A Unique and Delicious Collection of Passive-Aggressive Recipes
Sweet Revenge, on the surface, is a collection of passive-aggressive recipes meant for you to create delicious desserts and work out some of that pent-up rage. When you look a little deeper, however, you will find some extraordinarily creative treats and humor to make you feel just a little bit less bitter about life.
Heather Kim suggests baking up these desserts to hand over to your exes and enemies, or just to devour all on your own. I suggest you go with the latter...otherwise you might look a bit cray cray. Also, I'm pretty sure at least two of my exes would think I was poisoning them if I showed up with baked goods. But that's another story.
At first glance, it is hard not to notice the beautiful photography throughout the book. There are photos for every recipe, something that personally I always look for in a cookbook, as well as added illustrations and colorful fonts decorating the pages.
It is in the names of the recipes where this cookbook really shines. They aren't labeled as passive-aggressive desserts for no reason, after all. Among my favorites are You're the Devil Food Cake, You're a Piece of Sheet Cake, Go Fudge Yourself, and I'm Not Your Honeybuns. The best part is, these are totally legitimate recipes for you to make and enjoy. It's your choice whether you want to let others in on the real names or not.
I found the recipes to be easy to follow, overall, with little baking tips and notes sprinkled in here and there. The puns are funny, but at times the writing is slightly irritating (using words like "obvs" and "smashy-smasher"). My only complaint about the instructions is a slight lack of detail. The recipes don't tell you how many treats they yield, and sometimes are a little too vague for my comfort level.
I didn't want to review a cookbook without actually baking anything (of course), so I whipped up some Go Fudge Yourself (Mackinac Island chocolate fudge with white chocolate candied ramen) and You've Lowered the Bar (chocolate-hazelnut peanut butter bars).
I didn't think you could go wrong with any recipe involving Nutella, peanut butter, and chocolate, but I really didn't enjoy these bars like I thought I would. My husband thought they were good though and said they tasted just like brownies.
The Go Fudge Yourself turned out a lot better, but I was a tad bit nervous when the instructions told me to "cook for a couple minutes" after the sugar, milk, and butter was boiling. From my experience in making fudge (limited, and also full of failure), the boiling time is what makes or breaks the fudge recipe. In Heather Kim's defense, the fudge DID set just fine after boiling for "a couple minutes," so I needn't have worried. It was also delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, and highly dangerous to the waistline.
The white chocolate candied ramen that was supposed to top this fudge did not go according to plan, however. For some reason, I could NOT get the white chocolate to melt (my problem, not the author's). I tried and tried until I ran out of ingredients to work with, so eventually I just gave up and accepted defeat. When I dipped a piece of the crispy, baked ramen into the white chocolate and added a pinch of salt just to try the flavor out, it was good, but the fudge really didn't need it anyway.
As you can see from the previous recipe, this cookbook uses lots of unique ingredients, including ramen noodles, Doritos, Cap'n Crunch, and Funyuns. I appreciate the colorful, fun mix of ingredients, but some of them were just cringe-worthy and I don't think I could bring myself to try them, such as ice cream sandwiched between Flamin' Hot Cheetos sugar cookies with Hot Cheetos Ganache. Also, I take back my statement about these recipes not being suitable for your exes and enemies. Some are very appropriate for the people you hate most, because they may just stop their heart completely. Take Chicken-Skin Candy for instance. I'm sure it's actually delicious, but...skin candy.
Sweet Revenge is the first cookbook I've actually wanted to read cover-to-cover, and the humor that was laced throughout the pages was fun and made me laugh. I am looking forward to trying a few more recipes and sharing them (with friends, not enemies). I would recommend this cookbook to those who love to bake fun, creative treats, and it would also do well as a novelty gift.
I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via BookishFirst in exchange for my honest review.
Heather Kim suggests baking up these desserts to hand over to your exes and enemies, or just to devour all on your own. I suggest you go with the latter...otherwise you might look a bit cray cray. Also, I'm pretty sure at least two of my exes would think I was poisoning them if I showed up with baked goods. But that's another story.
At first glance, it is hard not to notice the beautiful photography throughout the book. There are photos for every recipe, something that personally I always look for in a cookbook, as well as added illustrations and colorful fonts decorating the pages.
It is in the names of the recipes where this cookbook really shines. They aren't labeled as passive-aggressive desserts for no reason, after all. Among my favorites are You're the Devil Food Cake, You're a Piece of Sheet Cake, Go Fudge Yourself, and I'm Not Your Honeybuns. The best part is, these are totally legitimate recipes for you to make and enjoy. It's your choice whether you want to let others in on the real names or not.
I found the recipes to be easy to follow, overall, with little baking tips and notes sprinkled in here and there. The puns are funny, but at times the writing is slightly irritating (using words like "obvs" and "smashy-smasher"). My only complaint about the instructions is a slight lack of detail. The recipes don't tell you how many treats they yield, and sometimes are a little too vague for my comfort level.
I didn't want to review a cookbook without actually baking anything (of course), so I whipped up some Go Fudge Yourself (Mackinac Island chocolate fudge with white chocolate candied ramen) and You've Lowered the Bar (chocolate-hazelnut peanut butter bars).
I didn't think you could go wrong with any recipe involving Nutella, peanut butter, and chocolate, but I really didn't enjoy these bars like I thought I would. My husband thought they were good though and said they tasted just like brownies.
The Go Fudge Yourself turned out a lot better, but I was a tad bit nervous when the instructions told me to "cook for a couple minutes" after the sugar, milk, and butter was boiling. From my experience in making fudge (limited, and also full of failure), the boiling time is what makes or breaks the fudge recipe. In Heather Kim's defense, the fudge DID set just fine after boiling for "a couple minutes," so I needn't have worried. It was also delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, and highly dangerous to the waistline.
The white chocolate candied ramen that was supposed to top this fudge did not go according to plan, however. For some reason, I could NOT get the white chocolate to melt (my problem, not the author's). I tried and tried until I ran out of ingredients to work with, so eventually I just gave up and accepted defeat. When I dipped a piece of the crispy, baked ramen into the white chocolate and added a pinch of salt just to try the flavor out, it was good, but the fudge really didn't need it anyway.
As you can see from the previous recipe, this cookbook uses lots of unique ingredients, including ramen noodles, Doritos, Cap'n Crunch, and Funyuns. I appreciate the colorful, fun mix of ingredients, but some of them were just cringe-worthy and I don't think I could bring myself to try them, such as ice cream sandwiched between Flamin' Hot Cheetos sugar cookies with Hot Cheetos Ganache. Also, I take back my statement about these recipes not being suitable for your exes and enemies. Some are very appropriate for the people you hate most, because they may just stop their heart completely. Take Chicken-Skin Candy for instance. I'm sure it's actually delicious, but...skin candy.
Sweet Revenge is the first cookbook I've actually wanted to read cover-to-cover, and the humor that was laced throughout the pages was fun and made me laugh. I am looking forward to trying a few more recipes and sharing them (with friends, not enemies). I would recommend this cookbook to those who love to bake fun, creative treats, and it would also do well as a novelty gift.
I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via BookishFirst in exchange for my honest review.