Cookbook Review

Wild Rice Mushroom and Cranberry Dressing
Ingredients:
Water 
Salt
Wild Rice
Olive oil
Button mushrooms
Red onion
Celery
Dried cranberries
Chopped pecans
Sage


This dish was so simple to make that I hardly consulted the recipe at all during the process. Once you have the ingredients list, you can make the dish, because it's simply a matter of cooking the rice, then sauteing the veggies and stirring it all together.
Review:
I already like everything that goes into this recipe, so I expected to like it all put together. But I was less than impressed with the dish in its first manifestation. It didn't taste bad, but it was pretty bland. I ended up adding more and more to it in my quest for flavor, but it wasn't until I got to the cream of mushroom soup (because that's the kind of person I am, Ingrid, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!) that it started tasting like it was supposed to. Bottom line? I'll make wild rice again, but not with this recipe, since I ended up re-doing most of it anyway.

If you're wondering, I added veggie chicken to it as one of my steps-to-better-flavor

Raisin Spice Coffee Cake
Ingredients:
Flour
Sugar
Butter
Cinnamon
Ground ginger
Raisins
Pecans
Buttermilk
Egg
Baking powder
Baking soda


I haven't made much coffee cake in my life (I think this was my first one), so maybe these directions are standard procedure and every one in the world knows it but me. What I found different about this recipe is that you take the flour, butter, and spices and make them into a crumbly mix. Then you divide the mix, leaving 1/3 of it aside and mixing the rest of the crumbles with the wet ingredients and leavening. After finishing the cake batter, you sprinkle half of your dry mix on the bottom of a greased pan and half of it over the batter for a crumb topping. When baked, this makes a sort of crust under the cake. It was pretty good.
Review:
This cake was tasty and fairly easy to make. If I make it again, I will boil the raisins ahead of time because some of the ones at the top and bottom got a little burned. If you soak raisins or cook them before using them in baked goods, they won't burn as easily. The cake tends a little to dryness, but I assume that's because it's meant to be eaten with your coffee, as the name implies.