Jessie Oleson has turned her CakeSpy blog into an adorable cookbook full of delectable treats. Using her "dessert detective" skills to their maximum, she creates mind-blowing combinations of sugary goodness.
CakeSpy contains recipes for homemade versions of commonly store-bought things like toaster pastries, as well as recipes that use sweet items to re-create other foods, like the "eggs benedict" made of doughnuts, brownies, frosting and Cadbury crème eggs. It also has recipes for popular regional dessert specialties such as Velveeta Fudge and Nanaimo Bars. The most impressive recipes, however, are the ones that combine two or more types of dessert in unexpected ways. Doughnut Upside Down Cake? S'moreos? Glazed Cinnamon Rolls Stuffed with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough? CakeSpy has all of these and more.
Oleson's cookbook features colorful photos and the margins are full of her drawings of cupcakes, unicorns, cookies and robots. Oleson also offers a short introduction for each recipe, explaining, for example, how she came up with the idea of offering comical advice such as "put your fat pants on." The directions are clear and specific, even for the most complicated creations. (Ingredients like store-bought cookie dough make it a cinch to whip up a batch of goodies.) But be warned: You won't be able to make just one CakeSpy sweet treat, because these recipes are that good--in fact, those cookie dough cinnamon rolls are pretty much to die for, in this reviewer's humble opinion. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm