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Milk Bar Life: Recipes & Stories
Go off the clock with Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar as she bakes one-bowl treats, grills with skills, and embraces simple, nostalgic—and often savory—recipes made from supermarket ingredients.
For anyone addicted to crack pie®, compost cookies®, and cake truffles, here are their savory counterparts—such as Kimcheezits with Blue Cheese Dip, Burnt Honey–Butter Kale with Sesame Seeds, and Choose Your Own Adventure Chorizo Burgers—along with enough make-at-home sweets to satisfy a cookie-a-day habit. Join Christina and friends as they cook their way through “weaknights,” sleepovers, and late-night snack attacks to make mind-blowingly delicious meals with whatever is in the pantry.
For anyone addicted to crack pie®, compost cookies®, and cake truffles, here are their savory counterparts—such as Kimcheezits with Blue Cheese Dip, Burnt Honey–Butter Kale with Sesame Seeds, and Choose Your Own Adventure Chorizo Burgers—along with enough make-at-home sweets to satisfy a cookie-a-day habit. Join Christina and friends as they cook their way through “weaknights,” sleepovers, and late-night snack attacks to make mind-blowingly delicious meals with whatever is in the pantry.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2015
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continuing-ed-cookbooks
October 29, 2015this is a review-in-progress that's going to be reposted as i (and maybe kelly) try more recipes in it. do not be alarmed if you see it more than once on your feed; i promise this is not groundhog day.
this cookbook is full of many tasty-looking treats that i want to try. i mean tasty-looking in a messy and manageable stonerfood way, not in in a composed fancy dinner party way - some of the recipes call for things like tang or velveeta!! so i am going to try a bunch of them and i guess review the book as i go along with pictures and (hopefully) amusing anecdotes.
thus far, i have only made one recipe - the mixed nut turtles which are photographed in the book like so:
mine did not end up looking like those, and my experience was a very humbling adventure through my own shortcomings and dumb ideas.
here's the thing - i love cooking, but i only bake during the holiday season and very occasionally throughout the year. and i'm not super-disciplined about it; i'm very laissez-faire with measurements and i don't have a lot of fancy professional-grade equipment. for example - i don't have a candy thermometer, because i never make candy. and i don't have an actual double boiler, just whatever i can rig up with two pots and some magical thinking.
but so i'm making these turtles because a promise is a promise, and i told anne that if i liked the book she told me to read, i would make them for her. and i did. so here i am following the directions, boiling up this concoction, and it's supposed to get to 245 degrees, after about fifteen minutes. i may not have a candy thermometer, but i do have a clock, and after fifteen minutes i'm frowning at this substance wondering, "is this shit done?" i let it boil and froth for a bit longer, to be on the safe side and then i stick my finger in it because i am smart and it felt really really hot which 245 degrees IS, and then i get the genius idea to grab my meat thermometer, but that only goes up to 190 degrees and this fact is precisely the reason candy thermometers exist, right? but i use it anyway and this tells me that it is at least hotter than 190 degrees, which is good enough for me!
it looks appropriately caramelly, so i start dumping it out onto the dutifully prepared cooking-sprayed wax paper in little turtle-sized dollops and wait for it to solidify. while i am waiting, i stick in the little pecan feetses and the little almond heads and a little spine of cocoa-dusted peanuts because i am sooooo fancy. and i make a couple of baking sheets of these babies before it becomes clear that this caramel just isn't hardening. so i turn to the internet which assures me mine is a situation that happens to a lot of guys and is not a big deal - i just gotta cook it a little longer.
so i remove all of the pecan feetses and almond heads and cocoa peanut spines from all of the turtles and put their sad sticky selves into little heaps in separate bowls and i scrape the little caramel pools back into my pot and i reheat and i wait for it to be darker this time, as internet has advised.
and it seems to be working just fine and i swap out the wax paper for fresh wax paper because i am tidy and i spoon this newer, better caramel onto it and grab fresh nuts for the little feetses and heads and spines. and then i realize that in between the caramel reheat and the nut redistribution and the putting down of fresh wax paper, i forgot to spray the new wax paper with cooking spray. which is awesome. so these turtles stuck like paint to the wax paper.
and then, long after it was relevant, i read the introduction to the recipe. which in cookbooks is usually just some story about the chef's creation of the recipe or how much their mom likes it or whatever, but in this case, had some pretty useful information for morons like me:
If you're feeling like a temperature ninja and/or are ballsy enough not to have a candy thermometer to do the job, test the caramel first by color - look for a nice auburn rust brown. Next, test the caramel's consistency by dipping a spoon into the caramel mixture and then into a little glass of ice water to cool it quickly. The cooled caramel should be firm and hold its shape but still have a slight chew - neither soft and super-tacky nor rock-hard crack.
oh.
so you'd think that would be the end of karen being an idiot in this story, but i'm nothing if not an overachiever.
lesson 2 - i don't know anything about chocolate
so i decide to make the little chocolate squiggles shown in the photo. and the little eyeballs. but there are no instructions for making these squiggles, it is just assumed that people know how to do this, and it's not part of the actual recipe, just a little sentence in a circle on the photograph itself, like hey, make 'em if you want.
Drizzle the finished turtles with melted semisweet chocolate chips to give them some stripes and personality.
that is exactly what i want to do!!!
so because i am a DIY genius who doesn't own pastry bags or anything, i decide that what people without pastry bags do is to pour melted chocolate out of the makeshift double boiler and into a plastic sandwich bag, which has been poked with a little pinprick-hole and that this will enable the chocolate to just ooze out into easy-to-manage decorative squiggles.
karen brissette - lateral thinking pro.
but there were complications. so, i guess a pinprick hole is not big enough to allow chocolate to gracefully flow out, and when you try to make the hole bigger, the chocolate just pours out like a garden hose and it is impossible to control, and of course when your bright idea is to hold the bag in one hand and gently squeeze the chocolate out, somehow forgetting that this is molten chocolate we're talking about and no store brand sandwich bag is going to protect sensitive palm flesh from a million degrees of chocolate. (i assume. again, i don't have a candy thermometer) so i'm squeezing and getting scalded and chocolate is shooting out in thick ropes and not in decorative squiggles at all, and it's starting to clot as it cools, so eventually i have to scrape the chocolate back into the double boiler - losing a lot of it along the way and being wasteful and i remelt it and just kinda scoop it over the turtles, covering up the pretty cocoa dusted peanuts with which i'd been so pleased so i may as well have just used regular peanuts and fml and all.
and also - making little chocolate eyeballs with a toothpick sounds easy, but is not. i am probably the worst turtle maker of all time.
the eyeballs shown in the book:
my eyeballs:
and then even though i knew it was a no-no, i put them in the fridge because it was so hot and i was so frustrated and i thought maybe it would be easier to remove the wax paper if they were cold (nope) and i don't even want to get into what happened when i had my idea to hold a knife in an open flame and then slide it underneath the turtles to effortlessly remove them from their wax paper trap. let's just say it was not successful.
i never even ate any of these. i saved two of the most deformed in the fridge and sent the rest to that sweet saint anne. man of the house devoured both deformed turtles before i could try them, wax paper and all, but he's not really a good judge of confectionary success - there's not much he won't eat if it's covered in chocolate. and anne provided her own photographic response to the things, but she may have just been being polite.
i am much better at cooking than baking and much better at baking than candy making.
**you guys - i have a candy thermometer now!
and how did i get one? a wizard?? a kardashian?? NO! from beautiful, wonderful anne, the bravest of the waxed paper eaters.
thank you anne! i hope to feed you parchment paper in the future.
coming soon: tang toast.
step one: locate tang
so, after the turtle debacle of 2015, i decided that tang toast would be a logical follow-up recipe. how can a recipe with only three ingredients (toast, margarine, and tang) fail? this is the picture in the book, and it looks cheerful and adorable:
this is what mine looked like:
it didn't blend nicely; it was all grainy and weird, and it tasted…
well, not great. i never throw food away, but i definitely tossed this into the trash. hopefully the third recipe i try from this will be a success. or at least edible.
before we delve into recipe three, i just want to make a general comment on this book and how weird it is. it's kind of a combination of white trash and gourmet, where one recipe will be like "add grape jelly to the cool whip" or "sprinkle tang on margarine" and others will require freeze dried corn powder and banana extract and the paddle attachment on your stand mixer (which isn't all that gourmet, but i don't have a stand mixer so it seems exotic). i'm sticking to the simplish recipes for now because i'm poor and banana extract is probably expensive.
anyway, here are some kimchi quesadillas.
so this recipe doesn't require you to make your own kimchi. i bought the radish kind, because i have it less frequently than the cabbage kind. okay, and also it was cheaper.
this is what they look like before you bake them:
there is a lot of butter involved. and parchment paper (thanks, anne!). and cheese, which variety is left to the chef. i chose blue cheese crumbles and queso fresco. and after assembling - and this is the reason i chose this recipe, you put another layer of parchment paper on top of these things and then put another baking sheet on top of that and then you bake it, which is a technique i have never encountered before, and i didn't understand why the insides would be buttered but not the outsides.
after:
they didn't get browny-crispy on the outsides, obviously, but i really liked the flavor of the kimchi with the blue cheese, and it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to combine the two, and there wasn't a single cooking-related disaster!
and then i made some with black beans and hot sauce
recipe three - a success!
okay, i have tried another recipe! for erma!
acorn squash with cinnamon butter and breakfast sausage
this is what the book says it should look like:
first you make these gourdcups where butter and salt and brown sugar and cinnamon live
and then bake them into fragrant pools
and then you add the rice and sausage! mine also has beans
and they were delicious!! and dripping with butter.
happy autumn!
next up: grilled ham and cheese corn cookie
step one: buy corn cookies at milk bar
wow. so i have already run out of space to review this book here. i am going to continue reviewing it on another edition but who knows how long that will last before i'm in the same predicament.
dear publisher - make more editions!
review continues here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
***********************************************************
here are some more recipes from this book i want to try, and hopefully they will go better than this one did, because if they're all this ... eventful, i'm gonna run out of review-space:
*hanky-pankies
*cheesy onions
*fruity pebble meringues with passion fruit curd
*ritz cookies
*banana cookies
*salt and pepper cookies
*ritz cracker ice box cake
*pb cornflake no-bakes
*hershey's kiss roll
*pumpkin gooey butter cake
*crackle
*burnt honey butter kale with sesame seeds
*lemon bars
*marky's butter burgers
*zucchini parm
*mac and cheese pancakes
*brisket and broccoli
this cookbook is full of many tasty-looking treats that i want to try. i mean tasty-looking in a messy and manageable stonerfood way, not in in a composed fancy dinner party way - some of the recipes call for things like tang or velveeta!! so i am going to try a bunch of them and i guess review the book as i go along with pictures and (hopefully) amusing anecdotes.
thus far, i have only made one recipe - the mixed nut turtles which are photographed in the book like so:
mine did not end up looking like those, and my experience was a very humbling adventure through my own shortcomings and dumb ideas.
here's the thing - i love cooking, but i only bake during the holiday season and very occasionally throughout the year. and i'm not super-disciplined about it; i'm very laissez-faire with measurements and i don't have a lot of fancy professional-grade equipment. for example - i don't have a candy thermometer, because i never make candy. and i don't have an actual double boiler, just whatever i can rig up with two pots and some magical thinking.
but so i'm making these turtles because a promise is a promise, and i told anne that if i liked the book she told me to read, i would make them for her. and i did. so here i am following the directions, boiling up this concoction, and it's supposed to get to 245 degrees, after about fifteen minutes. i may not have a candy thermometer, but i do have a clock, and after fifteen minutes i'm frowning at this substance wondering, "is this shit done?" i let it boil and froth for a bit longer, to be on the safe side and then i stick my finger in it because i am smart and it felt really really hot which 245 degrees IS, and then i get the genius idea to grab my meat thermometer, but that only goes up to 190 degrees and this fact is precisely the reason candy thermometers exist, right? but i use it anyway and this tells me that it is at least hotter than 190 degrees, which is good enough for me!
it looks appropriately caramelly, so i start dumping it out onto the dutifully prepared cooking-sprayed wax paper in little turtle-sized dollops and wait for it to solidify. while i am waiting, i stick in the little pecan feetses and the little almond heads and a little spine of cocoa-dusted peanuts because i am sooooo fancy. and i make a couple of baking sheets of these babies before it becomes clear that this caramel just isn't hardening. so i turn to the internet which assures me mine is a situation that happens to a lot of guys and is not a big deal - i just gotta cook it a little longer.
so i remove all of the pecan feetses and almond heads and cocoa peanut spines from all of the turtles and put their sad sticky selves into little heaps in separate bowls and i scrape the little caramel pools back into my pot and i reheat and i wait for it to be darker this time, as internet has advised.
and it seems to be working just fine and i swap out the wax paper for fresh wax paper because i am tidy and i spoon this newer, better caramel onto it and grab fresh nuts for the little feetses and heads and spines. and then i realize that in between the caramel reheat and the nut redistribution and the putting down of fresh wax paper, i forgot to spray the new wax paper with cooking spray. which is awesome. so these turtles stuck like paint to the wax paper.
and then, long after it was relevant, i read the introduction to the recipe. which in cookbooks is usually just some story about the chef's creation of the recipe or how much their mom likes it or whatever, but in this case, had some pretty useful information for morons like me:
If you're feeling like a temperature ninja and/or are ballsy enough not to have a candy thermometer to do the job, test the caramel first by color - look for a nice auburn rust brown. Next, test the caramel's consistency by dipping a spoon into the caramel mixture and then into a little glass of ice water to cool it quickly. The cooled caramel should be firm and hold its shape but still have a slight chew - neither soft and super-tacky nor rock-hard crack.
oh.
so you'd think that would be the end of karen being an idiot in this story, but i'm nothing if not an overachiever.
lesson 2 - i don't know anything about chocolate
so i decide to make the little chocolate squiggles shown in the photo. and the little eyeballs. but there are no instructions for making these squiggles, it is just assumed that people know how to do this, and it's not part of the actual recipe, just a little sentence in a circle on the photograph itself, like hey, make 'em if you want.
Drizzle the finished turtles with melted semisweet chocolate chips to give them some stripes and personality.
that is exactly what i want to do!!!
so because i am a DIY genius who doesn't own pastry bags or anything, i decide that what people without pastry bags do is to pour melted chocolate out of the makeshift double boiler and into a plastic sandwich bag, which has been poked with a little pinprick-hole and that this will enable the chocolate to just ooze out into easy-to-manage decorative squiggles.
karen brissette - lateral thinking pro.
but there were complications. so, i guess a pinprick hole is not big enough to allow chocolate to gracefully flow out, and when you try to make the hole bigger, the chocolate just pours out like a garden hose and it is impossible to control, and of course when your bright idea is to hold the bag in one hand and gently squeeze the chocolate out, somehow forgetting that this is molten chocolate we're talking about and no store brand sandwich bag is going to protect sensitive palm flesh from a million degrees of chocolate. (i assume. again, i don't have a candy thermometer) so i'm squeezing and getting scalded and chocolate is shooting out in thick ropes and not in decorative squiggles at all, and it's starting to clot as it cools, so eventually i have to scrape the chocolate back into the double boiler - losing a lot of it along the way and being wasteful and i remelt it and just kinda scoop it over the turtles, covering up the pretty cocoa dusted peanuts with which i'd been so pleased so i may as well have just used regular peanuts and fml and all.
and also - making little chocolate eyeballs with a toothpick sounds easy, but is not. i am probably the worst turtle maker of all time.
the eyeballs shown in the book:
my eyeballs:
and then even though i knew it was a no-no, i put them in the fridge because it was so hot and i was so frustrated and i thought maybe it would be easier to remove the wax paper if they were cold (nope) and i don't even want to get into what happened when i had my idea to hold a knife in an open flame and then slide it underneath the turtles to effortlessly remove them from their wax paper trap. let's just say it was not successful.
i never even ate any of these. i saved two of the most deformed in the fridge and sent the rest to that sweet saint anne. man of the house devoured both deformed turtles before i could try them, wax paper and all, but he's not really a good judge of confectionary success - there's not much he won't eat if it's covered in chocolate. and anne provided her own photographic response to the things, but she may have just been being polite.
i am much better at cooking than baking and much better at baking than candy making.
