Cara Eisenpress

Cara Eisenpress is the co-founder of Big Girls, Small Kitchen and the co-author of In the Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World. She and Phoebe Lapine are experts on cooking in small urban kitchens, even when time and money are limited.

Cara grew up in Riverdale, NY, in a house where homemade pizza was a regular on the rotation and “cake mix” was a never-uttered phrase. From a very young age, she flipped pancakes and scrambled eggs standing propped up on a chair by the stove. As the years wore on, she and her little sister usurped cooking duties from their mom, and she remembers high school as a succession of baked goods, from classic and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to madeleines. In college at Harvard, Cara landed a catering job, and she can mark her last two years there not only in baked goods but also in finger food.

After graduating, Cara lived in a tiny East Village walk-up with two roommates. She set up shop in the kitchen, and cooked lentil soup for the roommates and coconut cakes for friends who came to visit.

In 2008, Cara moved to Brooklyn, first Park Slope and now Prospect Heights. When she’s not cooking, Cara can be found on her road bike, in Prospect Park, immersed in a novel, or traveling, most recently to London, Morocco, and Long Island, and soon to Greece, Arkansas, and South America. Her favorite foods are vanilla cake with chocolate icing, grilled cheese sandwiches, pasta with too much grated Parmesan, cherry tomatoes, pad see ew, slow-cooked pork butt, and French fries. Her favorite guilty pleasure is over-buttered toast, and she likes to listen to Planet Money's brilliant podcasts while she cooks.