Easiest and Best Coffee Cakes and Quick Breads: Great Breads and Cakes to Stir and Bake

by Renny Darling

More than 500 outstanding cakes, breads, muffins, biscuits, and strudels to delight family and friends. The only cookbook of its kind, devoted entirely to extravagant cakes and breads that need only to be stirred and baked. Includes great "conversation" dinner breads, amazing cakes and tortes, muffins, biscuits, and scones.

Genres: Cookbooks

301 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1985

Reviews

[Jerry]

Baking coffeecakes and quick breads is one of the true joys and pleasures of the culinary experience.

I don’t know where this book comes in Renny Darling’s series; if the inside list only shows previous books (this is the fourth printing, so it may show later books) this is the 8th book. The only recipe I came across that is a reprint from one of her earlier books is The World’s Best Velvet Chocolate Brownies. It was in the earlier Great Beginnings and Happy Endings “but it is so good, I felt it worthwhile to repeat here.”

I made that when testing Great Beginnings, and I and my gaming group agree.

This book is filled with, as the title suggests, coffeecakes and quick breads, which includes brownies and other bars as well as strudels and danishes. They all sound mouthwatering, of course. I chose to make the Walnut & Butterscotch Cookie Bars first. They turn crunchy and chewy at the edges, and very brownie-like in the center. It uses very little flour. For a 9x13 pan, it uses only ⅓ cup. The bulk is made up with a whole lot of brown sugar and walnuts.

I also decided to try two corn bread recipes. First, I made her Country Kitchen Cornbread. It’s a fairly standard cornbread, with the addition of sour cream along with the milk. That, I suspect, is part of what makes it light and fluffy.

Then, I made the Mexican Style Cornbread with Chiles & Cheese. It also uses sour cream, but, in place of the milk, jack cheese. There is no flour in it, just cornmeal; I was expecting a wetter cornbread, but it also came out bread-like, with, of course, a wonderful flavor from the cornmeal, chiles, and cheese. Both recipes are great, but this is likely to become my go-to cornbread recipe.

As might be expected, most of the recipes I’m looking forward to are sweets. Fresh Apple Spiced Cake with Orange & Walnuts, Royal Raspberry & Almond Cake with Toasted Almond Glaze, German Chocolate Bar Cookies with Pecans & Coconuts. But there are also several savory recipes, such as Pesto Bread with Cheese & Pine Nuts, and Greek Lemon Bread with Green Onions, Tomato, & Feta Cheese.

As you can guess from the titles, it is filled with interesting flavor combinations.

This is one of the earliest cookbooks I have to warn that “milk that has gone sour is never to be used” in its notes about sour milk. I don’t know when writers started to get paranoid about baking with sour milk. I will continue to use it, as it produces wonderful baked goods.

…offering a freshly baked cake or bread is very much like an embrace… a big hug or a tight squeeze. Offering a freshly-baked bread is like giving someone a juicy kiss. You only bake for those you love.

[Kathy Shea]

Jim wanted me to bake a cake without salt as he is trying to watch his blood pressure. I remembered seeing this recipe Strawberry Pecan with Lemon Glaze cake. I added strawberry oil to the glaze. I also prepared this in a 9x13 instead of mini bread pans so I had to adjust the time (instead of 45 minutes for mini loaves; 30 minutes for a 9x13 pan) This is good - I do notice the absence of salt - if I were trying this without seeing the recipe, I would be trying to figure out what was missing. Jim says this is delicious and when it is cold, it is even better. He has been eating it for breakfast. This is the first recipe I've made from this oversized, thick book and I have my eye on many more recipes. The recipes all seem to be easy to put together with the majority of them being every day items you always have on hand. I love the amount of fruit baked goods so I will be adding bags of fruit to the freezer so that I can try some more of these this fall. There is a honey pumpkin I'm wanting to try.

I just made the Orange and Lemon sponge cake. Easy to create and delicious

[Julie]

Amazing recipes, but I’ve never seen a cookbook where almost every recipe calls for walnuts or pecans. I did find a few interesting nut-free options.

[Annie]

I wish this book came with some pictures but that's the only bad thing I have to say about it. The recipes seem intimidating at first but they're actually straight-forward and fantastic. I have loved everything we've made with this book. The breads and cakes are very flavorful and nice and hearty. Highly recommended.

[Mrs.]

Interesting book with lots of recipes but very repetitive!