The Kitchen Generation

There are thousands of cooking blogs -- each week, we bring you highlights from the best. This week, a shout out from a younger crowd.

All right, let's all agree that this generation is clearly food-obsessed. But what of the next? It follows that the generation to grow up in the age of offal and organics would find themselves at home behind the stove. Here's the blog to prove it: The Kitchen Generation is a gathering of five young cooks online whose culinary purview on life is eons beyond their actual age.

The group voice of The Kitchen Generation professes: "Living in this generation where we can connect to people half-way across the world with the click of a button, we knew we couldn't stop there." The set that subscribed to Gourmet in eighth grade and baked up a storm on the weekends has finally taken to the internet. Their own blogs 17 & Baking, Honey & Jam, sophisticated gourmet, Celiac Teen and Handle the Heat are the products of their passion -- earnest and smart, remarkably sophisticated, and full of stories that chart these youngsters' growth through food -- and The Kitchen Generation is where their voices converge. 

Their attitude towards food is refreshingly honest -- no gratuitous food porn here. Take, for instance, Honey & Jam's "scenes from the kitchen" post, where a charming series of photographs ends with her frank critique of the recipe. "Today I made these," states Hannah Queen. "Maybe it was just my American taste buds, but I didn't care for them at all. They were pretty tough." Enough said.

Across the board these young bloggers' aesthetic sense reveals a sophistication far beyond their years. The photos are genuinely exquisite and are sprinkled with lovely little recipes like 17 & Baking's delicately toasted Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons. Still, helpful tips like "Bringing Eggs to Room Temperature" and Celiac Teen's repertoire of gluten-free recipes lend a realistic, even pragmatic edge to the food blogosphere that it often sorely lacks -- no waxing poetic about unctuousness of last night's carbonara here. These blogs are truly digestible.