Annual Cookbook Issue : A Few Good Books

“Gooey Desserts: The Joy of Decadence,” Elaine Corn (Prima Publishing: $24.95; 243 pp.).

If you read cookbooks like novels, apply that technique to this one. It’s much safer on the waistline than making these irresistible treats.

Elaine Corn, former food editor of the Sacramento Bee, is not even plump, so perhaps the danger is exaggerated. But the calories certainly aren’t, because gooey is far more than sticky and sweet. It is, writes Corn, “a state of mind . . . soft, lush, rich, smooth, velvety and slick.” A true gooey dessert “squishes out around the sides of your tongue.” For Corn, the only important part of a cake is its goo components--filling and frosting, cream and caramel.

The first recipe in the book is 100% goo. It’s a mound of heavy cream, sour cream and brown sugar heaped in a dessert dish. The name: cream and sugar slave. Farther on are such excesses as “great gobs of ganache on a mudslide cookie with a surprise in the middle,” which is overblown both in title and content; gooey chocolate deliverance (a truffle torte); cream puffs with two fillings--brandy and chocolate; white chocolate-caramel cheesecake with macadamia nuts; “ooey gooey” sundaes, and fluffy strawberry-banana cream cake.

Corn cooks from scratch because she enjoys the gooey process as much as the results. Although opposed to mixes, she allows them in a chapter on “Great Gooey Classics” because the original recipes required them.

Her book is perfectly timed to further the annual holiday binge, and Corn admits that it “could be perceived as a metaphorical pie in the face of the contemporary American health movement.” She then makes us consider the broader picture. Most people do not eat dessert with every meal, or every day. But when they allow themselves this indulgence, they want it to be fantastic. And Corn has done her best to guarantee that it will be.

“The Tea Book,” Sara Perry (Chronicle Books: $12.95; 95 pp.).

Did you know that black tea contains twice the amount of caffeine as coffee? Once in the cup, though, it’s a lot weaker, because a pound of tea produces five times as many servings as a pound of coffee.

Did you know that the British began to drink tea with milk not to dilute the flavor but to prevent the hot beverage from cracking delicate porcelain cups?

And have you heard the painful, technical name for what happens when boiling water meets tea leaves? It’s called the “agony of the leaves.”

When you finish this book, you’ll know a lot more tea facts, and, of course, you will be able to brew a perfect cup of hot tea, make perfect ice tea, and a lot of tea-related foods like scones, cookies, cakes and even main dishes.

Author Perry, a food writer for the Oregonian, has also written books on coffee and chocolate. But she seems especially enamored of this topic, which she expands to include herbal infusions. Although she’s a strong proponent of tea brewed from loose leaves, she allows a tea bag to show prominently in one photograph. After all, more than half the tea drunk in the United States is brewed from bags, she reports.

Lee covers tea accessories, tea customs, how to serve tea and much more. If you’re not already a tea fan, the alluring photographs of soothing cuppas may turn you into one.

“The Pyramid Cookbook,” Pat Baird (Henry Holt: $24; 257 pp.).

“Healthy” cookbooks with dull, good-for-you recipes discourage the wise eating that they try to promote. For a different experience, page through “The Pyramid Cookbook.” It’s based on the U. S. Department of Agriculture Food Guide Pyramid issued in 1992, and it’s packed with dishes that sound, well, good enough to eat.

You would hardly feel deprived by a dinner that includes sweet potato and apple bisque, venison brochettes with rosemary-juniper sauce, spiced Asian rice, steamed asparagus and chocolate angel food cake. That’s one of the suggested menus at the end of the book. Even breakfast sounds wonderful, with ideas like baked orange French toast, cinnamon-scented apricot bread and gingered fruit compote with yogurt cream.

Yet these foods fit the Pyramid pattern: broad-based eating of bread, cereal, rice and pasta; generous servings of vegetables and fruits; smaller servings of dairy foods, meats, and proteins such as dry beans, eggs and nuts; and sparing use of fats, oils and sweets.

Baird is a New York-based registered dietitian and nutritional consultant who leads weight management groups and health education workshops and consults in the food industry. She has long taken the point of view that no food should be forbidden. The trade-off is to balance something rich with something low in fat.

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Along with writing decent recipes, Baird knows how to make nutritional guidelines easy to grasp. That’s by putting nuggets of practical information into lists like “Ten Ways to Get 5 a Day” (five servings of vegetables and fruits), “What a Serving Looks Like” (a three-ounce portion of meat, fish or poultry is about the size of a deck of cards), “Frozen Food Tips” (for supermarket shoppers) and “Tips for Eating on the Run.”

It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to cook and eat at home, so Baird discusses how hotels, restaurants, airlines and cruise ships are meeting nutritional needs. She even provides menu suggestions for fast food junkies. For breakfast at Jack in the Box, you could have a sourdough breakfast sandwich and orange juice. A Pyramid-style lunch or dinner at Wendy’s would include a grilled chicken sandwich, a side salad with reduced calorie dressing and lemonade.

What should one eat during the holidays? With Baird’s book in hand, you might have turkey pot-au-feu , sesame-dressed field greens with apples and water chestnuts, savory peppered corn muffins and glazed apples and raisins, which Baird likens to “apple pie without the pastry.” That sort of diet food sounds like good reason to feast.