bakes
Cookie Dough Fudge Brownies – Sugar Dish Me
Peanut Butter Squares – Kelly Bakes
Simple Apple Crisp – Real: The Kitchen and Beyond
Raspberry Swirl Pound Cake – The Redhead Baker
Beirut Tahini Swirls – Pastry Chef Online
Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuits– In the Loop
Drinks:
Oat-chata – Healthy Slow Cooking
****a Rafflecopter giveaway***click on through to entire the giveaway!
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Fork Vs Spoon 
Ok first…I totally agree with you on the cookbooks! There is just something about cracking one open and checking it out for the first time. We often rent houses all over the East Coast for vacations and any time the kitchen has a row of cookbooks….I crack each one open and squeal when people have written notes inside. I don’t think I will ever tire of that! Second…plums! Plums (Pluots are close enough) are my FAVORITE cooked fruit!! Your Galette is stunning and i can not wait to recreate it!! Thanks for joining in!!
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I love that you use a mixture including almond meal to soak up and hold onto all the juices in your galette. Almond is just so perfect with stone fruit!
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I love the rustic look and honestly I have no idea why I never cook with pluots. I’m with Jenni and the almond flour – it’s a great idea!
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This is just lovely! Love the almond/plum flavors!
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I have always loved cooking. I find it very relaxing (when the music is on).
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I’ve never heard of a Pluot before but that looks delicious.
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I have also heard them called plumcots … and I will say, this galette has gone straight to the top of my favorite desserts. I was reluctant to share!
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Gorgeous, and I’m sure delicious too!
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thank you!
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I don’t even know where to begin with this post, I just love so much about it–your stunning (as always) photos, the vibrant red pluots in that gorgeous galette or your lovely description of the out-of-order Betty Crocker cookbook! We had that same one with the pull-out pages and the tab dividers and somehow I’d lose the banana bread recipe in somewhere with the roast chicken. I called my mom a few years ago to ask for that same recipe and she couldn’t find it because it was tucked away in the wrong spot! I don’t care how many recipes are online, it’s still more fun using a cookbook! 🙂
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thanks, lady!
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I had to laugh out loud at the part when you figured out that, having chosen a pie cookbook, you were going to have to turn the oven on, Mallory. I have that internal discussion almost daily. Is it worth it? Isn’t it already dang hot enough here already!? But, you know what? For your gorgeous galette, I’d crank it up. Totally worth it!
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gosh, I wasn’t thinking…however, the outcome was worth the back sweat!
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It’s really not fair that so much amazing fruit is ripe just when it’s too hot to want to make pie, isn’t it?! But this looks amazing, Mallory, your photos are beautiful, and I’m sure that the *having* the pie was worth the pain of baking it during August!
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This pie looks and sounds amazing! Your pictures are beautiful.
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never tried pluots before! definitely curious to know what they taste like.. this galette looks delicious.
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They are a bit more plum-ish than apricot…sweet and juicy.
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