5 New Baking Books to Gift This Season: A Chat With Margaret Roach
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
If you are looking for a gift for the baker in your life, good news: you have lots of options this year. You also face a difficult decision: which one to buy??
I recently spoke with my friend Margaret Roach, the master gardener behind A Way to Garden, about five new baking books, all of which are fabulous, all of which provide both volume and metric measurements, all of which promise to fill your kitchen with deliciousness this winter and beyond.
You can listen to our conversation over on A Way to Garden, where you also can enter a five-book giveaway 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Margaret and I are each giving away a copy of the five books we discuss in our chat. Find the giveaway details below.
PS: Margaret Roach’s Garden is Magical
PPS: Margaret’s book, A Way to Garden, is a must for the gardener in your life.
Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies
In 100 Cookies, Sarah Kieffer writes: “In my childhood kitchen, cookies were a foundation, a stepping-stone to baking, a rite of passage.”
I love this sentiment, and as we potentially head into another quarantine, this book would be such a great one to have on hand, especially for budding bakers. There are metric measurements for each recipe, and as Margaret noted in our conversation, paring this book (or any of the others) with a digital scale would make a great gift.
My 9- and 10-year-olds have been weighing out all of the ingredients, and then we’ve been assembling the cookies together. We are loving the brown butter chocolate chip cookies and the brown sugar cookies, but I have no doubt every recipe in this book is a winner.
Sarah is an incredibly reliable recipe writer, and I love her precise instructions, in particular that she gives weights for the actual portioned cookie dough balls — so helpful!
If you are a fan of Sarah’s pan-banging cookies, there are 12 variations of that cookie in the book as well as an extensive troubleshooting section about that cookie alone.
Yossy Arefi’s Snacking Cakes
Yossy Arefi describes a snacking cake as “a single layer cake, probably square, covered with a simple icing — or nothing at all — and it must be truly easy to make. It’s a cake that makes an ideal breakfast to-go, wrapped in a paper napkin, and a perfect little sweet to have alongside coffee in the afternoon.”
I am loving Snacking Cakes for a number of reasons, but namely:
- The recipes are simple: truly, none requires much more than a bowl, a whisk, and a reasonably well-stocked pantry.
- As promised, some of the recipes come together before your oven reaches temperature.
- Because none of the cakes requires creaming butter and sugar (but instead calls for oil or melted butter), most of them come together in a single bowl.
I have made the powdered donut cake several times, and my children devour it every time. I love the lemon-olive oil cake, and I’m dying to make the cocoa yogurt cake, which I heard Yossy say in an interview is maybe her favorite recipe in the book.
Erin Jeanne McDowell’s The Book on Pie
In The Book on Pie, Erin Jeanne McDowell writes: “Pie has a miraculous ability to be simultaneously comforting and special occasion worthy, both homey and fancy. “
So true.
The Book on Pie not only celebrates pie but also demystifies the pie-baking process. Throughout the book, you very much get the sense that Erin is trying to remove the fear from pie baking, an intimidating process for many home cooks.
I love that you can feel Erin’s love of teaching in every page of this book. In the introduction, Erin says she “wanted to create a true handbook filled with all the things [she’s] learned.”
She succeeded.
I am finding her explanation of parbaking and blind baking — probably my least favorite thing to do in the kitchen — very helpful. She inspired me in fact to parbake the crusts for my Thanksgiving pies this year. (More on this soon!)
The pies in this book vary from classics such as apple, lemon-meringue, chess, and chocolate-pecan but there are so many fun and inspiring ideas, too: cherry clafoutis pie, cheesecake pie, Tres leches slab pie, to name a few. There are savory pies, too.
Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person
In Dessert Person, Claire Saffitz writes: “Rolling out a pie crust or cutting biscuits is my version of doing yoga. Dessert is in my DNA.”
I love this. If you have made any of the dessert recipes in Bon Appetit in recent years, you’ve likely made one of Claire’s. This rhubarb custard cake is one of my favorites, so I loved reading in the introduction that fruit desserts are her preference.
This book is filled with fruit desserts, and unlike the three previously mentioned books, this one is more of a general dessert cookbook. There are recipes for cakes, pies, cookies, bars, and more. There are savory baking recipes as well.
One thing that struck me: Claire believes there’s no such thing as a foolproof recipe, which more and more I am learning to be true — from ovens and pans to humidity and altitude, the many variables affecting how a recipe will turn out in someone else’s kitchen simply cannot be controlled.
