Rigo Jancsi, the hungarian chocolate mousse cake I grew up with
I decided to take a tour in the dessert blogging community and select the top 10 dessert blogs for you for the Memorial Day Holiday. The criteria for inclusion in this list, include the following:
- I hit the site and I yell out: Wow!
- The first photograph I see takes my breath away
- The date on the top post is not older than one week
- I start to read the top post and I find myself interested to click on the “continue to read”
- The recipe is written clearly with enough details to follow
- The blog is at least 80% about desserts
- Easy to read
- There are no ready-made mixes, cans, jars (except jams), gums, or ingredients that I cannot pronounce in the recipes
- The recipes are not straight copies from cookbooks or from other authors
- Contains limited number of comments (I’d like to promote bloggers that work hard to create great blogs, but for whatever reason ignored or missed.)
Little did I realize that I am asking nearly the impossible. This tour was a real education. No blog matched all ten criteria and after surfing for a half-a-day I still only had 7 blogs on my list.
I think it should be a real eye opener for all of us dessert bloggers (and perhaps food bloggers, as well) and try to work together to enhance and upgrade our blogs to be a better value to our readers. I discussed earlier in my posts about the benefits of multiple brains vs. a single one. I still think it is a good idea.
I’d like to start a “Dessert-Genius-GroupR” that will tour the dessert blogs and select a blog for our weekly meeting to dissect, analyze and recommend improvements. I realize that not everyone can be a star photographer, or a genius recipe developer, but that does not mean that the only desserts we can make and post that is written by someone else, published in cookbooks or put together with the help of artificial ingredients. Recipes handed down from moms and grandmas are fine; but still the best ones are those that we develop from scratch on our own. The only way we will be able to develop great recipes, if we understand the characteristics of the ingredients and how to use them. It also means that we need more educational blogs to help those of us who are great writers, but lack professional and/or scientific education.
If you are interested in joining me in developing this centrally leading Genius-GroupR, please contact me at your earliest.
The first blog on my list is:
As much as I wanted to select bakers that are relatively unknown, but doing a great job as dessert blog developers and writers, I could not leave Dorie Greenspan off this list. Although, Dorie’s blog cannot be classified as a dessert blog by a strict interpretation, nevertheless there are enough dessert recipes on her site that we can overlook the formalities. In addition, I own five of her cookbooks; all of them are about desserts. I believe Dorie is secretly a dessert lover and blogger. She has contributed significantly over the years toward the enhancement of creative pastries and the enrichment of creative desserts.
Dorie’s reputation as a great cookbook writer/author, a professional recipe developer, mentor and friend is mile high and not without merit. It is, therefore, not surprising that I have selected her as one of the top dessert bloggers in our time. With all her knowledge and experience, she is always open to new ideas, not embarrassed to learn from others (even if those may not be near to her level) and not afraid to ask questions, when something is not clear. These qualities can only be assigned to a giant, such as Dorie Greenspan.
Whether it is Tuesdays with Dorie, or French Fridays with Dorie, we always want to be next to Dorie with the hope that something will rub off on us. We also like Rainy Days and Mondays with Dorie, Super Wednesday with Dorie, but Never on Sundays with Dorie (please people, she needs a day to rest).
