Coffee Occasion

2 Responses to “Maxwell House Coffee Drinks & Desserts Cookbook: From Lattes and Muffins to Decadent Cakes and Midnight Treats”

1. 
   Otieno Says:
   November 6th, 2009 at 9:00 pm

   The “Maxwell House Coffee Drinks & Desserts Cookbook” starts off with some information & history on coffee and “The Maxwell House Story,” followed by some information about brewing & serving coffee. The brewing & serving tricks are fairly standard. The rest of the book seems a little arbitrarily divided up. The sections are: Breakfast & Brunch; Coffee Break; Lunch; Afternoon Coffee Time; Dinner; After the Show; Midnight Snack. This means that if you want to find a certain kind of recipe, you should look in the index instead of trying to find the right chapter. After all, there are plenty of things that could work equally well for any of the above coffee times. The beginning of each chapter has a list of the recipes in it, though, which helps. The layout of the recipes is great, and most recipes are quite short and simple. Prep time and baking time are provided up front! The ingredients are set off from the instructions quite well, and the instructions are broken up into manageable chunks.

   The beverages are simple, and some of them made me shrug. We already do things like add cinnamon or vanilla to our coffee, so those recipes don’t add anything new to our repertoire. On the other hand, there are things like the “Shake Awake Smoothie,” with double-strength coffee, banana, vanilla yogurt, sugar, and ice cubes. Simple it may be, but it’s also yummy! Some recipes call for instant mixes, which may rub some people the wrong way. The hot chocolate cappuccino is just milk, chocolate, and instant cappuccino mix, for example.

   The desserts include shortcakes with espresso cream, Hawaiian dessert sauce, cappuccino sticky buns, coffee cream cheese for your bagels, coffee cinnamon cream cheese brownies, banana caramel cafe pie, cafe panna cotta, caffe latte bread pudding, tiramisu cheesecake, and much more. Many of the recipes come with wonderful pictures.

   This is an absolutely wonderful cookbook, and every recipe we’ve tried from it has come out perfectly. It is a fine source of new & unusual ways to drink coffee, as well as interesting recipes you can make with coffee.

2. 
   Lakeithia Says:
   November 6th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

   This handy little cookbook is an absolute treasure! It starts out with a fascinating history of coffee, a history of Maxwell House, and then has some brewing and serving “tips and tricks.” After that come the recipes!

   The recipes are organized into seven chapters: 1) Breakfast and Brunch, 2) Coffee Break, 3) Lunch, 4) Afternoon Coffee Time, 5) Dinner, 6) After the Show, and 7) Midnight snack. Each of the more than 160 recipes(!) starts out with a list of preparation and (if applicable) baking times, a complexity rating (one cup to four!), a list of ingredients, and very clear step-by-step instructions.

   My wife and I have found the recipes to be great, and none of the ones that we have done have proven to be all that difficult. Heck, some of the drinks are delicious, and take very little time at all. We love this book, and highly recommend it to you!

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