Because of this Claire gives lots of indications — visual cues — throughout the recipes to help you along. For instance, she’ll never just say: “bake a cake until a tester comes out clean.” She’ll tell you how it will look, how it will feel, and how it will smell. How nice?
I have yet to bake anything, but these three recipes are calling my name:
- Blood Orange and Olive Oil Upside-Down Cake
- Goat Cheese Cake with Honey and Figs
- Minty Lime Bars
Melissa Weller’s A Good Bake
In A Good Bake, Melissa Weller writes about an aha moment she had upon thinking about the cookbooks she learned from early on in her career: “If those recipes had just given a little hint about this or that, a little more detail here or there, my baked goods would have turned out looking like those in the pictures that inspired me to want to make them to begin with. I knew then that I wanted to write a cookbook.”
A Good Bake is a compilation of 15 years of training, working, and note-taking — it’s the book Melissa Weller wishes she had when she was starting out.
Melissa trained at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and worked at Babbo, Jim Lahey’s restaurants, Thomas Keller’s restaurants, and Roberta’s. But before she was a baker, she was a chemical engineer.
If you are someone who appreciates a scientific approach to baking, you will love this book. In the introduction, Melissa writes: “Asking questions — lots of them — is integral to being an engineer: a chemical engineer or an engineer of dough.” Melissa attributes her love of science and baking as well as her curiosity for shaping her career in pastry and bread.
Like Dessert Person, A Good Bake is an overall dessert cookbook, with recipes for breads, pastries, pies, tarts, cakes, quick breads, cookies, bars, and more.
If you want to learn how to make laminated pastry, from croissants to kouign amann, this is a great resource. If you want to learn how to make flaky buttermilk biscuits or tender, buttery pie dough, Melissa will show you how. If you want to learn how to build a sourdough starter from scratch, there’s a tutorial for that, too.
I have yet to bake anything, but these three recipes are calling my name:
- Black Sesame Kouign Amann
- Cinnamon Swirl Sour Cream Bundt Cake
- Flourless Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
To Enter the Giveaway
A Way to Garden and I are each giving away five cookbooks. To enter, answer this question in the comment box at the bottom of the page (then copy and paste it into the comment box over at Margaret’s website):
Tell us what your favorite new cookbook is and what recipe you are loving from it.
We’ll each select 5 winners on December 13th and notify you then. UPDATE: The Giveaway is closed. The winners — Thao, Jenn S., Xenia, Urszula, and Samota — have been emailed.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
511 Comments on “5 New Baking Books to Gift This Season: A Chat With Margaret Roach”
I have also fallen for Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden, and my current favorite recipe is the swiss chard & leek crostata – with a nutty dough – so good!
Favorite cookbook: Plenty by Ottolenghi. Favorite recipe in that book: Eggplant with buttermilk sauce!
My new favorite cookbook is Eating Out Loud: Bold Middle Eastern Flavors for All Day, Every Day and I am loving her pistachio cardamom coffeecake!
I am enjoying The New Southern Garden Cookbook by Sheri Castle. Her recipe for Chicken and White Bean Chili is delicious and just what warms me up in this cooler weather.
It’s not a new cookbook but I just finally got around to it: “New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies” by Najmieh Batmanglij. I’m really enjoying the chicken fesenjan recipe along with the variations of basmati rice. During cold weather, this sweet tangy dish hits the spot with ground walnuts, pomegranate molasses and butternut squash. I also love the baked saffron yogurt rice with spinach. Unbelievably good!
It’s not a new cookbook, but I love love love Sarah Kieffer’s The Vanilla Bean Baking Book – her coffee blondies are to die for!
Cook with me by alex guarnaschelli! The pot roast is delish!
My recent baking has come from the virtual King Arthur Baking Company classes. I’ve made laminated dough for apple-cheese danish, eclairs and cream puffs.
But for reliable recipes I use steadily, my go-to is The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf and the bakery staff (2009). The chapter on cookies never fails.
Hello‼️ My favorite new cookbook is “The Joys of Baking: Recipes & Stories for a Sweet Life,” by Samantha Seneviratne. & I have been enjoying the Saffron & Chocolate Tea Cake [may I add another one, please? The Banana Date Bread with Lime.] Thank you for this contest‼️What wonderful books you’ve chosen as prizes‼️
My current favorite cookbook is Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat – I’ve had it for a few years but it is such a treasure trove of information that I love flipping through it to rediscover tips, insights and recipes! Samin’s buttermilk roast chicken and Brussels sprouts and winter squash agrodolce were a hit at our thanksgiving for two this year.