**you guys - i have a candy thermometer now!
and how did i get one? a wizard?? a kardashian?? NO! from beautiful, wonderful anne, the bravest of the waxed paper eaters.
thank you anne! i hope to feed you parchment paper in the future.
coming soon: tang toast.
step one: locate tang
so, after the turtle debacle of 2015, i decided that tang toast would be a logical follow-up recipe. how can a recipe with only three ingredients (toast, margarine, and tang) fail? this is the picture in the book, and it looks cheerful and adorable:
this is what mine looked like:
it didn't blend nicely; it was all grainy and weird, and it tasted…
well, not great. i never throw food away, but i definitely tossed this into the trash. hopefully the third recipe i try from this will be a success. or at least edible.
before we delve into recipe three, i just want to make a general comment on this book and how weird it is. it's kind of a combination of white trash and gourmet, where one recipe will be like "add grape jelly to the cool whip" or "sprinkle tang on margarine" and others will require freeze dried corn powder and banana extract and the paddle attachment on your stand mixer (which isn't all that gourmet, but i don't have a stand mixer so it seems exotic). i'm sticking to the simplish recipes for now because i'm poor and banana extract is probably expensive.
anyway, here are some kimchi quesadillas.
so this recipe doesn't require you to make your own kimchi. i bought the radish kind, because i have it less frequently than the cabbage kind. okay, and also it was cheaper.
this is what they look like before you bake them:
there is a lot of butter involved. and parchment paper (thanks, anne!). and cheese, which variety is left to the chef. i chose blue cheese crumbles and queso fresco. and after assembling - and this is the reason i chose this recipe, you put another layer of parchment paper on top of these things and then put another baking sheet on top of that and then you bake it, which is a technique i have never encountered before, and i didn't understand why the insides would be buttered but not the outsides.
after:
they didn't get browny-crispy on the outsides, obviously, but i really liked the flavor of the kimchi with the blue cheese, and it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to combine the two, and there wasn't a single cooking-related disaster!
and then i made some with black beans and hot sauce
recipe three - a success!
okay, i have tried another recipe! for erma!
acorn squash with cinnamon butter and breakfast sausage
this is what the book says it should look like:
first you make these gourdcups where butter and salt and brown sugar and cinnamon live
and then bake them into fragrant pools
and then you add the rice and sausage! mine also has beans
and they were delicious!! and dripping with butter.
happy autumn!
next up: grilled ham and cheese corn cookie
step one: buy corn cookies at milk bar
wow. so i have already run out of space to review this book here. i am going to continue reviewing it on another edition but who knows how long that will last before i'm in the same predicament.
dear publisher - make more editions!
review continues here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
***********************************************************
here are some more recipes from this book i want to try, and hopefully they will go better than this one did, because if they're all this ... eventful, i'm gonna run out of review-space:
*hanky-pankies
*cheesy onions
*fruity pebble meringues with passion fruit curd
*ritz cookies
*banana cookies
*salt and pepper cookies
*ritz cracker ice box cake
*pb cornflake no-bakes
*hershey's kiss roll
*pumpkin gooey butter cake
*crackle
*burnt honey butter kale with sesame seeds
*lemon bars
*marky's butter burgers
*zucchini parm
*mac and cheese pancakes
*brisket and broccoli
continuing-ed-cookbooks
November 6, 2015SO! i filled up the other review space, and now i am continuing my review over here. part one of review can be found here.
same caveat:
this is a review-in-progress that's going to be reposted as i (and maybe kelly) try more recipes in it. do not be alarmed if you see it more than once on your feed; i promise this is not groundhog day.
next up: grilled ham and cheese corn cookie
step one: buy corn cookies at milk bar
now, the book will tell you:
If you've got a copy of Momofuku Milk Bar, you've got the recipe for corn cookies. Or you can buy some from milkbarstore.com and have them shipped to your doorstep.
fortunately, there are several milk bar locations near me, so i bought the cookies at the store, but i just want the record to show how jive i think it is that instead of just reprinting the recipe here, the expectation is that you will whip out an additional cookbook to make this simple-dimple recipe. or that you would own the other cookbook in the first place. be more efficient, plz.
anyway, here are the cookies
i followed the recipe, putting the cookies directly on the skillet and "piling up" the ham around it
i was skeptical about putting the cookies on an unbuttered skillet and leaving it uncovered, but i figured - this person gets paid to cook, she must know something i don't, like maybe the cookies have so much butter in them it will just ooze out and be fine.
and this is what happened.
the outside started blackening
long before the cheese melted
now maybe this would have been better with individually-wrapped cheese singles or velveeta or on a diner-grade griddle, but i followed the recipe as printed and it was a disaster.
i tried to fix the situation by melting the cheese in the oven
but the damage had been done, it was burnt and completely falling apart
it probably would have been delicious flavor-wise if not for all the char, so if i do this again, i'm just going to pan-fry the ham and then assemble the sandwich and oven-melt the cheese from the get-go.
i had two more cookies to try the recipe again, but sean of the house was impatient and i was too sleepy to make it, so i mumbled instructions from the bed, making sure there was no skillet involved, and i was going to rally to take pictures of what he created, but his fell apart much more than mine did, plus he slapped it onto a giant portion of the mac and cheese i had made from that other book i'm long-terming, and it was ... not pretty. but he said it was tasty, so maybe i'll make them again this week, MY way, and see what happens.
*okay, so i went and bought more cookies and i just put thinly sliced cheese on them and shoved them in the oven and put the ham on cold because i'm not really a fan of fried ham when it's coldcut ham and it was delicious so BOOM!
recipe, schmecipe!
same caveat:
this is a review-in-progress that's going to be reposted as i (and maybe kelly) try more recipes in it. do not be alarmed if you see it more than once on your feed; i promise this is not groundhog day.
next up: grilled ham and cheese corn cookie
step one: buy corn cookies at milk bar
now, the book will tell you:
If you've got a copy of Momofuku Milk Bar, you've got the recipe for corn cookies. Or you can buy some from milkbarstore.com and have them shipped to your doorstep.
fortunately, there are several milk bar locations near me, so i bought the cookies at the store, but i just want the record to show how jive i think it is that instead of just reprinting the recipe here, the expectation is that you will whip out an additional cookbook to make this simple-dimple recipe. or that you would own the other cookbook in the first place. be more efficient, plz.
anyway, here are the cookies
i followed the recipe, putting the cookies directly on the skillet and "piling up" the ham around it
i was skeptical about putting the cookies on an unbuttered skillet and leaving it uncovered, but i figured - this person gets paid to cook, she must know something i don't, like maybe the cookies have so much butter in them it will just ooze out and be fine.
and this is what happened.
the outside started blackening
long before the cheese melted
now maybe this would have been better with individually-wrapped cheese singles or velveeta or on a diner-grade griddle, but i followed the recipe as printed and it was a disaster.
i tried to fix the situation by melting the cheese in the oven
but the damage had been done, it was burnt and completely falling apart
it probably would have been delicious flavor-wise if not for all the char, so if i do this again, i'm just going to pan-fry the ham and then assemble the sandwich and oven-melt the cheese from the get-go.
i had two more cookies to try the recipe again, but sean of the house was impatient and i was too sleepy to make it, so i mumbled instructions from the bed, making sure there was no skillet involved, and i was going to rally to take pictures of what he created, but his fell apart much more than mine did, plus he slapped it onto a giant portion of the mac and cheese i had made from that other book i'm long-terming, and it was ... not pretty. but he said it was tasty, so maybe i'll make them again this week, MY way, and see what happens.
