Best Comments of 2010

A highly subjective list of the best comments on this blog in 2010.

Best Comments of 2010
1. All of Mark Scarbrough's comments to the Cookie of the Month posts.
It's not just because he's the co-author with Bruce Weinstein of The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie Book: From Chocolate Melties to Whoopie Pies, Chocolate Biscotti to Black and Whites, with Dozens of Chocolate Chip Cookies and Hundreds More (crickets from Martha Stewart's camp even after 12 months featuring her cupcake book. . . a zillion interns and crickets). In January he shared some tips about butter temperature. In February he said he'd "send Bruce back to the kitchen" to work out the case of the fractured cookies. In March he was charmingly gracious about the comparison to the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies. In June he gave the backstory behind why he included what I snarkily referred to as a "filler" recipe in the cookbook. Hopefully my unjust snarkiness didn't put him off and he just got too busy to comment the rest of the year. So if you buy your cookbooks based on what you think of the author personally, I highly recommend any of the works in Mark Scarbrough's oeuvre. And as a year of baking his cookies has demonstrated, his recipes are well written and yummy, to boot. Now that I've read his bio on Amazon, I like him even more. Ooo . . . and he and Bruce have a book on pizza: Pizza: Grill It, Bake It, Love It! . . . .

2. Friends Who Bake
Starting with my very first Cupcake of the Month post Tina_Bakes and Jenny_Bakes shared their enthusiasm for baking in general and more specifically baking cupcakes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat. Reading their experiences with the cupcakes helped me prepare for my own attempts at these sometimes harrowing experiments. Tina_Bakes even invited me to another bake-along over at My Domestic Bliss, but, overwhelmed by cupcakes and cookies and the wee bairn, I totally flaked out. Now Jenny_Bakes is in pastry school in Paris! Is that not inspirational?

3. Zed's comment directing me to the best cupcake carrier ever: the Snapware Snap 'N Stack 2 Layer Cookie, and Cupcake Carrier. Best food gadget purchase of the year.

4. Recipes posted in the comments to CSA posts. Kinda like the idea behind AskMetafilter, the CSA posts seem to be like an open call for recipes using the items in the baskets and the recipes are what makes reading the post and comments worthwhile.

• Baked Kale Chips
  
• Kale with Peanut Sauce
  
• Kohlrabi Slaw

5. The comments to November's Cupcake of the Month: Marshmallow Turkey Cupcakes. I also got a few phone calls of support from friends who read of my death defying cupcake catastrophe. I'm trying to line up an adjunct position at the university as an instructor in the new writing genre "adventure cooking at home." Meanwhile, I, like Thalia, will hope merely to "remember to put pants on myself."

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