Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics


Ina Garten - 2008
    Ina Garten’ s bestselling cookbooks have con-sistently provided accessible, subtly sophisticated recipes ranging from French classics made easy to delicious, simple home cooking. In Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Ina truly breaks down her ideas on flavor, examining the ingredients and techniques that are the foundation of her easy, refined style. Here Ina covers the essentials, from ten ways to boost the flavors of your ingredients to ten things not to serve at a party, as well as professional tips that make successful baking, cooking, and entertaining a breeze. The recipes—crowd-pleasers like Lobster Corn Chowder, Tuscan Lemon Chicken, and Easy Sticky Buns—demonstrate Ina’s talent for transforming fresh, easy-to-find ingredients into elegant meals you can make without stress. For longtime fans, Ina delivers new insights into her simple techniques; for newcomers she provides a thorough master class on the basics of Barefoot Contessa cooking plus a Q&A section with answers to the questions people ask her all the time. With full-color photographs and invaluable cooking tips, Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is an essential addition to the cherished library of Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets


Carole Walter - 2003
    From traditional favorites like Snickerdoodles, Oatmeal Raisin, and Favorite Lemon Squares to future stars of the cookie jar like the trail mix–inspired Teton Trailers and chewy, chocolaty Midnight Macaroons, Great Cookies provides something to satisfy every taste and every occasion. There’s even a section devoted to the quintessential American cookie—chocolate chip. With nuts or without? White chocolate or milk? Chocolate dough? Oatmeal in the dough? Carole provides a dozen chocolate chip recipes in all, plus definitive research on a crucial issue: “Not All Chocolate Chips Are Created Equal.” Drop cookies. Bar cookies. Piped, pressed, and rolled. Great Cookies covers every conceivable method for baking these tasty confections. In the more than thirty years that she has studied and taught baking, Carole has cataloged a wealth of helpful tips and troubleshooting hints that for the first time are gathered in one collection. With guidelines for measuring and substituting ingredients, storing and freezing, recapturing that fresh-from-the-oven flavor, decorating, even gift-wrapping and shipping, Great Cookies addresses all the basics and then some. And this ultimate guide is rounded out with authoritative information on ingredients, equipment, and the foolproof techniques for which Carole is known, including the essential “Secrets To” hints for every type of cookie. With master baker Carole Walter by your side, you may never look at a glass of ice cold milk the same way again.

How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking


Nigella Lawson - 1998
    Nigella's deliciously reassuring and mouthwatering cookbook demonstrates that it's not terribly difficult to bake a batch of muffins or a layer cake, but the appreciation and satisfaction they bring are disproportionately high. At last, a book that understands our anxieties, feeds our fantasies, and puts cakes, pies, pastries, breads, and biscuits back into our own kitchens.

Duff Bakes: Think and Bake Like a Pro at Home


Duff Goldman - 2014
    Inside you’ll find the perfect muffin recipe to eat straight while waiting for your morning bus, an easy pizza dough recipe for a quick weeknight dinner, and cookie recipes for every occasion. Filled with Duff’s engaging earthiness and hilarious personality, Duff Bakes includes chapters on different types of pastry dough, a variety of cookies, brownies, muffins, bread, biscuits, pies, cakes and cake decorating, gluten-free and vegan desserts, and much more.Duff provides 130 recipes for a diverse range of goodies, including nutter butter cookies, white chocolate blondies, apple streusel muffins, cereal bars, bacon jalapeno biscuits, banana bourbon cream pie, zucchini lemon cake, and savory bread pudding. Here are a few classics as well, like a re-make of the childhood favorite, Twinkies. Duff Bakes will help both novices and seasoned bakers master the best, most delicious home baked goods, build on their baking successes, hone their skills, and understand the science behind the fundamentals of baking.

Professional Cake Decorating


Toba Garrett - 2006
    Professional Cake Decorating is the first guidebook, reference, and at-your-fingertips resource to the special methods and techniques unique to cake decorating.Professional Cake Decorating is:a comprehensive set of lessons designed to teach the skills needed in cake decorating, including basic, intermediate, and advanced piping skills; hand modeling; and gumpaste flowers a powerful tool for making dramatic improvements in the overall look and design of cakes a valuable training handbook and resource for bakers and decorators a comprehensive reference of successful professional skill sets Using more than 200 step-by-step and finished cake color photographs, as well as over 125 illustrations, this highly visual book covers a wealth of techniques for cake borders, piped flowers, cake writing and piping, royal icing designs, marzipan fruits and figurines, rolled icing, floral patterns, petit fours, gumpaste floral art and design, and much more. Thorough coverage also includes such foundation skills as making shells, rosettes, reverse shells, zigzags, fleur-de-lis, rope, garlands, scrolls, rosebuds, and other confectionary designs.Complete with more than three dozen tried-and-tested recipes, Professional Cake Decorating is the only book that places the rewards of thirty years of training, traveling, teaching, and private practice in your hands! It is a must-have for today's bakers, cake decorators, specialty shop owners, and independent cake designers.