*okay, so i went and bought more cookies and i just put thinly sliced cheese on them and shoved them in the oven and put the ham on cold because i'm not really a fan of fried ham when it's coldcut ham and it was delicious so BOOM!
recipe, schmecipe!
April 20, 2015
This book really devastated me. Momofuku Milk Bar (MMB) is literally my favorite cookbook. It not only changed the way I bake--it taught me how to bake from scratch. I used to love a Funfetti cake, but now I won't touch a cake mix. So imagine my shock when I see recipes in Christina Tosi's new book that call for boxed cake mix. Processed foods aren't the real shock--Tosi calls for Ritz crackers, for example, in MMB. But the way she uses them in this book lacks transformation or creativity the way they do in Milk Bar Life's (MBL) predecessor. What is this brilliant pastry chef wasting time and paper on a recipe for Seven-Layer Salad? Who eats Seven-Layer Salad?! I understand that this is Tosi's at-home cookbook. Sure, no problem. But why put the name Milk Bar in the title? To sell copies, I guess. Do we really need a recipe for Tang Toast or Spaghetti-O's Sandwich? Those just sound gross. Why use Cool Whip for the Ritz Ice Box Cake when whipped cream is more delicious and just as easy? There are a few glimmers of hope that made me decide to keep the book, mostly her cookie recipes. Though there's no shortage of delicious chocolate chip cookies, Tosi's are delicious. The oatmeal cookie recipe that opens the book inspired Tosi to become a baker, and that's certainly exciting. The Citrus Cookie sounds right up my alley, but the Lemon Bars call for cake mix. It's a perplexing cookbook, but maybe perfect for college-aged stoners.
July 3, 2016
I copied one recipe out of this book so I gave the book 2 stars instead of 1. I've never been to the author's restaurant and if I based my decision to dine there solely on this cookbook, I wouldn't go. Where to begin? How about with the Spaghettios sandwich?
1 can Spaghettios
4 maple-flavored breakfast sausage links
2 slices bread
Unsalted butter
Maple syrup
Handful of chips
Is your mouth watering yet? Well, if so continue on and and try the Ritz cracker ice box cake, only three ingredients, so really easy to make.
11/2 cups grape jelly
2 containers Cool Whip
1 box Ritz crackers
The author states that this "cake" is magic. It sounds and looks revolting to me. I've taught young children how to cook and I think I'd have had a difficult time getting them to try this. Hershey kiss roll involves a tube of crescent rolls and 32 Hershey's kisses. Beef roast with gravy---1 can flipping cream of mushroom soup, pkg of dried onion soup mix, 1 can tomato sauce, 1 beef brisket. A good beef brisket does not deserve this treatment!! Tang toast anybody? Okay, get your 2 slices of white bread, toast it then slather it with MARGARINE. Yes, you read that right, margarine. Now sprinkle some tang on that and you've got another recipe down.
There are some "real food" recipes in the book but far too many like those mentioned above. Check it out at the library but don't encourage the author by buying this book! Oh, and the recipe I copied was for Rosemary nuts-- 1 pound nuts, 2 Tbsp butter, 3 Tbsp chopped Rosemary, 1/3 cup (I'll use less :) ) brown sugar and 2 tsps kosher salt.
Now it's time to jar up my strawberry jam (strawberries, sugar and lemon juice + elderberry flowers in a few jars.)
1 can Spaghettios
4 maple-flavored breakfast sausage links
2 slices bread
Unsalted butter
Maple syrup
Handful of chips
Is your mouth watering yet? Well, if so continue on and and try the Ritz cracker ice box cake, only three ingredients, so really easy to make.
11/2 cups grape jelly
2 containers Cool Whip
1 box Ritz crackers
The author states that this "cake" is magic. It sounds and looks revolting to me. I've taught young children how to cook and I think I'd have had a difficult time getting them to try this. Hershey kiss roll involves a tube of crescent rolls and 32 Hershey's kisses. Beef roast with gravy---1 can flipping cream of mushroom soup, pkg of dried onion soup mix, 1 can tomato sauce, 1 beef brisket. A good beef brisket does not deserve this treatment!! Tang toast anybody? Okay, get your 2 slices of white bread, toast it then slather it with MARGARINE. Yes, you read that right, margarine. Now sprinkle some tang on that and you've got another recipe down.
There are some "real food" recipes in the book but far too many like those mentioned above. Check it out at the library but don't encourage the author by buying this book! Oh, and the recipe I copied was for Rosemary nuts-- 1 pound nuts, 2 Tbsp butter, 3 Tbsp chopped Rosemary, 1/3 cup (I'll use less :) ) brown sugar and 2 tsps kosher salt.
Now it's time to jar up my strawberry jam (strawberries, sugar and lemon juice + elderberry flowers in a few jars.)
April 9, 2023
Conceptually, I actually liked this book more than the other cookbooks I've read from Tosi, but practically speaking, this one just didn't speak to me. I enjoyed the sections by type of event/hangout, the lay-flat binding, and that (almost) every recipe had a photo. But in terms of actual recipes, I think I bookmarked three? The ingredients and recipes here are a lot more reasonable for a home cook/baker than her other works (another thing I appreciated) but her palette is all over the place, and I just have no interest eating a grilled cheese made with cookies instead of bread, or onions cooked in velveeta...
February 3, 2016
If you love the Momofuku Milk Barbook, Milk Bar Life is not for you.
Momofuku Milk Bar changed how I bake, no word of a lie, so I was really excited when I heard Christina Tosi was writing another book. But Momofuku Milk Bar 2 this is not. Which is fine, but not what I was expecting.
I guess the target audience for this might be college students or very young professionals just starting out? Or the very very inebriated? I say this because there is literally a recipe for cinnamon toast, and another recipe that tells you how to undercook a cookie--one single cookie--using store bought cookie dough.
I do like the pictures and the storytelling in this book. Tosi writes like your bff. There's no pressure to excel in the kitchen or to source hard to find ingredients. Which is a bummer because I love those challenging books and spending way too much money on butter.
You will find really creative recipes in here that you'd expect from a Momofuku offshoot (kimcheez-its anyone?) but they're sandwiched in between recipes that are repeated from the Momofuku cookbook, or that reference Momofuku Milk Bar recipes without repeating it (Grilled Ham and Cheese Corn Cookies, ingredients: cheese, cookies, and ham. Literally the only ingredient you need a recipe for is the Corn Cookies but it's not included).
The thing that I dislike the most about this book is the lack of weighted measurements. Tosi goes to great pains to emphasize the importance of weighing baking ingredients in Momoofuku Milk Bar and then just throws it out the window in this book.
I get the home kitchen is different, but would it have killed them to include weights in cups and grams?
I will try some of the recipes in this book, but meh.
Momofuku Milk Bar changed how I bake, no word of a lie, so I was really excited when I heard Christina Tosi was writing another book. But Momofuku Milk Bar 2 this is not. Which is fine, but not what I was expecting.
I guess the target audience for this might be college students or very young professionals just starting out? Or the very very inebriated? I say this because there is literally a recipe for cinnamon toast, and another recipe that tells you how to undercook a cookie--one single cookie--using store bought cookie dough.
I do like the pictures and the storytelling in this book. Tosi writes like your bff. There's no pressure to excel in the kitchen or to source hard to find ingredients. Which is a bummer because I love those challenging books and spending way too much money on butter.
You will find really creative recipes in here that you'd expect from a Momofuku offshoot (kimcheez-its anyone?) but they're sandwiched in between recipes that are repeated from the Momofuku cookbook, or that reference Momofuku Milk Bar recipes without repeating it (Grilled Ham and Cheese Corn Cookies, ingredients: cheese, cookies, and ham. Literally the only ingredient you need a recipe for is the Corn Cookies but it's not included).