It’s so hard to choose just one book, but I constantly go back to A Common Table by Cynthia Chen McTiernan (Two Red Bowls blog). I love the entire chapter on breakfast – the buttermilk mochi pancakes, milk bread, and gochujang eggs in purgatory.
My favorite new to mecookbook is Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich and I love the Buckwheat Sables.
My favorite new cookbook is Bread, Toast, Crumbs – no joke! I’ve made several recipes already and loved them all. However, my favorite thus far is the Roasted Garlic Bread – absolutely delicious! My whole family loved it! This cookbook is clever and a true winner.
Banana pudding, from The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook.
Excellent does not necessarily mean complicated.
Thank you for a great site!
Bread Toast Crumbs is my fav and anything bread related in that cookbook is a winner.
The Good Book of Southern Baking. The cornbread is outstanding.
My favorite Cook Book is Shuk and I just made Cabbage Cake Stuffed with Beef, Rice, Nuts, and Raisins. It was to die for. I also love Orange and Olive Salad with Harissa Vinaigrette and will even eat it for breakfast YUM.
As a graduate of the University of B.C.,my favourite, new to me cookbook is called, “Treats to Remember”. It is a compilation of recipes by the UBC bake shop. I have very fond memories of stuffing my mouth full of their famous Cinnamon bun most days as I trudged from one part of the campus to the other in the bucketing rain.
Week, gee. Here’s what I posted at Margaret’s site – ☺️ No new cookbooks in my collection – I have too many that have not all proven to be that inspiring despite beautiful illustrations and formatting. Ha! But I do particularly like Food52 Genius Recipes. So here’s my comment from the podcast page
Ali has been on my radar since hearing your 2017 podcast about her then newly published book Bread, Toast, Crumbs – but she’s really been my constant cooking companion for these last strange months. Her simple red enchilada sauce and variations on enchiladas have been a go-to for me and my husband. And they’ve made great use of the bumper tomato crop we enjoyed this year (thank god for the small mercies our gardens have given us in 2020). Both you and Ali have an uncanny knack for making a listener/reader feel as though they are hanging with a close friend. Thank you!
Mosquito Supper Club is my new favorite cookbook – loved the Shrimp Poboy recipe. I’m an avid cookbook collector so it’s hard to choose!
Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden! Beet Slaw with Pistachios and raisins is THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD.
Made these this morning to drop off at an elderly neighbor’s. Magnificent! I love the richness of brown sugar — and these cookies are great. Thanks for sharing!
I love baking and my favorites are sourdough bread, quick breads and anything chocolate. I would love any of these books. Thanks so much.
In Bibi’s Kitchen, love the fir fir!
Half Baked Harvest – Avocado Breakfast Tacos!
Homemade Strufoli from the family cookbook my sister assembled from all of our extended Italian family. Strufoli is a holiday favorite and I’m trying to perfect it!
What an amazing collection of new cookbooks!!! Salt, Fat, Acid , Heat is not new, but I’m still learning so much from it. It has really changed the way I think about cooking. I would love to be able to perfect my technique in two classic dishes: cacio e pepe and Persian rice/Tahdig. Thank you for your blog…and Bread, Toast, Crumbs ❤️ I’ve converted my mom as well. Happy Holidays!
I just checked out Ina Gartens new cookbook from the library on Wednesday. I haven’t had a chance to try anything yet. But actually, I use your cookbook all the time. The pull apart rolls with a little bit of fresh rosemary was perfect for Thanksgiving. I will definitely be making them again.
Over quarantine, I purchased Pastry Love by Joanne Chang. It is so hard to pick one favorite recipe from this cookbook. But I would have to say my two favotite recipes have been her English Toffee and Peppermint Kisses. I have never been able to successfully make toffee. With her great instructions, I have been able to make toffee and caramel. Again caramelizing sugar has always been a mystery to me. The Peppermint Kisses (meringue kisses without adding the peppermint) are just so cute. I have used them to decorate the tops of cakes and to have as snacks. Love your blog!
Naz Deravian’s “Bottom of the Pot” is my favorite new cookbook. She is a marvelous writer and cook. Currently enjoying herYogurt Beet Dip!