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.

Joy of Cooking


Irma S. Rombauer - 1931
    Rombauer self-published the first three thousand copies of Joy of Cooking in 1931, it has become the kitchen bible, with more than 20 million copies in print. This new edition of Joy has been thoroughly revised and expanded by Irma’s great-grandson John Becker and his wife, Megan Scott.John and Megan developed more than six hundred new recipes for this edition, tested and tweaked thousands of classic recipes, and updated every section of every chapter to reflect the latest ingredients and techniques available to today’s home cooks. Their strategy for revising this edition was the same one Irma and Marion employed: Vet, research, and improve Joy’s coverage of legacy recipes while introducing new dishes, modern cooking techniques, and comprehensive information on ingredients now available at farmers’ markets and grocery stores. You will find tried-and-true favorites like Banana Bread Cockaigne, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Southern Corn Bread—all retested and faithfully improved—as well as new favorites like Chana Masala, Beef Rendang, Megan’s Seeded Olive Oil Granola, and Smoked Pork Shoulder. In addition to a thoroughly modernized vegetable chapter, there are many more vegan and vegetarian recipes, including Caramelized Tamarind Tempeh, Crispy Pan-Fried Tofu, Spicy Chickpea Soup, and Roasted Mushroom Burgers. Joy’s baking chapters now include gram weights for accuracy, along with a refreshed lineup of baked goods like Cannelés de Bordeaux, Rustic No-Knead Sourdough, Ciabatta, Chocolate-Walnut Babka, and Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza, as well as gluten-free recipes for pizza dough and yeast breads. A new chapter on streamlined cooking explains how to economize time, money, and ingredients and avoid waste. You will learn how to use a diverse array of ingredients, from amaranth to za’atar. New techniques include low-temperature and sous vide cooking, fermentation, and cooking with both traditional and electric pressure cookers. Barbecuing, smoking, and other outdoor cooking methods are covered in even greater detail. This new edition of Joy is the perfect combination of classic recipes, new dishes, and indispensable reference information for today’s home cooks. Whether it is the only cookbook on your shelf or one of many, Joy is and has been the essential and trusted guide for home cooks for almost a century. This new edition continues that legacy.

The Complete Low-Carb Cookbook


George Stella - 2014
    All 130 recipes are made without any wheat or added sugar, making them gluten-free, and great for diabetics as well.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck


Thug Kitchen - 2014
    Beloved by Gwyneth Paltrow ("This might be my favorite thing ever") and named Saveur's Best New Food blog of 2013—with half a million Facebook fans and counting—Thug Kitchen wants to show everyone how to take charge of their plates and cook up some real f*cking food.Yeah, plenty of blogs and cookbooks preach about how to eat more kale, why ginger fights inflammation, and how to cook with microgreens and nettles. But they are dull or pretentious as hell—and most people can't afford the hype.Thug Kitchen lives in the real world. In their first cookbook, they're throwing down more than 100 recipes for their best-loved meals, snacks, and sides for beginning cooks to home chefs. (Roasted Beer and Lime Cauliflower Tacos? Pumpkin Chili? Grilled Peach Salsa? Believe that sh*t.) Plus they're going to arm you with all the info and techniques you need to shop on a budget and go and kick a bunch of ass on your own.This book is an invitation to everyone who wants to do better to elevate their kitchen game. No more ketchup and pizza counting as vegetables. No more drive-thru lines. No more avoiding the produce corner of the supermarket. Sh*t is about to get real.

First Prize Pies: Shoo-Fly, Candy Apple, and Other Deliciously Inventive Pies for Every Week of the Year (and More)


Allison Kave - 2014
    She won. In fact, her pies were such a hit that she turned pro.                                        People can’t get enough of her Bourbon Ginger Pecan pie, her whimsical Root Beer Float Pie, her addictive Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Pie. And the crusts—oh, the crusts!—are so impossibly flaky, so utterly delicious, that pie eaters around the world will rejoice that Allison has at last divulged her techniques and tips. Organized by month, the book includes pies for every sweet tooth, from inventive pies like Chocolate Lavender Teatime to old-school comfort pies like Candy Apple. Also available from Allison Kave: Butter & Scotch.