The thing that I dislike the most about this book is the lack of weighted measurements. Tosi goes to great pains to emphasize the importance of weighing baking ingredients in Momoofuku Milk Bar and then just throws it out the window in this book.
I get the home kitchen is different, but would it have killed them to include weights in cups and grams?
I will try some of the recipes in this book, but meh.
August 28, 2023
christina tosi is queen
March 16, 2018
Have you read Momofuku? You know how that’s so advanced, yet made accessible enough for a home-kitchen? Well, that’s how this is, except in regards to sweets. Definitely worth the buy/read, but expect a challenge.
December 29, 2018
First off: this isn't a fancy Milk Bar cookbook. This is a Christina Tosi cookbook. "Milk Bar Life" refers to who she is, her attitude, how she treats people, how she runs things, in both her professional life and personal life. A lot of people complained that the Milk Bar book was too complicated for home bakers. Milk Bar Life is for home bakers, and people are complaining it's not complicated enough.
This one is full of recipes that Christina herself grew up with, uses on a regular basis, for entertaining friends and family. Essentially her "at home" go-to's. This is probably not what people were expecting, hence the negative reviews, but it's still a great cookbook for what it is. It's not a fancy bakery cookbook, it's a "this is what I eat" cookbook. Hence the title: her life revolves around Milk Bar, and her job does affect how she eats and what she eats- the intro to each recipe explains it all well. Surprise! Professional chefs don't eat fancy food all the time!
"This is what I ate growing up because my mom/grandma made it for me."
"This is what I eat when I'm exhausted and have been working on my feet all day."
"Here's what we love to eat for family meal at the restaurant."
"This is what I make my friends when they come over."
I know some of the recipes are downright gross or bizarre to most people, but if you're from Ohio or Virginia, they may seem familiar to you, since that's where she grew up. There's some old family recipes that I'm fond of that my friends in California think are repulsive, but hey, that's how my family ate in Boston. They may seem familiar if you grew up in the 80's! I'm the same age as Tosi so a few of these things I distinctly remember from childhood (that Ritz "cake" being one).
It's a great window into the personal life of a professional chef. And there's some great stuff in here! The Rosemary Nuts, all the dip recipes and things that are great party food, and the cookie recipes (Citrus, the Greta, Molasses Rye) are amazing and a lot more accessible to bakers who find the Milk Bar cookie recipes too intimidating. I would definitely recommend this to people living on their own for the first time who probably haven't cooked a lot, or people looking for something more adventurous or nostalgic. If you found her first book to be beyond your skillset at the moment, give this one a try- you don't need any fancy equipment or ingredients, there's no measurements by weight, and odds are you have a lot of the ingredients on hand already. Overall, a very fun book, and I will definitely gift this to friends who love this kind of cooking.
This one is full of recipes that Christina herself grew up with, uses on a regular basis, for entertaining friends and family. Essentially her "at home" go-to's. This is probably not what people were expecting, hence the negative reviews, but it's still a great cookbook for what it is. It's not a fancy bakery cookbook, it's a "this is what I eat" cookbook. Hence the title: her life revolves around Milk Bar, and her job does affect how she eats and what she eats- the intro to each recipe explains it all well. Surprise! Professional chefs don't eat fancy food all the time!
"This is what I ate growing up because my mom/grandma made it for me."
"This is what I eat when I'm exhausted and have been working on my feet all day."
"Here's what we love to eat for family meal at the restaurant."
"This is what I make my friends when they come over."
I know some of the recipes are downright gross or bizarre to most people, but if you're from Ohio or Virginia, they may seem familiar to you, since that's where she grew up. There's some old family recipes that I'm fond of that my friends in California think are repulsive, but hey, that's how my family ate in Boston. They may seem familiar if you grew up in the 80's! I'm the same age as Tosi so a few of these things I distinctly remember from childhood (that Ritz "cake" being one).
It's a great window into the personal life of a professional chef. And there's some great stuff in here! The Rosemary Nuts, all the dip recipes and things that are great party food, and the cookie recipes (Citrus, the Greta, Molasses Rye) are amazing and a lot more accessible to bakers who find the Milk Bar cookie recipes too intimidating. I would definitely recommend this to people living on their own for the first time who probably haven't cooked a lot, or people looking for something more adventurous or nostalgic. If you found her first book to be beyond your skillset at the moment, give this one a try- you don't need any fancy equipment or ingredients, there's no measurements by weight, and odds are you have a lot of the ingredients on hand already. Overall, a very fun book, and I will definitely gift this to friends who love this kind of cooking.
June 11, 2018
Unfortunately I spent my early years in Catholic school taught by honest to goodness nuns wearing habits and wimples. This shapes a person in odd ways, leaving me permanently feeling a sense of unspecified guilt and the need to be clear when I am skating corners as the weekly confessional would find me out anyway.
Luckily I am in a 12 step recovery program from Catholicism, but that old sense of guilt arose when I read a cookbook and have to decide if I will count it as a read book, and exactly how one writes a review of cookbook while remaining true to the spirit of GoodReads. I know, I know, time to let all this guilt go.
I decided to count the book as the reality is that this is a cookbook with an awful lot of supporting narrative about where the recipes came from. In that sense this is interesting, but it is a little bit overly focused on the great environment that has been created at work (!!), and how happy everyone is to be a baker (!!) and how terrific Christina's life has worked out (!!).
The receipes are a little uneven with old standards such as jelly meatballs and buckeyes without a lot of embellishment or updating. Nothing wrong with that at all, but not what I expected, nor what I wanted. So, a 3 rating it is, and a fairly firm decision to continue to be wracked with Catholic guilt when reviewing cookbooks as non-fiction.
Luckily I am in a 12 step recovery program from Catholicism, but that old sense of guilt arose when I read a cookbook and have to decide if I will count it as a read book, and exactly how one writes a review of cookbook while remaining true to the spirit of GoodReads. I know, I know, time to let all this guilt go.
I decided to count the book as the reality is that this is a cookbook with an awful lot of supporting narrative about where the recipes came from. In that sense this is interesting, but it is a little bit overly focused on the great environment that has been created at work (!!), and how happy everyone is to be a baker (!!) and how terrific Christina's life has worked out (!!).
The receipes are a little uneven with old standards such as jelly meatballs and buckeyes without a lot of embellishment or updating. Nothing wrong with that at all, but not what I expected, nor what I wanted. So, a 3 rating it is, and a fairly firm decision to continue to be wracked with Catholic guilt when reviewing cookbooks as non-fiction.
January 5, 2017
This book makes me so happy.
Yes, it is junk food, and yes, it is stuff she cooks at home for herself and no, it's not as fancy as Momofuku Milk Bar but you know what, I don't even care. There are lots of classic recipes in here like Apple Dumplings (which I tried in Philly and loved, and have wanted to re-create ever since but I did not trust any of the online recipes I had found), Roast Chicken, Chicken Pot Pie, Cinnamon Buns with cream cheese icing - I am excited to try her versions of my favorite things to eat.
Yes, it is junk food, and yes, it is stuff she cooks at home for herself and no, it's not as fancy as Momofuku Milk Bar but you know what, I don't even care. There are lots of classic recipes in here like Apple Dumplings (which I tried in Philly and loved, and have wanted to re-create ever since but I did not trust any of the online recipes I had found), Roast Chicken, Chicken Pot Pie, Cinnamon Buns with cream cheese icing - I am excited to try her versions of my favorite things to eat.
July 20, 2023
After reading Christina Tosi's memoir/cookbook Desserts Can Save the World I decided to check out some of her cookbooks. After reading her memoir this cookbook makes total sense - it's a variety of recipes (still mostly desserts) that trace back to her family and things she personally likes to eat/cook at home. It's far from gourmet and more like nostalgia cooking or remaking things she enjoyed in her childhood. Several reviews complained that this cookbook was so much worse or different than Momofoku Milk Bar, I haven't seen that one so I didn't have anything other than her memoir to compare this cookbook to. I didn't think it was amazing and if I hadn't read her memoir I would probably be more confused about how she is a famous chef now. I did find a couple recipes I'd like to try and photographs are great, but not a gourmet cookbook by any stretch.
