The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Chocolate Week 5 – 2025

It is messy chocolate week in the tent. The dread cursed week. This was the first year in several where hot weather was not an issue. Signature challenge: Six high decorative edible cups of chocolate mousse which must also include a baked element in 2 1/2 hours. Toby's chocolate and orange cups cracked, but the judges loved his flavors (Prue… read more

To fan, or not to fan – that is the question

oven dial
If your oven has a convection setting, how often do you use it? If the answer is "never because I don't know when it is appropriate", recipe developer and cookbook author Irvin Lin can help you. He penned an article on Simply Recipes that gives you the lowdown on how to properly use your oven's convection setting. First, you need… read more

Penny pinchers won’t give up their butter

With prices on a seemingly endless climb, people are tightening their belts and closely watching their budgets. One food item that isn't being cut? Butter, especially high-end, boutique butter. The Los Angeles Times reports on an ultra-spendy, $60/pound butter that sells out within minutes in online flash sales, while The Guardian brings us the story that specialty butter sales in… read more

2026 James Beard Foundation Awards: Call for entries open

The James Beard Foundation® announced today that the entry and recommendation period for the 2026 James Beard Awards® presented by Capital One is officially open until December 3rd, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. ET. (Deadline extended from November 21st). Deadlines: Open Call for Entry begins on Wednesday, October 1 at 9 a.m. ET and closes Friday, November 21 at 11:59 p.m. ET.… read more

Alton Brown talks cookbooks

Alton Brown knows a thing or two about cooking, and he has written several highly-respected cookbooks. He also has strong opinions about the latter, and he recently shared some cookbook wisdom on Instagram. Brown wagers that most people turn to the "interwebs" for recipes and further wagers that 80 percent of those recipes "are of questionable reliability." That's why he… read more

September 2025 New Cookbook Review

September and October are huge months for cookbook releases. Our 2025 Cookbook Preview Post is continually updated and I have already started the 2026 post! Don’t forget that you can create a wishlist and share it with your loved ones. A few members have been asking some questions about how to do particular notes and more, our Ideas on how to make EYB work… read more

Food news antipasto

Value grocery chain Aldi is starting a complete revamp of its private label merchandise. The move comes after extensive customer feedback, placing the Aldi name front and center. Many items will also feature the nicknames that customers have given the product, such as Red Bag Chicken. Aldi has also met its goal that every Aldi-exclusive product will have reusable, recyclable,… read more

The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Back to School Week 4 – 2025

Sharpen your pencils - for the first time ever, it is back to school week in the tent. Signature Challenge: Twelve identical flapjacks with an extra filling or topping in two hours. A flapjack (also known as a cereal bar, oat bar or oat slice) is a baked bar, cooked in a flat oven tin and cut into squares or… read more

Is cereal technically soup?

The easiest way to start an argument among food lovers are the questions about food categories or definitions. Is a taco a sandwich? Are ravioli dumplings? Let the fight commence. Over at Food Republic, they are currently arguing about whether cereal is a soup. Rhubarb, ginger & strawberry soup from Green Kitchen Stories by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl While… read more

The rise and fall of “foodie”

Jaya Saxena, former correspondent at Eater, has had her last byline on the website and boy, is it a doozy. Saxena dives into the formation of "foodies," how the term has transformed in the past quarter century, and what it looks like today. She explores this history in parallel to - and driven by - the rise of food television… read more

A new definition of bread bag

Reducing food waste just got fashionable - as in items to wear and/or to hold. At the fashion website Dauphinette, you can find Toast Bags, Croissant Minaudière, a Bag-uette, and more items made from real, surplus bread. Dauphinette collaborated with Yukiko Morita at Pampshade to create these reimagined 'bread bags'. The Croissant Minaudière and Toast Bag at Dauphinette The bread… read more

September 2025 EYB Cookbook Club Summary

Each month we allow posting in our Eat Your Books Cookbook Club from any cookbook, magazine or blog and we also offer one featured cookbook -most months. We hope that sharing our favorite recipes will help our Members discover new cookbooks and recipes to try. Also please see our October 2025 Great Big Cookbook Club Summary which is now organized by location and includes… read more

