Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking


Michael Ruhlman - 2009
    Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn’t it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That’s the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want—chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture. Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin. Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2—or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor. Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen—water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs—work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes. As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is—and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

Wintersweet: Seasonal Desserts to Warm the Home


Tammy Donroe Inman - 2013
    Wintersweet encourages readers to make use of fresh, local ingredients for warming seasonal desserts. While summer farmers' markets are always overflowing with ripe produce, there's plenty to be had from November to March: squashes and pumpkins, parsnips and carrots, apples, pears, citrus of all types, and feel-good ingredients like nuts, cheese, and chocolate.The fresh and rustic recipes in Wintersweet push the envelope of traditional winter desserts like pumpkin or apple pies with such delicacies as Pear Cranberry Clafouti, Spicy Prune Cake with Penuche Frosting, Tangelo Sorbet, and Goat Cheese Cake with Dried Cherry Compote. Each chapter is devoted to different ingredients, ranging from Persimmons, Pomegranates, and Cranberries to Citrus, Cheese, and Dried Fruits, allowing readers to experiment with new and exciting ingredients for complex and delicious flavors. They taste even better when they can be found near your own backyard; Donroe provides resources for finding the best local farmers' markets and agricultural centers near you. Perfect for holiday gatherings or to warm the belly on a cold night, Wintersweet is the perfect dessert companion to make the year's coldest season a bit more festive.

The Perfect Pie: A Handbook for Pie Lovers


Dennis Weaver - 2014
    See tips, techniques and recipes galore to help you make the perfect pie. Have you always had trouble making a perfect crust? Find advice from the experts right here! Never make an "ok" pie crust ever again. You'll see recipes for fruit pies, cream and custard pies, and other pies such as pink lemonade pie and strawberry rhubarb pie. Get over 30 pages of nothing but helpful tips, techniques and recipes to make the perfect pie.

The Violet Bakery Cookbook


Claire Ptak - 2015
    The baking is done with simple ingredients including wholegrain flours, less refined sugars and the natural sweetness and muted colours of seasonal fruits. Everything is made in an open kitchen for people to see. Famed for its exquisite baked goods, Violet has become a destination.Owner Claire Ptak uses her Californian sensibility to devise recipes that are both nourishing and indulgent. With real thought about taste and using the purest ingredients, she has created the most flavoursome iterations of classic cakes, as well as new treats for modern palates. Over 100 recipes include nourishing breakfasts, midday snacks,teatime treats, puddings to share, pantry preserves, and stylish celebration cakes. For example:Morning – Buckwheat Granola or Cinnamon BunsMidday – Squash, Brown Butter and Sage Quiche or Mozzarella, Rosemary and New Potato TartsTeatime – Butterscotch Blondie or Ginger Molasses CakeDesserts – Cherry Cobbler or Fig Leaf Ice-cream Party Party – Loganberry-vanilla Birthday Cake or Coconut-cream Trifle CakeThis book is about making baking worth it: simple to cook and satisfying to eat.

Simple Sourdough: Make Your Own Starter Without Store-Bought Yeast and Bake the Best Bread in the World With This Simplest of Recipes for Making Sourdough


Mark Shepard - 2005
    And it's made from only wheat, water, and salt! You'll love this tasty, wholesome, easy-to-make bread from a tradition thousands of years old. In fact, it may spoil you for all other bread! Topics in this book include "The Starter," "The Ingredients," "The Sponge," "The Two Things You Must Always Remember," "The Dough," "The Rising," "The Baking," and "Amazing Facts."

Dessert for Two: Small-Batch Sweets for One, Two, or a Few


Christina Lane - 2015
    Finding the willpower to resist extra slices of cake can be difficult; the battle between leftover cookies and a healthy breakfast is over before it started. Until now. Dessert for Two takes well-loved desserts and scales them down to make only two servings. Cakes are baked in small pans and ramekins. Pies are baked in small pie pans or muffin cups. Cookie recipes are scaled down to make 1 dozen or fewer. Your favorite bars: brownies, blondes, and marshmallow cereal treats are baked in a bread loaf pan - which happily serves two when cut down the middle. Newly married couples (and empty-nesters) will be particularly enthralled with this miniature dessert guide. To everyone who lives alone: have your own personal-sized cake and eat it, too.

Miette: Recipes from San Francisco's Most Charming Pastry Shop


Meg Ray - 2011
    Miette's pretty Parisian aesthetic enchants visitors with tables piled high with beribboned bags of gingersnaps, homemade marshmallows, fleur de sel caramels, and rainbows of gumballs. This cookbook brings the enchantment home, sharing 100 secret formulas for favorite Miette treats from chef and owner Meg Ray. More than 75 gorgeous color photos capture the unique beauty of Miette desserts and shops. Scalloped edges on the book block enhance the preciousness of this fetching package. Just like the adorable cakes, cookies, clairs and tarts for sale in Miette's case, this book is irresistible!

Bouchon Bakery


Thomas Keller - 2012
    The tastes of childhood have always been a touchstone for Thomas Keller, and in this dazzling amalgam of American and French baked goods, you'll find recipes for the beloved TKOs and Oh Ohs (Keller's takes on Oreos and Hostess's Ho Hos) and all the French classics he fell in love with as a young chef apprenticing in Paris: the baguettes, the macarons, the mille-feuilles, the "tartes aux fruits." Co-author Sebastien Rouxel, executive pastry chef for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, has spent years refining techniques through trial and error, and every page offers a new lesson: a trick that assures uniformity, a subtlety that makes for a professional finish, a flash of brilliance that heightens flavor and enhances texture. The deft twists, perfectly written recipes, and dazzling photographs make perfection inevitable.