May 3, 2018
Hi, my name is Kim and I like to read cookbooks. The Ritz cookies were A+
August 29, 2019
This was a great companion to the Chef's Table profile of author and chef Christina Tosi that I saw recently on Netflix. I'm not sure I would ever make any of the recipes, but I really enjoyed the stories about Christina's life and experiences as owner of Momofuko Milk Bar in New York City. Definitely recommended!
July 18, 2024
Was this cookbook written as a joke? Honest question
November 7, 2022
funny, accessible, tasty, and CRAZY unhealthy.
the apple dumplings are AMAZING. and the recipe is very, very forgiving. i'm a super shitty baker, but i still managed to pull these together -- dough crumbling everywhere, more of it on my torso and the floor than in anything resembling a neat little package -- TWICE! and create an exhileratingly good dessert. oh -- and the recipe scaled up without a problem. the dumplings are SUPER sweet, like, skirting the give-me-a-damn-headache line, but they pull back juuuust before. like, HOW, tosi?? #TheMaster also, note, i have ZERO previous experience making apple dumplings, but this recipe was not beyond me. but i totally made a mess of my kitchen. just saying. but WORTH IT.
i based my entire gigantor christmas eve menu for, like, fifteen people on this book. in the end, i tweaked some of the recipes based on other recipes (as in, she based some of her recipes on other peoples' recipes, so i found the originals and mostly used theirs), but i was almost always really happy with the results. (see: her bo ssam, a falling-apart-tender, sugar-and-salt-crusted pork shoulder, which is based on david chang's [of Momofuku fame] recipe; mine was SUCCULENT; big hit; and i'd NEVER made pork shoulder before, so this is totally beginner friendly.)
the only fail in my tosi-inspired recipe lineup was her intriguing-sounding miso butterscotch topping, which i tried to prepare to dial my sundaes up to eleven. but mine burnt to an acrid dust, though i followed her instructions to the letter. i suppose this is why i'm not yet a not-shitty baker: i have to develop my oven-using intuition, which is pretty much nil. ALL THIS TO SAY: it's a SUPER interesting recipe idea, and i bet if i had the patience/groceries/time/reason to try this recipe another time or two, i'd get the spreading-the-miso-thin-on-the-baking-pan thickness right and the baking timing right, which would yield an Umami Bomb, with a fascinating interplay in a sundae, instead of the sad ash i ended up throwing away.
NOTE: this book is aaaaaaaalllll about the taste bombs. the recipes are full of fat, sugar, and salt. and they very frequently use super-processed foods. or even try to modernize middle-american comfort foods (the kinds that were prepared using way-processed, will-never-biodegrade foodstuffs like Velveeta and cream of chicken soup) without even thinking about healthing them up. so, like, don't rely on this book to get you to that Zen, Healthful, Flavorful Place. it won't. what it WILL do is jack up your blood values, while being deliciiiiiiiiiicious.
technique: very accessible, even to average home cooks
ingredients: very accessible; aaaaaalmost everything would be found in most well-stocked grocery stores, even if you don't live in a super big city (i think i even found the right miso paste in my regular store, which frankly surprised me, and i'm in the country; THO: i had to call around to find a store that sold pork shoulder, as i don't live in the south, where that cut is apparently super readily available because #Barbeque)
results: realllly tasty, often clever
healthfulness: um.
thank you, christina tosi.
*** UPDATED 11/6/22 ***
I just tried baking her Hijacked Biscoff Cookies. they were super simple to make and came out light and subtle and yummy; excellent with a cup of coffee or tea. The cookies could have even tolerated more spice to them but are lovely as is. I needed much more mixing time to get the dough to come together, however; but even so, that didn't make them tough. Lovely, easy recipe.
the apple dumplings are AMAZING. and the recipe is very, very forgiving. i'm a super shitty baker, but i still managed to pull these together -- dough crumbling everywhere, more of it on my torso and the floor than in anything resembling a neat little package -- TWICE! and create an exhileratingly good dessert. oh -- and the recipe scaled up without a problem. the dumplings are SUPER sweet, like, skirting the give-me-a-damn-headache line, but they pull back juuuust before. like, HOW, tosi?? #TheMaster also, note, i have ZERO previous experience making apple dumplings, but this recipe was not beyond me. but i totally made a mess of my kitchen. just saying. but WORTH IT.
i based my entire gigantor christmas eve menu for, like, fifteen people on this book. in the end, i tweaked some of the recipes based on other recipes (as in, she based some of her recipes on other peoples' recipes, so i found the originals and mostly used theirs), but i was almost always really happy with the results. (see: her bo ssam, a falling-apart-tender, sugar-and-salt-crusted pork shoulder, which is based on david chang's [of Momofuku fame] recipe; mine was SUCCULENT; big hit; and i'd NEVER made pork shoulder before, so this is totally beginner friendly.)
the only fail in my tosi-inspired recipe lineup was her intriguing-sounding miso butterscotch topping, which i tried to prepare to dial my sundaes up to eleven. but mine burnt to an acrid dust, though i followed her instructions to the letter. i suppose this is why i'm not yet a not-shitty baker: i have to develop my oven-using intuition, which is pretty much nil. ALL THIS TO SAY: it's a SUPER interesting recipe idea, and i bet if i had the patience/groceries/time/reason to try this recipe another time or two, i'd get the spreading-the-miso-thin-on-the-baking-pan thickness right and the baking timing right, which would yield an Umami Bomb, with a fascinating interplay in a sundae, instead of the sad ash i ended up throwing away.
NOTE: this book is aaaaaaaalllll about the taste bombs. the recipes are full of fat, sugar, and salt. and they very frequently use super-processed foods. or even try to modernize middle-american comfort foods (the kinds that were prepared using way-processed, will-never-biodegrade foodstuffs like Velveeta and cream of chicken soup) without even thinking about healthing them up. so, like, don't rely on this book to get you to that Zen, Healthful, Flavorful Place. it won't. what it WILL do is jack up your blood values, while being deliciiiiiiiiiicious.
technique: very accessible, even to average home cooks
ingredients: very accessible; aaaaaalmost everything would be found in most well-stocked grocery stores, even if you don't live in a super big city (i think i even found the right miso paste in my regular store, which frankly surprised me, and i'm in the country; THO: i had to call around to find a store that sold pork shoulder, as i don't live in the south, where that cut is apparently super readily available because #Barbeque)
results: realllly tasty, often clever
healthfulness: um.
thank you, christina tosi.
*** UPDATED 11/6/22 ***
I just tried baking her Hijacked Biscoff Cookies. they were super simple to make and came out light and subtle and yummy; excellent with a cup of coffee or tea. The cookies could have even tolerated more spice to them but are lovely as is. I needed much more mixing time to get the dough to come together, however; but even so, that didn't make them tough. Lovely, easy recipe.
December 3, 2016
I checked this book out from the library by accident when I was looking for the Momofuku cook book, but I remembered hearing good things about Christina's Tosi's first book, Momfuku Milk Bar. Milk Bar Life, however, was terrible. The first recipe, an oatmeal cookie recipe from her grandmother that inspired her to become a baker, sounded interesting, if only for the story. But as I flipped through the book, I found myself getting angrier and angrier.
There were recipes for things like Tang on toast (which was just powdered orange juice on toast) or Spaghetti O's crammed in between two slice of white bread, and an Icebox cake that consisted of Ritz crackers, cool whip, and a jar of grape jelly. Not only did these recipes sound disgusting, but they also seem to fetishize poverty. Now, having been poor myself, I have opened my fridge door to see a block of tofu, some slices of american cheese, and half a jar of spaghetti sauce and thought to myself, "Can I eat that? If I mixed it all together would it be edible?" The answer is yes, but why would you want to? Why would a successful and creative NYC baker turn to things like boxed cake mix and tang? The answer isn't convenience!
