Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple

"Dorie Greenspan is one of those upper echelon cookbook authors. I love her. I’ve worked with her a bit and I never cease to learn something from her. It’s a gorgeous book, first of all, and it’s got so many different types of bakes. They just run the gamut. If you want something really simple, like a simple loaf cake, that’s in here; if you want a showstopper layered cake, that’s in here, too. She has a whole section devoted to chocolate chip cookies. You think, ‘Okay, how much can I do with those?’ She makes a compelling case that there’s a lot you can do with them, swapping in flours, using some cocoa powder. She has one recipe, which I’m really excited to try, that turns them into slice and bake cookies, and then you bake them in a muffin tin, so you get these chocolate chip cookies with really crispy, caramelized edges. It’s so smart. Again, someone who comes up with things that I would never have thought of. She does a bread pudding with scones. Of course, why not? She has a reputation for being very reader-friendly and that certainly comes through in this book. She is always offering information, like how to store things, which is missing in a lot of recipes. Or whether you can do any of the work ahead of time. Basically, any time a recipe has that option, she includes it. She also has little sections in most of the recipes called ‘playing around’ that give you ideas on how you can customize it to your own tastes, swapping out chocolate or flours or decorating them differently. And she has a very good writing style. My colleague Ann Maloney, who has baked a lot out of this book, said that she always feels like she’s standing next to you, but not in an overbearing way. She tells you what to anticipate. If something’s going to look weird, ‘don’t worry, it’ll come together’; ‘Here’s where you might run into trouble.’ It’s a very reader-friendly style. Even if there are more complicated recipes in here, I still think this is a book that a baker who’s a relative beginner could pick up and have some success with. She said this was her 14th cookbook and it’s the 30th anniversary of her very first cookbook. Dorie is here to stay. And we are lucky."