Food52 Baking: 60 Sensational Treats You Can Pull Off in a Snap (Food52 Works) - Hardcover

Editors Of Food52

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607748010 ISBN 13: 9781607748014

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2015

Synopsis

A stunning collection of hassle-free recipes for baking cakes, cookies, tarts, puddings, muffins, bread, and more, from the editors behind the leading food website Food52.

Whether it's the chocolate cake at every childhood birthday, blondies waiting for you after school, or hot dinner rolls smeared with butter at Thanksgiving dinner, homemade baked goods hold a place in many of our best memories. And that's why baking shouldn't be reserved for special occasions.

With this book, curated by the editors of Food52, you can have homemade treats far superior to the store-bought variety, even when it feels like you're too busy to turn on the oven. From Brown Butter Cupcake Brownies to "Cuppa Cuppa Sticka" Peach and Blueberry Cobbler, these sixty reliable, easy-to-execute recipes won't have you hunting down special equipment and hard-to-find ingredients or leave you with a kitchen covered in flour and a skink piled high with bowls. They're not ordinary or ho-hum, either: ingredients you've baked with before (and some you haven't - like black sesame, coconut oil, and lavender) come together to create new favorites like Baked Cardamom French Toast and Olive Oil and Sesame Crackers. Filled with generations’ worth of kitchen wisdom, beautiful photography, and tips you'll return to, Baking is the new go-to collection for anyone who wants to whip up something sweet every day.

About this title

About the Author

The home and kitchen destination website Food52 was founded in 2009 by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, two authors, editors, and opinionated home cooks who formerly worked for the New York Times. Since then, Food52 has created a suite of cookbooks, a cooking and home shop, a podcast, and a cooking hotline—and has won many a James Beard and IACP award doing it.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword

One of us considers herself a baker; the other does not. Yet we both bake frequently at home. Amanda has had more formal training (the idea of rolling out pie dough or making a yeast bread doesn’t give her the shakes), but Merrill also grew up enjoying homemade baked goods. So while only one of us could assemble a croquembouche without breaking a sweat, we both believe in a more uncommitted style of day-to-day baking.

When we talk about “uncommitted baking” (that was actually the first title for this book, which went over like rain at a beach party), we mean the kind of baking you can do on a weeknight, once the dinner dishes are cleared away and the kids are asleep—without having to stay up so late that you’re bleary-eyed the next day. It’s the kind of baking you can take on, like Amanda does, as a fun activity with her eight-year-old twins; each weekend, they make a simple cake to have around the house for packed lunches and after-dinner dessert during the week ahead.

We’re talking about one-bowl cakes, cookies that don’t require dipping or finishing, slumps, crisps, quick breads, galettes, puddings, and muffins. This is the sort of baking your grandmother did—unpretentious and comforting. Each recipe comes with tips and tricks learned from years of practice, in the voice of one home baker speaking to another. None of these recipes will keep you in the kitchen for hours just for the sake of it, and each produces consistently delicious results. We wanted to create a book that would be your right hand whenever a baked good beckoned.

The recipes come from our readers, contributors, and team members. Many are treasured family recipes that have never appeared on the site; others are from Food52 and have become legends in our office. Our former editor Marian Bull introduced us to her family’s beloved schlumpf, an even more relaxed version of a crumble; with a name like schlumpf how could it not make it into this book? There are light-as-air berry scones from longtime Food52er mrslarkin, whose professional nickname is The Scone Lady. And we included Merrill’s mother’s recipe for cream cheese cookies, which have earned a bit of a cult following over the years among those addicted to their crisp, caramelized edges and chewy, slightly tangy centers.

All of these memorable recipes were expertly herded and curated by our editor Sarah Jampel. Sarah is like a whirling dervish, editing, styling, and coordinating—she’d complete a chapter or two before we finished our morning coffee. She left no stone unturned, and even pilfered many of her mom’s own baking pans for this book’s photo shoots. Under her careful direction, a baking book took shape that we hope will be an indispensable resource for bakers and nonbakers alike.

—Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs

About this edition

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1607748010
• ISBN 13: 9781607748014
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 172