The only time I’ve cooked anything of hers was when Smitten Kitchen Every Day was COTM back in 2018. From my notes, it looked like I made one recipe and didn’t like it. Her blog and books have never appealed to me, but I’m always willing to give a COTM a try. Fortunately my library had the book.
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I’ve really liked several of her blog recipes (stromboli, plush confetti cupcakes chocolate babka, skillet ravioli with spinach*) but I’ve found I needed to tweak to my preferences, and there are often ways to streamline vs the way she wrote them. Like @NJChicaa I have borrowed her earlier cookbooks from the library but didn’t find enough to justify the purchase. I jumped to buy this cookbook more as a way of supporting her and feel less guilty about mooching free online recipes.
(*all of which are not gluten-free so I won’t be making again now that I’ve had to go GF. However, she does have some other dishes that happen to be GF or are easily adapted.)
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You might get away with making these with a 1:1 replacement flour. 
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Somehow I missed this news about having to go GF. I hope it doesn’t end up being too difficult to transition to that. So sorry.
I like many SK recipes - tons of them. But I look at EYB fairly often, and the reviews haven’t made me want to cook from this book.
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Yep, cupcakes are definitely a case where a flour blend like the KA measure-for-measure will work admirably.
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Time to nominate books for May!
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Thanks… I’ve been cautious about using M4M in baking sweets since the few recipes I’ve tried so far have been less than impressive. (cornbread was fine, though!)
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FALAFEL p. 143
The mixture is easy enough to assemble. You soak chick peas overnight and then pulse them in a food processor with onion, garlic, parsley, red pepper flakes, cumin, salt and pepper. (cilantro optional) You refrigerate the mix for at least 30 minutes but preferably several hours. I wound up refrigerating overnight because–life.
I tried to form the mixture into balls to fry and that wasn’t happening. I even added eggs to the mix and they still crumbled in the pan. I can’t comment on flavor as nothing held together enough to even cook and eat. I threw it all away.
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Oh man.
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I haven’t made this falafel recipe, but I compared it to my go-to (from “Will It Waffle?” WIW has a similar ingredient list, but also includes 2 T olive oil and 2 T flour. I suspect the SKK recipe is lacking the binding effect of the flour. (The WIW recipe is cooked in a waffle iron, duh, which is probably why the oil is in the mixture - it’s not fried.)
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I think you are right. It doesn’t take much flour, and it doesn’t matter which kind (I’ve used rice flour, chickpea four, tapioca flour, etc), but just a little will help hold it together.
Mmm, chickpea flour would really boost the chickpea-ness of the falafel!
Also, SKK has a lot more “wet” stuff than my usual recipe - double the herbs and double the onion (assuming that a large onion is twice the size of a small one).
Hmm. I’ve made that recipe, and it came out just fine. It was my only time making falefel - maybe I got lucky?
I usually choose chickpea flour for exactly that reason, but TBH the amount of flour is so small it really doesn’t make a difference.
Did a quick comparison with the recipe in Jerusalem, which works well for me. More onion and herbs in the SK version, although the Jerusalem one does have some water, so maybe that’s a wash. And of course the Jerusalem recipe has that tiny amount of flour.
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I agree with you on this one. I liked it, but it seemed to be missing something important. I think I would need to find a new recipe when making something like this again. Seems like a rare miss for her.
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CREAMY TOMATO CHICKPEA MASALA
This is not a ”keeper” for me. I liked it fine, but found it a little boring and I am not sure why. Perhaps it was my expectations. I was hoping that with the cream, it would taste like the rich sauce of a chicken tikka masala, but it didn’t taste like that to me. I made the recipe as written with two exceptions. I used dried chickpeas which I soaked overnight and cooked and I added the garam masala during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Mine seemed a bit watery; the recipe adds 1 1/4 cups of water and perhaps I should have simmered it a bit longer or at a higher temperature to reduce the liquid.
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GREEN ANGEL HAIR WITH GARLIC BUTTER
I also really liked this, with slight adaptations. I did half butter and half olive oil (due to shortage of butter on hand, not any culinary wisdom) and parm over pecorino (again because it’s what we had). The whole family liked it (an unusual win) and has asked for it again - we’ve probably made it three times now.
The first time I used spaghetti and have since switched to cavatappi, mainly for the little eaters’ ease. Adults have added red pepper flakes, as @MelMM suggests.
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May voting is now open!
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I voted for this book so here goes
I chose a cookie recipe as my favorite cookie recipe is Whole Wheat Chocolate Oat cookies from her blog
Oatmeal date shortbread page 223
I didn’t think the final dough would be so dry and crumbly but there is no liquid or egg and it was sand.
Also using a food processor as recommended was a bad idea. It only took a few pulses to pulverize the dates and oatmeal so the dough had no texture left. I decided to add a few tablespoons of booze and it brought it together enough to form logs. The next day, this morning, I sliced and baked 1/2 inch thick cookies for 10 minutes, not 12 to 14 per the recipe. They were pretty but very hard and I would have tossed them but I had a coffee hour commitment so I brought them along with my successful favorites SK WW choc chip. Surprisingly the jaw breakers as I called them were terrific dipped into hot coffee. It was a dreary rainy day and a friend compared them to biscotti. I don’t recommend them… I just got lucky.
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At least they didn’t go to waste. If this recipe had been posted on her blog, you could have read comments to see if others had similar issues.
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