Food52 Baking: 60 Sensational Treats You Can Pull Off in a Snap

by Food52, Amanda Hesser (Foreword by), Merrill Stubbs (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607748014
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	09/22/2015
Series:	Food52 Works
Pages:	172
Sales rank:	997,936
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.90(d)

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.

Read an Excerpt

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

Table of Contents

Breakfast Goods
Featherweight Blueberry Scones  |  2
Baked Cardamom French Toast with Syrupy Meyer Lemons  |  5
Yogurt Biscuits  |  8
Cranberry, Oatmeal, and
Flaxseed Muffins  |  11
Whole Wheat Molasses Yogurt Bread with Figs and Walnuts  |  12
Bestest Banana Bread  |  15
Buttermilk Dutch Baby with
Caramelized Pears  |  16
Overnight Orange
Refrigerator Rolls  |  19
Tomato and Cream
Cheese Turnovers  |  20
Cookies & Bars
Cream Cheese Cookies  |  25
Italian Cornmeal Cookies  |  26
Cardamom Currant
Snickerdoodles  |  29
Grape-Nut and Chocolate Chip
Kitchen Sink Oatmeal Cookies  |  30
Six-Ingredient Peanut Butter and
Jelly Sandwich Cookies  |  33
Dark Chocolate and Cherry
Mandelbrot  |  34
Brown Sugar Shortbread  |  37
Balsamic Macaroons with
Chocolate Chips  |  38
Hippie Crispy Treats  |  41
Double-Layer Coconut
Pecan Bars  |  42
Oatmeal Streusel Bars with
Rhubarb Filling  |  45
Magic Espresso Brownies  |  46
Fruit Desserts
Blueberry Schlumpf  |  51
Nectarine Slump  |  52
Apple Brown Betty with
Gingersnap Crumbs  |  55
Almond Butter and Oatmeal Crisp  |  56
Blueberry Cream Torte  |  59
Summer Fruit Galette  |  61
Peach Tart  |  64
“Cuppa Cuppa Sticka” Peach and Blueberry Cobbler  |  67
Custardy Cakes & Puddings
Challah Bread Pudding “Soufflé”  |  71
Raspberry Clafoutis  |  72
Pudding Chômeur  |  75
Baked Rice Pudding with Coconut
Milk and Honey  |  76
Lemon Sponge Cups  |  79
Sour Cream Cheesecake with
Chocolate Cookie Crust  |  80
Coconut Tres Leches Cake  |  83
Everyday Cakes
Strawberry-Yogurt Snack Cake  |  87
Easy-as-Pie Apple Cake  |  88
Cold-Oven Pound Cake  |  91
Honey Pecan Cake  |  92
Spiced Parsnip Cake  |  95
Chocolate Dump-It Cake  |  96
Tomato Soup Spice Cake with
Cream Cheese Frosting  |  99
Special Occasion Cakes
Brown Butter Cupcake Brownies  |  102
Maple Persimmon Upside-Down Cake with Maple Cream  |  105
Tender Yellow Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting  |  107
Cherry Almond Crumb Cake  |  111
Black Sesame Cupcakes with Matcha
Buttercream  |  112
Olive Oil Ricotta Cake with Plums  |  115
Skillet Spice Cake with Gooey
Caramel Bottom  |  116
Gluten-Free Lemon Blackberry
Corn Cake  |  119
Banana Cake with Penuche Frosting  |  120
Pumpkin Pie Crumble  |  124
Savory Baked Goods
Heavenly Molasses Oatmeal Rolls  |  129
Black Pepper Popovers with Chives and Parmesan  |  130
Fifteen-Minute Olive Oil and Sesame
Seed Crackers  |  133
Cheese Crispettes  |  134
Basil Onion Cornbread  |  137
Savory Galette with Greens and Gruyère  |  138
No-Knead Thin-Crust Pizzas  |  141
Grilled Flatbreads  |  145

Editorial Reviews

08/17/2015
The editors of Food 52, the cooking website founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, present 60 recipes for an “uncommitted” style of “day-to-day baking” culled from readers, contributors, and site members. The collection personifies the spirit of Food52 with worthy creations made from “reliable” and “no-fail” recipes that don’t make weeknight baking off limits. Flavors soar beyond the basic with easy-to-make selections such as balsamic macaroons with chocolate chips, black sesame cupcakes with matcha buttercream, and black pepper popovers with chives and parmesan. The yogurt biscuits and tomato and cream cheese turnovers will quickly become regular go-tos. With Mark Bittman recipe adaptations and recipes culled from Tupperware parties in the 1970s, this eclectic collection is sure to bring inspired ideas to home bakers and includes unique finds such as Cuppa Cuppa Sticka peach and blueberry cobbler, and challah bread pudding Soufflé. A troubleshooting guide collects tips scattered through the book, explaining how to stale fresh bread in a hurry, how to pit cherries without a cherry pitter, and how to package cookies for the mail. This title may just become that one baking book kept out on the counter for use time and time again. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A completely appealing collection of completely doable and do-right-now recipes.  Whether you’re the go-to baker in your family, the one your friends always turn to for party cakes, or a total beginner who’s only made brownies from a box, you’ll find recipes that you’ll love.  Leave it to fabulous Food52 to give us exactly what we want to bake and share.” —Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking Chez Moi

From the Publisher