Robicelli's a Love Story, with Cupcakes: With 50 Decidedly Grown-Up Recipes


Allison Robicelli - 2013
    No fondant. No red velvet. Upscale bakery Robicelli's has become a buzzed-about, in-demand purveyor of decidedly adult cupcakes. Nixing cutesy, pastel-colored dollops of fluff for real ingredients and rich French buttercreams, the husband and wife team have reinvented the cupcake craze for a more sophisticated palate, making each a small piece of the greatest cake ever made. Now their extraordinary recipes are available to the home cook.Now their extraordinary recipes are available to the home cook, including: The Laurenzano (fresh fig cake topped with goat cheese buttercream, fig balsamic gastrique, and crisp prosciutto flakes)The Brooklyn Blackout Cake (chocolate cake with chocolate custard buttercream, dipped in homemade fudge and rolled in chocolate cake crumbs)This book captures not only the Robicelli's unique take on baking but also their edgy, unapologetically hilarious take on life, including how they survived severe economic setbacks to launch the country's hottest cupcake brand-- a venture begun with thirty dollars in borrowed quarters.Offering both cupcake recipes and a recipe for life that calls for a stash of "emergency cake," Robicelli's: A Love Story, with Cupcakes is a baking book like you've never seen before.

Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life


Kate McDermott - 2016
    Here she shares her secrets to great crusts (including gluten-free options), fabulous fillings, and to living a good life. This is the only PIE cookbook you need.

The Foster's Market Cookbook: Favorite Recipes for Morning, Noon, and Night


Sara Foster - 2002
    Now Sara Foster shares more than two hundred delicious recipes, providing modern takes on favorite home-style classics.The Foster’s Market Cookbook features old-fashioned ideas about how good food should taste and new-fashioned ideas about prep times and the use of high-quality prepared ingredients. Filled with eighty color photos, this is the perfect cookbook to refer to over and over again for everyday meals or for entertaining, whether it be for two or for twenty.Before moving to Durham, North Carolina, Sara worked alongside Martha Stewart in the kitchen of Martha’s catering business. When she opened her own catering company, Sara kept her food simple yet soulful, trusting the complex flavors of seasonal ingredients. This same basic principle guides the daily offerings at Foster’s Markets in Durham and Chapel Hill. Each week the markets serve nearly a thousand customers hungrily searching out Sara’s innovative, new-style home cooking. And now food lovers everywhere will be able to prepare with ease sumptuous dishes such as Roasted Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Arugula Salad; Herb-Grilled Salmon with Fresh Tomato-Orange Chutney; and Risotto Cakes with Roasted Tomatoes and Foster’s Arugula Pesto. Also featured are a host of wonderful desserts, such as Lemon Chess Pie with Sour Cherries and Chocolate Espresso Layer Cake with Mocha Latte Frosting.Featuring mouthwatering favorites from the market and dozens of helpful sidebars that discuss ingredients, techniques, and make-ahead tips, The Foster’s Market Cookbook provides all you need to know to make the most of every season’s finest offerings.

Oh Gussie!: Cooking and Visiting in Kimberly's Southern Kitchen


Kimberly Schlapman - 2015
    She’s also an award-winning Nashville superstar and the popular host of Kimberly’s Simply Southern, her delightful hit television cooking series.Fans have fallen for Kimberly’s easy confidence in the kitchen and effortless way she entertains. They love her cooking the same way they’ve swooned over her high harmonies singing with country music powerhouse Little Big Town. In Oh Gussie!, Kimberly shares soul-pleasing recipes and soul-stirring stories from her roots in the Appalachian foothills of north Georgia, her travels on tour with the band, and from the life she loves back home in country music’s capital.Kimberly’s cooking style embodies modern, wholesome, Southern home-cooking—fresh, accessible, nutritious, quick, and fun. With Oh Gussie!, fans can whip up a batch of Georgia Peach Salsa for a tailgate party; bring a pot of Kimberly’s Chicken and Dumplings to the next neighborhood potluck; serve some Baked Onion Rings with Hot Ranch Dip for the big game; sweeten up a weekend brunch with Sticky Cinnamon Rolls; and finish off a satisfying meal with bowls of Big Batch Banana Pudding.Filled with gorgeous color photos that capture the flavor and fun of her delicious food, Oh Gussie! honors Kimberly’s beloved Georgia mountain-home cooking and serves up helpings of her favorite foods from Nashville as well.

Betty Crocker's Cookbook


Betty Crocker - 1969
    Easier than ever to use, it's organized just he way you plan your meals - with meats and main dishes first. It's packed with know-how, show-how and how-to. More than 1500 recipes, 299 full-color photographs, cooking hints, shopping tips, charts, line drawings.