Pure Vanilla: A Cook’s Book Review

By: Michelle Sczpanski

Every day that I step into Graham Dining Hall, I am faced with the decision that has haunted mankind since the advent of the ice cream machine: chocolate or vanilla? It is a debate that some feel as strongly about as they do about their politics. Even though I’m all for looking at both sides, this is one issue where I rarely waver. I undoubtedly am a vanilla girl. Some may discount it as dull and unoriginal, but I will always defend its merits to the death.

Being the staunch vanilla advocate that I am, I could not help but squeal with excitement when I discovered that Shauna Sever, one of my biggest foodie crushes, had released her second cookbook, Pure Vanilla, earlier this week.

As its name suggests, Pure Vanilla is comprised of a wide array of recipes; from classics like “ultimate vanilla cupcakes” to “vanilla marscapone pavlova”, Pure Vanilla had me swooning over all its 150 pages. The sheer variety of recipes was one of the things that impressed me the most. Sever creates recipes that go beyond anything I would have ever thought possible, incorporating vanilla in ways that make it anything but the dull flavor it so often gets brushed aside as.