The recipe? Buy a cookbook. Follow a recipe. Take a picture. Blog about it. Repeat.

That's the latest trend in food blogging identified by the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes in a piece today that talks about several people who have done just that. It notes that the most famous case was Julie Powell who cooked from Julia Child's epic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Of course, that blog subsequently became a book and is now slated to be a movie

Today, bloggers are cooking everything from Thomas Keller masterpieces to simple baked bread. Riding the coattails of a popular cookbook can certainly be a good way to generate traffic, at least for the short term. In Powell's case, she turned it into a long-term success, but others will have to chart their own paths.

Obviously, this delivers a clear benefit to the cookbook authors themselves, as it prolongs the publicity for a project. Of course, if the recipes turn out disastrously, that may not be beneficial, but in most cases it seems these blogs are started by fans who are far less likely than others to be truly critical of the cookbook.

Certainly a notable phenomenon and one to watch to see how it stands the test of time.