Offerings from the Oven: A Classic Cookbook with Recipes for Every Occasion

Wendy Louise and MaryAnn Koopmann
Champion Press, Ltd. (2006)
ISBN 1932783911
Reviewed by Kelli Glesige for Reader Views (9/06)

“Offerings from the Oven” is a classic cookbook with recipes for every occasion.  Authors Wendy Louise and MaryAnn Koopmann have explored their mothers’ recipe boxes to come up with the basis for their “down home taste” cookbook.  The authors state, and I believe most of us would agree, that nothing beats a home-baked pie, that special casserole, an aromatic loaf of fresh bread, or a tasty oven-baked, butter-basted chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy “just like Mom made.”  Can you smell it now?

The good news is that cooks today are not forced to create from scratch daily--for we can use conveniently packaged and prepared ingredients in our recipes to speed preparation and clean-up.  Seasonal foods and ethnic ingredients are more readily available too, so we can choose to prepare a special favorite whenever we feel like it, not when something is in season or when we are in a certain area of the country.

I found “Offerings from the Oven” to be a great addition to my cookbook shelf.  The recipes are good basic recipes that most cooks will find desirable and useful.  The ingredients are items most of us usually have on hand if we bake often, or if not, they should be easy to find at any grocery.  Baking is my favorite type of cooking, and this cookbook did not disappoint.

If you like spending time in the kitchen often or only occasionally, you should find “Offerings from the Oven” a helpful resource.  The book is a standard paperback with 355 pages.  Most recipes are complete on a single page.  Interesting quotes and words of wisdom are sprinkled throughout to offer inspiration.

“Offerings from the Oven” includes chapters on recipes we would expect to find such as snacks, casseroles, and side dishes, but other interesting sections include: “The Top Twenty”…Twenty of Our Favorite Casseroles, “Kitchen Klassics” by Classic Cooks, “Company’s Coming for Dinner; Let’s Get Fancy”, and even “Outside the Oven”…Adding that Special Touch.  Of course, no cookbook is complete without desserts, and this book offers all the standard desserts bakers seem to look for again and again.  And if it is your turn to host the annual holiday feast, a small section is devoted to preparing the perfect turkey dinner.

“Offerings from the Oven” deserves a “5 Star” rating in my book for content, quality and clear instructions of recipes.  The only drawback is that like most paperbacks, it is not the easiest to prop open while trying to prepare a recipe from a certain page. However, that did not keep me from enjoying such a comforting book.  I recommend this to all interested bakers.

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