Saveur magazine announces winners of Best Food Blogs

An original brownie recipe inspired by Dolce & Gabbana, a blog devoted to Texas eats, and a young, blue-eyed baker whose pithy one-liners are as arresting as photos of her baked goods, are among the winners of
Saveur's
Best Food Blogs competition.

The US-based food magazine announced the winners Tuesday, crowning the best in 17 categories that include baking, desserts, cooking, photography, restaurant reviews and special interest blogs.

As food bloggers, they are an army of cyber scribes who toil in relative anonymity unless they're anointed by food authorities like Saveur. Their keyboards are often sticky from battered or buttered fingertips. At restaurants, they forbid fellow guests from tucking into their meals until a round of photos have been shot at various angles, and their kitchens are in perpetual disarray from recipe experimentations.

Though only in its second year, the competition has quickly attracted the attention of food bloggers, many of whom harbor the secret hope that that their blog will help them become the next Food Network star, or attract the attention of a cookbook publisher - a common path for food personalities today.

This year, readers nominated 45,000 food blogs which were then whittled down to just six finalists in each category. Voters determined the winners.

For her blog Joy the Baker, Joy Wilson of Los Angeles was voted Best Baking and Dessert Blog, a site that has already been singled out by The Times in London, and Forbes magazine.

Recipes for desserts like Hot Chocolate Popovers and Gluten-free Toasted Coconut Waffles with Maple Cream are paired with lifestyle and food observations by a razor-sharp-witted 20-something Angeleno "hurtling towards" her 30s.

From posts about her bed-head relationship with her local produce guy at Whole Foods to posts on how to woo a man through his stomach, Wilson has amassed an impressive legion of fans: one post garnered 429 comments.

Cenk Sonmezsoy's Brownies with Hazelnut Butter and Chocolate Lace commissioned by Italian designers Dolce & Gabbana for their online magazine Swide was also voted Best Original Baking and Desserts Recipe, for its flavor and aesthetic appeal: a lacy, chocolate embellishment for a dense rich brownie cake. His blog, Café Fernando, is based out of Istanbul, Turkey.

Other award winners include Lisa Fain for Homesick Texan, Katie Quinn Davies of Australia for her blog What Katie Ate, and John Mitzewich for his food vlog, Food Wishes.

Producers have often turned to food bloggers as an inexhaustible talent pool for TV hosts. In the US, for example, the winner of The Next Food Network Star Aarti Sequeira, started out as a food blogger with her blog Aarti Paarti which is also the name of her TV show, Aarti Party.

The 2009 movie Julie & Julia is also based on a food blogger's year-long experiment cooking recipes from Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

For more on Saveur's awards, visit http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/2011-SAVEUR-Best-Food-Blog-Awards-Winners.