Sally's Candy Addiction: Tasty Truffles, Fudges Treats for Your Sweet-Tooth Fix


Sally McKenney - 2015
    If you're a candy and sweets lover, then look no further. Complete with over 75 brand new recipes, indulge in truffles, fudge, caramels, and marshmallows. And if you like Oreos, Reese's, Snickers, or other candy bar favorites, Sally will show you the best ways to incorporate these into cookies, cupcakes, bars, and more.Complete with easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes, Sally's signature photography for every recipe, and snippets from Sally's own kitchen experiences, Sally's Candy Addiction has a recipe for every candy lover in your life.

Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky: A Modern Baker's Guide to Old-Fashioned Desserts


Karlynn Johnston - 2016
    In her anticipated first cookbook, Karlynn covers everything you need to know about being a modern-day old-fashioned baker: from setting up your kitchen and stocking your pantry, to making pie dough and releasing a Bundt cake from its pan.Once you've got the basics covered, you'll be ready to bake time-honored desserts like Saskatoon Berry Pie, Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, and No-Bowl Chocolate Vinegar Cake. Then, jazz things up with these recipes' modern twists: White Chocolate Saskatoon Galette, Chocolate Buttercream-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Root Beer Float Cupcakes. And, of course, there's the recipe that started it all: the almost-lost Prairie favorite, Flapper Pie. When Karlynn first posted this recipe on her blog, it went viral, drawing enthusiastic and sentimental responses from readers everywhere who wanted to reminisce about their childhood and family food memories.An approachable book for every skill level, Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky covers all the cherished bake goods from Karlynn and her family. Featuring more than 120 recipes from cakes to candies, doughnuts to dainties, and pies to puddings, with the same gorgeous photography that has made The Kitchen Magpie a go-to blog for passionate home bakers, this book is a delicious demonstration of the comfort and closeness that baking can bring. Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky is destined to become a classic to be shared through the generations.

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals


Jamie Oliver - 2008
    What I've tried to do in this book is pick a whole load of meals that we all love to eat and break them down to make them as simple as possible. There are plenty of clear instructions and step-by-step pictures, so whether you're an accomplished cook or a complete beginner, you'll be able to enjoy cooking and achieve great results in the kitchen.This book is inspired by all the people I've met who thought they could never and would never learn how to cook. I believe that good home cooking is one of the most essential, fundamental skills that every single person on this planet should have in order to look after themselves, their families, and their friends. This food revolution is all about people learning how to make a recipe, then teaching that recipe to their friends and family . . . if enough people do this, pretty soon everyone will be cooking. So cook something today, then PASS IT ON!

Kitchen Confidence: Essential Recipes and Tips That Will Help You Cook Anything


Kelsey Nixon - 2014
    Her recipes, which are broken down into simple steps, teach readers how to cook, highlighting key tools and basic techniques everyone should know. And yet her flavors are anything but basic; Kelsey gives everyone the confidence to start with the 2.0 version of a recipe instead of the boring standards. For example, she makes her house pilaf with quinoa instead of rice, and her addictive fruit salad is a savory first course instead of a lackluster dessert.      With 100 recipes and 60 color photographs, Kitchen Confidence brings home all of the energy and spirit of the Cooking Channel show of the same name, making it an excellent handbook for newlyweds, recent college graduates, and those discovering their kitchens for the first time.

The Moosewood Cookbook: Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant, Ithaca, New York


Mollie Katzen - 1977
    But times have changed, and knowledge about the foods we eat and their nutritional value has increased. So, after many inquiries and requests, the author has revised many of her recipes to be lighter and healthier. Illustrated.

Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker


Dawn J. Ranck - 2000
    Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good"Slow cookers are having a comeback. With good reason. They are friends on a day of running errands. They allow easy entertaining with no last-minute preparation. They are miracles for potluck meals, whether in

Food52 Genius Desserts: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake


Kristen Miglore - 2018
    IACP AWARD WINNER - Featured as one of the best and most anticipated fall cookbooks by the New York Times, Eater, Epicurious, The Kitchn, Kitchen Arts & Letters, Delish, Mercury News, Sweet Paul, and PopSugar.Drawing from her James Beard Award-nominated Genius Recipes column and powered by the cooking wisdom and generosity of the Food52 community, creative director Kristen Miglore set out to unearth the most game-changing dessert recipes from beloved cookbook authors, chefs, and bakers--and collect them all in one indispensable guide.This led her to iconic desserts spanning the last century: Maida Heatter's East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, Fran�ois Payard's Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies, and Nancy Silverton's Butterscotch Budino. But it also turned up little-known gems: a comforting Peach Cobbler with Hot Sugar Crust from Renee Erickson and an imaginative Parsnip Cake with Blood Orange Buttercream from Lucky Peach, along with genius tips, riffs, and mini-recipes, and the lively stories behind each one.The genius of this collection is that Kristen has scouted out and rigorously tested recipes from the most trusted dessert experts, finding over 100 of their standouts. Each recipe shines in a different way and teaches you something new, whether it's how to use unconventional ingredients (like Sunset's whole orange cake), how to make the most of brilliant methods (roasted sugar from Stella Parks), or how to embrace stunning simplicity (Dorie Greenspan's three-ingredient cookies). With photographer James Ransom's riveting images throughout, Genius Desserts is destined to become every baker's go-to reference for the very best desserts from the smartest teachers of our time--for all the dinner parties, potlucks, bake sales, and late-night snacks in between.