I know in recent years that things like eating local produce and kale have become popular and mainstream. There are so many cookbooks out that are praising farmer's markets and Whole Foods and this book seems to be reactionary to that. Milk Bar Life has adopted the mentality that eating healthy is popular so it sucks now. (Ugh.) This book is glorifying unhealthy, super processed food, and so what if thinking that means that I'm a food snob? I think that we can all agree Tang on toast is a bad idea. Now, I'll be there first person to admit that I don't eat a healthy diet all of the time. In fact, there are plenty of processed foods that are delicious. Oreos, for example. Oreos are perfect. But many of the recipes that I found here are lazy, unappealing, and just gross. Mac-and-cheese pancakes? Grilled cheese and ham corn cookies? Again...tang on toast?? Ew, no thank you.
There were recipes for things like Tang on toast (which was just powdered orange juice on toast) or Spaghetti O's crammed in between two slice of white bread, and an Icebox cake that consisted of Ritz crackers, cool whip, and a jar of grape jelly. Not only did these recipes sound disgusting, but they also seem to fetishize poverty. Now, having been poor myself, I have opened my fridge door to see a block of tofu, some slices of american cheese, and half a jar of spaghetti sauce and thought to myself, "Can I eat that? If I mixed it all together would it be edible?" The answer is yes, but why would you want to? Why would a successful and creative NYC baker turn to things like boxed cake mix and tang? The answer isn't convenience!
I know in recent years that things like eating local produce and kale have become popular and mainstream. There are so many cookbooks out that are praising farmer's markets and Whole Foods and this book seems to be reactionary to that. Milk Bar Life has adopted the mentality that eating healthy is popular so it sucks now. (Ugh.) This book is glorifying unhealthy, super processed food, and so what if thinking that means that I'm a food snob? I think that we can all agree Tang on toast is a bad idea. Now, I'll be there first person to admit that I don't eat a healthy diet all of the time. In fact, there are plenty of processed foods that are delicious. Oreos, for example. Oreos are perfect. But many of the recipes that I found here are lazy, unappealing, and just gross. Mac-and-cheese pancakes? Grilled cheese and ham corn cookies? Again...tang on toast?? Ew, no thank you.
June 30, 2019
I'm not sure I would have picked this up had it not been a "Milk Bar" book. However, I have now glanced through it several times and while it is wacky (some people have described SEVERAL of the recipes as "stoner" food), it's super entertaining and I'm excited to try out a few of the recipes (the enchiladas and COOKIES mostly). We'll see how it goes...probably not going to try the Spaghettios and maple link sausage sandwich recipe :)
On a side note, it's refreshing to peruse recipes that are NOT super health conscious (e.g. ADD SOME DAMN BUTTAH and enjoy those tasty carbs).
On a side note, it's refreshing to peruse recipes that are NOT super health conscious (e.g. ADD SOME DAMN BUTTAH and enjoy those tasty carbs).
May 7, 2015
I had read great things about this author's other cookbook and thought I would give the newest one a try. 2 stars for the Beautiful book, pictures and easy to read recipes. I am just not a fan of using old processed food in an attempt to be creative? They lost me at Fruity Pebble Meringue Cookies, a Spaghetti-O's Sandwich and by using Velveeta Cheese and Ritz Crackers in recipes. Would I ever want to make anything or eat anything from this cookbook? Nope.
March 31, 2016
More savory recipes this time, following Tosi's theme in her first book by citing kitschy, "regular"ingredients and turning them into something creative and fun. He tone and style of writing are accessible, charming, and empowering, much like her recipes. Jerk chicken wings and apple dumplings are soon to come out of my kitchen. Tang on Toast? Not so much, but I'll mention it to my kids when they eventually write home from college asking for money.
May 10, 2018
Love her first cookbook, love Milk Bar. Bought this after seeing her really enjoyable episode on Chef's Table. Disappointing isn't an adequate word for this follow-up book, with recipes for concoctions such as Tang Toast, and a sandwich with Spaghettios, sausage links, and white bread. Cool Whip and Velveeta also figure prominently. Where was her editor?? A buying mistake, for sure.
November 11, 2015
A recipe for Tang toast? This is not my jam.
March 28, 2016
Some of the recipes (stoner food with velveeta) look revolting, but this one earns love anyway for cookies and baking tips. Strong "voice, " but quite a bit too hipster for me!
July 17, 2015
Ugh, this book is so gross.
October 30, 2015
I wrote a review of this book, including a recipe, here: http://flourandfancy.com/2015/07/23/h...
October 28, 2020
Some recipes were ridiculous, some were awful, but many of them were great! Enough to where I want to purchase this book. I liked that it wasn't super highbrow cooking, it celebrated family recipes and home cooking, and processed food., but interspersed with these were some techniques and ingredients I hadn't learned about before. I did gain at least 3 pounds just from making some of the food in this cookbook.
Here are the recipes I made that I thought were great:
Citrus Cookies--these were so worth the effort (i.e. zesting 14 citrus fruits). If you make them, don't ignore her advice about not grating the pith under the zest (my cookies tasted kinda bitter), also don't skip making and adding the lemon granola (I tried it both ways).
XXXL Lady Salad-Very filling and healthy salad for a crowd or for a few people for a few days. I skipped toasting the almonds and the cheese though because I'm bad at not burning that type of stuff.
Pickle Juice Poached Fish (my 4 year old ate her full serving of white fish!)
Chicken Puffs-super simple and so delicious! Not very healthy though.
Cornmeal Mush--reminded me of my childhood
Marinade for chicken, the one from David Chang
Arnie Palmer--I had never heard of this drink before. I mixed this up and added some hard liquor and it was very yummy.
Milk Bar Ranch Dip--I have made ranch mixes before and this is a better recipe.
Overnight Chicken soup
Fruity pebble meringues with passion fruit curd (I just made the meringues and didn't add the fruity pebbles or the curd and they tasted great, fun to cook with my kitchen mixer and my 4 year old).
Here were some that were pretty good, but not quite great that I made:
Chicken and dumplings--I didn't really measure the buttermilk, so the dumplings fell apart
Cornbake--a bit too salty (1 tablespoon of salt!) but maybe that was because I used salted butter?
Cake Mix Coffee Cake--this was super easy and fun to make with my 4 year old
Awful recipes:
Mixed Nut Turtles--they didn't turn out at all, I ended up throwing it all away. I was using a candy thermometer, but I probably had the heat on a bit too high and stopped stirring for 2 seconds and burned the caramel. Then I thought I got it up to the right temp, but based on the way it didn't solidify, I guess I didn't. I wanted the cute chocolate on them, had to find on the internet how to get chocolate to where you can drizzle it, and added too much oil to the chocolate for it to get solid when it cooled, so I ended up with gloopy, gluey caramels that had puddles of oily chocolate on them. I tried one and then remembered that I don't even like caramel, so I guess the only reason I tried this recipe was because the picture looked so cute.
Tang toast, Ritz cracker ice box cake, and spagettio sammy were items that made me want to gag. I didn't attempt these. If I buy a copy of this book I will literally tear those and several other similar recipes out.
There are so many other recipes I want to try:
All of her jelly/jam recipes, there are like 8 of them. She has you use this pectin that is better than the stuff you get at the grocery store. I made the pickled strawberry jam (only I used huckleberries) and it turned out amazing.
Tex-Mex curried Chili, this sounds really yummy
Eggs in Purgatory
2 kale recipes
Bird in a Bag-but only if I can get a BPA free bag (you boil the chicken a plastic bag with seasoning and buttermilk
crock pot cake
Quiche recipe
Chicken Pot Pie (she uses Wondra flour to thicken the filling)
Miso butterscotch
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Biscoff dupes
Snickerdoodles
Apple Dumplings
Buckeyes
Pumpkin Gooey Bars
Caramelized Garlic, onions, and leeks
Lemon Bars
Burnt Honey Mustard
Popovers
Lime, yogurt, olive oil cake
English Muffin recipe
Here are the recipes I made that I thought were great:
Citrus Cookies--these were so worth the effort (i.e. zesting 14 citrus fruits). If you make them, don't ignore her advice about not grating the pith under the zest (my cookies tasted kinda bitter), also don't skip making and adding the lemon granola (I tried it both ways).
