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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
Since she was a teenager, Rosie Alyea has been obsessed with “whipping up a sweet life.” She began as a professional baker and then veered into the world of entrepreneurship, launching a decadent beauty product line. In 2010, Alyea began dreaming up creative confections for her blog, Sweetapolita. Her ribbons of Swiss Meringue Buttercream piled up rave reviews, and with each colorful cake creation she cultivated an adoring crowd. Today, Sweetapolita has nearly half a million followers on Facebook, and now Alyea is also an author with her first cookbook, the The Sweetapolita Bakebook.
This bakebook is a showstopper, full of bright, vibrant pastels. Rosie obviously has a passion for color, evident in the line of every dazzling dessert she fashions. Her cookies transcend bakery staples into the realm of fine art. The buttery rounds are swimming with swirls of watercolor frosting and then dipped in edible gold so that they look like gilt-edged framed paintings, worthy of gracing any museum wall. Her infamous cakelets stand like fairytale towers, adorned with charming children’s fondant doodles in carnival colors.
If the Sweetapolita recipes look daunting, don’t despair. Rosie has included lots of basic baking and decorating techniques, as well as an extensive section stocked with easy favorite frostings and simple cakes. Even beginning bakers will find bite-sized inspiration in the shape of Jumbo Frosted Animal Crackers. If you appreciate the art of baking, this beautiful, drool-worthy book will become a source of inspiration. – Kaz Weida
CASTRO’S CUBA – 50 YEARS LATER, THE ISLAND NATION IS STILL CASTRO COUNTRY
Castro’s Cuba: An American Journalist’s Inside Look at Cuba 1959-1969 by Lee Lockwood Taschen 2016, 360 pages, 10.3 x 13.6 x 1.4 inches (hardcover)
Right now, Cuba is red hot, hotter even than when Ry Cooder introduced most of the world to the Buena Vista Social Club almost 20 years ago. Thanks to the normalization of relations between the United States and the Caribbean island nation, American tourists will soon have a new place to drink alcohol, lie in the sun, and complain about their ceviche – regular flights between the U.S. and Cuba begin at the end of August.
Despite the diplomatic thaw, though, Cuba is still Castro country. Fidel, who just turned, 90, may be out of the picture, but his younger brother, Raul (age 85), remains firmly in control. Which makes the new Taschen reprint and expansion of photojournalist Lee Lockwood’s 1967 Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel so timely. The new 7 ½-pound, 360-page version – simplified to Castro’s Cuba — expands greatly on the original, supplementing the original 100 black-and-white photos with hundreds of color shots, a pair of essays by the late Castro documentarian Saul Landau, and, as usual with Taschen, high-production values.
Style, though, is not the book’s primary virtue. Its heart revolves around lengthy interviews Lockwood conducted with Fidel Castro in 1965, in which the revolutionary leader spelled out his vision for his country — from its agriculture to its education system to its arts. Castro considered the roles of his country’s institutions carefully, explaining at one point that what looked like political indoctrination to Americans was social education to the Cubans, who were, after all, being prepared for a new life in a new Communist society. “From an early age,” Castro tells Lockwood, “they must be discouraged from every egotistical feeling in the enjoyment of material things.” Lockwood captured examples of this social education with his camera, as seen in the numerous images of young people working in fields, but he was no propagandist for the Cuban leader who granted him so much exclusive access — Lockwood also got a priceless candid shot of two boys proudly posing with the latest album by The Beatles. – Ben Marks
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Tywen Kelly, Tech Evangelist
01/17/20 Picks and shownotes