Food news antipasto

We start out this week's review with the passing of two very different culinary figures. The first is Marian Burros, cookbook author, food columnist for The New York Times from 1981 to 2014, and former Washington Post food editor, who has died at age 92. An Emmy award-winning television host, Burros became famous for her plum torte recipe, which was… read more

The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Bread Week 3 – 2025

I dread bread week for two reasons. One, there is never enough time to proof the dough. Secondly, I envision Paul as he violates a loaf of bread as the giant finger who would poke the Pillsbury dough boy's belly back in the day. Darcie: I share Jenny's opinion about bread week, but for an additional reason - I have… read more

Chemistry in the kitchen

If you love to cook, you are applying scientific concepts every time you make a meal - even if you hated science classes in school. I happened to love chemistry, which may explain why I geek out over the science of cooking. Serious Eats also has a thing for food science, which is why they created a series of articles… read more

October 2025 Great Big Cookbook Club Summary

As our members know, each month we offer several cooking options in our Eat Your Books Cookbook Club. There are other fun cookbook clubs around world and we’d like to highlight those for those members who might want to cook or bake something other than our choices.  I will update this post as clubs make their additional choices. Something that has… read more

Forgotten vegetables

While there is a large variety of vegetables to be found at farmers' markets and grocery stores, some veg that were once staples in diets around the world have faded into obscurity. The Takeout looks into fifteen of these all-but-forgotten vegetables and explains a bit of the history of each. While I was familiar with several of these foods, there… read more

A new (old) way to fry food

A deep frying technique that has been used for centuries in Asia is gaining a new fan base in the West, and it uses a surprising ingredient: salt. Salt (or, more commonly, sand) frying "is a process with historical roots that spans countries and centuries" says Food & Wine's Merlyn Miller. It's receiving renewed interest since cooking creator Roice Bethel's… read more

Food news antipasto

Love avocados but struggle to get them out of their skins? You may want to try the viral method that relies on a whisk. It is just as easy as it sounds - cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, and "insert your whisk right into the green part of the avocado, twist, and scoop". Just be sure to… read more

The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Week 2 – Biscuit Week 2025

After a rough Cake Week, we are back in the tent for Biscuit Week! In case you missed this: Waitrose Weekend’s September 4th edition has a two page article (p. 6-7) about the two women who organize all the logistics for the Bake-off Tent. Signature challenge: Slice and bake biscuits with a design in two hours. How to make slice and bake… read more

Upcoming cookbooks and events, EYBD Previews and more

Today, I will tell you about a few upcoming titles that I am loving! First up, Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora: Recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia by Polina Chesnakova is a must have for this Cookbooktober. I love Polina's cookbooks and was thrilled to learn of this title. Chesnok translates to a head… read more

In praise of beige food

Beige is not a color that inspires - it is most often associated with words like dull, drab, boring, and bland. This is true even when you extend it to the food world. Instagram is not exactly brimming with glam shots of plain porridge or buttered noodles or an unadorned piece of toast. These foods get zhuzhed up with vividly… read more

Are cooking shows on their way out?

Cooking shows have proliferated in the past 20 or so years - every streaming service has multiple offerings, as do more traditional broadcast and cable networks. These vary from competitive reality TV to educational programs to travel shows. Programs like Top Chef, Chopped, Hell's Kitchen, Good Eats, America's Test Kitchen, No Reservations, and dozens more have educated and entertained us… read more

Cooking by sound

A friend was over at my house one day when I was baking a cake. When I took the pan out of the oven I held it to my ear. Puzzled, my friend asked what I was doing. I told her I was listening for the cake to tell me it was done. She didn't believe me at first, but… read more

Listen to Your Vegetables – Quick Bites – Worldwide Giveaway

Enter our worldwide giveaway to win one of two copies of Listen To Your Vegetables: Italian-Inspired Recipes for Every Season by Sarah Grueneberg. I love this book so much - I bought two extra copies to giveaway here. Listen To Your Vegetables - published in 2022 - is a vegetable focused cookbook of more than 200 Italian-inspired recipes that are surprisingly achievable… read more
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