Cookbook Review:
The Amish Cook's Baking Book

The Amish Cook's Baking Book by Lovina Eicher is a book that brings us back in time.

The smell of homemade bread, cake, cookies or pie baking in the oven is a luxury that often doesn't fit into our overly busy lives.

You may have noticed lately the advent of the "eat locally" and slow food movements.

These movements back to "real" cooking are beginning to make many of us rethink how we eat and appreciate the soothing simplicity of using seasonal and local ingredients to make delicious and back-to-basics dinners and baked goods.

Lovina's wonderful baking book is a perfect cookbook for our revived interest in home cooking. It is filled with over 100 recipes for delicious Amish home baked goodies.

Just browsing through this beautiful book makes me want to get out the flour and start baking. She reminds us that baking is not just delicious, but relaxing and therapeutic as well.

In addition to the basic biscuit, pie crust, bread and cookie recipes, Lovina brings us recipes we don't see all the time, like:

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• Chocolate Chip Pie
• Cornmeal Pie
• Swiss Custard Peach Pie
• Hobo Bread
• Sweet Breakfast Rolls
• Strawberry Bread
• Amish Doughnuts
• Old-Fashioned Ginger Cookies
• Broomstick Cookies
• Plum Cake
• Sour Cream Spice Cake
• Toffee Nut Bars
• 10-Minute Cookie Bars

The images in the book are beautiful and show you quite clearly how each recipe should look. Lovina also peppers the book with interesting insights into Amish life, both in and outside the kitchen.

Lovina states that "Baking is something my mother taught me, much like sewing and ironing, or gardening. Now, as a mother of eight children of my own, I am beginning to teach them how to bake. I have many cherished memories of baking throughout my life." It shows in the care she takes to pass these delicious recipes on to us.

I love this book. It will be a well used part of my cookbook library for many years to come.

Here are three delicious recipes from this Amish baking book that you will find here on the site:

Apricot Pie

Monster Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies

About the Author

Lovina Eicher and Kevin Williams write the newspaper column "The Amish Cook," which brings Amish culture, traditions, and recipes into the homes of readers each week. The column is syndicated in over 130 newspapers across the United States. Lovina lives in Michigan with her husband, Joe, and their eight children. Kevin is a frequent speaker and author on Amish topics. He lives in Middletown, Ohio.

If you like The Amish Cook's Baking Book, you may also want to look at the following cookbooks: