View full size“Cutie Pies” by Dani Cone.
The best baking cookbooks for holiday giving, for anyone who’s been naughty or nice
A baking cookbook is a gift for everyone. The recipient gets a new collection of recipes, photos and essays to fuel her fire, and then her social circle gets to reap the rewards of the resulting baking binges. That’s why the gift-giver should pick a cookbook with care. If there’s a baker on your Christmas list, here are some of our favorite baking books from the past year, suitable for anyone who’s been naughty or nice (or both).
Recipes included with this story: Parmesan Cheese Bites; Butter Dough, Personalized in Chocolate; Vermonter Sponge Candy; Peanut Butter and Banana Cupcakes; Garlic, Potato and Chive Cutie Pies.
Nice
Nothing’s nicer than pie. Though it’s trendy now, the true joy of stalwart pie is that it transcends trends. Pie will always be relevant. But if you buy one cookbook about mini-pies this year (seriously, there are several), it should be Dani Cone’s “Cutie Pies: 40 Sweet, Savory, and Adorable Recipes” (Andrews McMeel, $16.99, 160 pages). Cone, proprietor of Seattle’s wildly popular High 5 Pie, assembled a mix-and-match assortment of crust, filling and shape options, so you can customize big pies, hand pies, pies in jars and itty-bitty pies to your heart’s content, with Cone’s practical tips and suggestions to guide you along. Cone’s sincere passion for pie is palpable on every page, an asset for any successful cookbook, but a must for a pie cookbook.
View full size“Cake Ladies” by Jodi Rhoden.Jodi Rhoden blogs and runs a cake shop in Asheville, North Carolina, but (refreshingly) that’s not what her first book is about. “Cake Ladies: Celebrating a Southern Tradition” (Lark Crafts, $19.95, 144 pages) is a portrait of today’s multiethnic South and the strong, hard-working women who connect with their communities through baking and sharing cake. “Almost every town in the South, large or small, has its cake lady,” Rhoden writes. “Cake lady cakes are special.”
Rhoden’s profiles of cake ladies young and old are not only rich in history, but alive with evolution. Recipes range from touchstones of Southern baking, such as caramel cake, to highly regional specialties (the Carolina Low Country’s Gullah Dirty Cake marries chocolate with lard) to contemporary spins like vegan red velvet cupcakes.
View full size“Inside the Jewish Bakery” by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg.“Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories From the Golden Age of Jewish Baking” (Camino Books, $24.95, 344 pages) likewise weaves threads of recipes into a larger tapestry of history and heritage. As traditional Jewish delis and family-run Jewish bakeries join the endangered species list, lifelong professional bakers and New York natives Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg joined forces to compile recipes and their origins so that we may keep them alive in our kitchens, even as they disappear from commercial shops.
Bialys, bagels, challah, rye loaves and rugelach — they’re all here, bolstered with memories and histories evoking a time when a visit the neighborhood bakery was more than just a latte run. Unlike most other hyped-up baking books of late, “Inside the Jewish Bakery” is down-to-earth and unassuming visually; the treasures it houses are its words and sincerity, the best kind of all treats.
View full size“Best Bake Sale Cookbook” by Gretchen Holt-Witt.“The Cookies for Kids’ Cancer Best Bake Sale Cookbook” (Wiley, $19.99, 176 pages) is perfect for bakers in your life who just want a manageable selection of sweet recipes. It’s compact, cheerful and charitable. Besides the contemporary recipes for cookies, cupcakes, scones and crunchy snacks, it’s packed with concise tips for putting together a smashing, smoothly run bake sale.
Author Gretchen Holt-Witt, founder of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, has been holding bake sales since her son was diagnosed at age 2 with cancer, and she peppers the book with moving and inspiring stories. All of Holt-Witt’s royalties from the book go toward pediatric cancer research.
View full size“CakeSpy” by Jessie Oleson.Naughty
She fries cupcakes speared on sticks, makes instant pudding with melted ice cream, and sandwiches scoops of ice cream between Pop-Tarts. In other words, moderation is not part of Jessie Oleson’s kitchen vocabulary. Even those who shudder at the thought of artificial colors and boxed cake mix will find inspiration in author-illustrator Oleson’s “CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life” (Sasquatch, $22.95, 160 pages). It’s so cheerfully over-the-top you can’t help but hop on board Oleson’s wild rainbow ride, populated with whimsical spot illustrations of unicorns and smiling cupcakes (full disclosure: her Rainbow Cookies are an adaptation of a recipe from my blog). If you are 8 years old, or stoned, this book is made for you.
Oleson’s not a trained chef, but her almost surreal creativity keeps everything from getting tooth-achingly twee, adding a teensy twist of subversion to the works. It’s a mindset you can apply to much more than dessert: If “CakeSpy” can bake cupcakes stuffed with mini cupcakes, why can’t I top braised kale with kale chips? Why not, indeed!
View full size“Baking Style” by Lisa Yockelson.Some of the photos and recipes in Lisa Yockelson’s “Baking Style: Art, Craft, Recipes” (Wiley, $45, 528 pages) may take your breath away, but the book’s art direction will knock the wind out of you. It’s a bombastic explosion of fuchsia and curlicues, the rococo likes of which echo the author’s fondness for elaboration.
This is a book for an advanced baker who loves accessories, both in the kitchen and on the table. IACP award winner Yockelson, author of “Baking by Flavor,” calls “Baking Style” “my personal storybook, a how-to scrapbook.” A memory-drenched essay precedes each recipe, and the book’s heft allows Yockelson the space to articulate her love for each stage of baking, “the visual experience, the lure of the hands-on, the literary expression of it all.” Organized not by recipe type but by Yockelson’s whim, it’s unlike any baking book I’ve seen before, so dizzyingly rich it’s best consumed in small, well-spaced bites.
View full size“Sugarbaby” by Gesine Bullock-Prado.Gesine Bullock-Prado writes, “This is a book about cooking with sugar, not baking with sugar.” Her book “Sugar Baby: Confections, Candies, Cakes and Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking With Sugar” (Stewart, Tabori Chang, $29.95, 252 pages) may not be the first American book about cooking with sugar, but it’s the cheekiest.
Bullock-Prado previously authored “My Life From Scratch,” about ditching Hollywood in order to start a confectionery business in pastoral Vermont; she’s also Sandra Bullock’s sister. If, like me, you could care less about Hollywood back stories, you can feel confident that nary a whiff of Tinsel Town infects the good spirits of “Sugar Baby.” Bullock-Prado’s knowledge is rock-candy solid, but her delivery is bloggy-familiar. (“Every good recipe needs to be manhandled.”) She divides the chapters by doneness of sugar syrup (soft-ball, hard-ball, soft-crack, etc.), and concludes with examples of how to put buttercream, fondant, caramel and spun sugar together. The result feels almost as much a craft how-to as a cookbook, but in just the right way.
Sara Bir lives in Portland. You can read more of her work at sarabir.com.
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