XXXL Lady Salad-Very filling and healthy salad for a crowd or for a few people for a few days. I skipped toasting the almonds and the cheese though because I'm bad at not burning that type of stuff.
Pickle Juice Poached Fish (my 4 year old ate her full serving of white fish!)
Chicken Puffs-super simple and so delicious! Not very healthy though.
Cornmeal Mush--reminded me of my childhood
Marinade for chicken, the one from David Chang
Arnie Palmer--I had never heard of this drink before. I mixed this up and added some hard liquor and it was very yummy.
Milk Bar Ranch Dip--I have made ranch mixes before and this is a better recipe.
Overnight Chicken soup
Fruity pebble meringues with passion fruit curd (I just made the meringues and didn't add the fruity pebbles or the curd and they tasted great, fun to cook with my kitchen mixer and my 4 year old).
Here were some that were pretty good, but not quite great that I made:
Chicken and dumplings--I didn't really measure the buttermilk, so the dumplings fell apart
Cornbake--a bit too salty (1 tablespoon of salt!) but maybe that was because I used salted butter?
Cake Mix Coffee Cake--this was super easy and fun to make with my 4 year old
Awful recipes:
Mixed Nut Turtles--they didn't turn out at all, I ended up throwing it all away. I was using a candy thermometer, but I probably had the heat on a bit too high and stopped stirring for 2 seconds and burned the caramel. Then I thought I got it up to the right temp, but based on the way it didn't solidify, I guess I didn't. I wanted the cute chocolate on them, had to find on the internet how to get chocolate to where you can drizzle it, and added too much oil to the chocolate for it to get solid when it cooled, so I ended up with gloopy, gluey caramels that had puddles of oily chocolate on them. I tried one and then remembered that I don't even like caramel, so I guess the only reason I tried this recipe was because the picture looked so cute.
Tang toast, Ritz cracker ice box cake, and spagettio sammy were items that made me want to gag. I didn't attempt these. If I buy a copy of this book I will literally tear those and several other similar recipes out.
There are so many other recipes I want to try:
All of her jelly/jam recipes, there are like 8 of them. She has you use this pectin that is better than the stuff you get at the grocery store. I made the pickled strawberry jam (only I used huckleberries) and it turned out amazing.
Tex-Mex curried Chili, this sounds really yummy
Eggs in Purgatory
2 kale recipes
Bird in a Bag-but only if I can get a BPA free bag (you boil the chicken a plastic bag with seasoning and buttermilk
crock pot cake
Quiche recipe
Chicken Pot Pie (she uses Wondra flour to thicken the filling)
Miso butterscotch
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Biscoff dupes
Snickerdoodles
Apple Dumplings
Buckeyes
Pumpkin Gooey Bars
Caramelized Garlic, onions, and leeks
Lemon Bars
Burnt Honey Mustard
Popovers
Lime, yogurt, olive oil cake
English Muffin recipe
March 16, 2018
As is the case with many other reviewers, I loved Momofuku Milk Bar, Christina Tosi's first book. It smashed through the walls of conventional baking books to bring a radical, fresh take that has the substance to back its weirdness up. Tosi's passion bleeds from every page. Some called it hipster, some called it poser, but I believe she truly lives 24/7 the sugar obsession she details. Yes, the recipes demand commitment and a lot more effort than, say, any Food Network book would ask for, but the end products well justify the means.
Milk Bar Life is hoped by many to be Momofuku Milk Bar: The Sequel; the disappointment they feel, however, is all on them, for Tosi makes it clear repeatedly that this book is a different monster altogether. This book is designed to give a glimpse into the private, after hours world of eats for Tosi, her family, and friends/coworkers--a sort of index-card file of handed down recipes and family go-tos that comfort the heart and feed the nostalgia. So some reviewers give this 1 or 2 stars because this isn't what they came for; I gave it 2 stars because, well, these recipes just aren't intriguing in the slightest.
Judging the book based on her intended purpose, there's just not a lot here. There are plenty of other books out there that collect personal family back-of-box recipes, and most have something to keep a reader invested (historical reference, regional flavor, etc). This collection provides so little substance or uniqueness. Yeah, I get it--you come home late after a double shift and want whatever you can throw together quick with whatever is in the fridge. We all do. But a cookbook isn't necessary to explain how to put cinnamon on toast or blue cheese atop pretzels. It's not because this is coming from someone like Tosi; rather, it is as if any writer tried to sell me a book that details how to make cheese and crackers or peanut butter and jelly. It's not that these things are basic, it's that they are self-explanatory.
So yeah, 2 stars from me. I appreciate the intent but failed to find much that delivered the goods.
Milk Bar Life is hoped by many to be Momofuku Milk Bar: The Sequel; the disappointment they feel, however, is all on them, for Tosi makes it clear repeatedly that this book is a different monster altogether. This book is designed to give a glimpse into the private, after hours world of eats for Tosi, her family, and friends/coworkers--a sort of index-card file of handed down recipes and family go-tos that comfort the heart and feed the nostalgia. So some reviewers give this 1 or 2 stars because this isn't what they came for; I gave it 2 stars because, well, these recipes just aren't intriguing in the slightest.
Judging the book based on her intended purpose, there's just not a lot here. There are plenty of other books out there that collect personal family back-of-box recipes, and most have something to keep a reader invested (historical reference, regional flavor, etc). This collection provides so little substance or uniqueness. Yeah, I get it--you come home late after a double shift and want whatever you can throw together quick with whatever is in the fridge. We all do. But a cookbook isn't necessary to explain how to put cinnamon on toast or blue cheese atop pretzels. It's not because this is coming from someone like Tosi; rather, it is as if any writer tried to sell me a book that details how to make cheese and crackers or peanut butter and jelly. It's not that these things are basic, it's that they are self-explanatory.
So yeah, 2 stars from me. I appreciate the intent but failed to find much that delivered the goods.
October 1, 2023
I was surprised that when I lived in New York, I never went to Milk Bar but discovered Christina Tosi from Bake Squad on Netflix. I found the forced hilarity on that show very annoying, so not the best intro. All that said, I expected this book to be a cookbook and not so much a memoir from a girl who really likes to TALK. I really wanted to google many of the restaurants she mentioned but didn't want to concretely know that/if they had closed down. (Damn the pandemic...) Interesting, some weird, some very lowbrow, recipes but only four inspired me enough to flag them. Lots of poorly lit photos but most all the recipes include a picture. Many, many tips and tricks and a lot of cringey text: Anything smoky is manly to a gaggle of giggling girls. (p 194). Ugh. I do plan on reading her other books, though.
November 11, 2017
I picked up this book at the library because Christina Tosi seems cool and I wanted to learn more about her. I did not get it for the recipes and have not tried the recipes - though pickled strawberry jam sounds too good to not try. I am amused, grossed out and slightly curious about the recipes that contain ingredients like spaghetti-o’s and bbq potato chips. But I kind of like that she includes these without apology - I admire the gutsy move even if I am not interested in making those recipes.
After reading other reviews of this book, many disappointed in this book after loving Momofuku Milk Bar, I definitely want to read that and see how it compares.
After reading other reviews of this book, many disappointed in this book after loving Momofuku Milk Bar, I definitely want to read that and see how it compares.
May 18, 2018
This book is a whole lot of fun, nostalgia and love. I think people are easily dismayed from this book because it's not like momofuku milk bar, that is because this book was intended to bring a totally different purpose to readers. Christina tells stories of growing up, everyday life and simple comforts. With some super wacky recipes and she tells great stories in the process. I think it's unfair to compare this book to her others because it's an honest look at her life, not a bakery. I will always love any kind of book where people share these kind of recipes and memories. Not every cookbook is some fancy professional cookbook, so don't expect it to be a book it never set out to be.
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