Thirty is a lot. Master baker Dorie Greenspan has written thirty cookbooks, including this one, so she knows a little about baking, writing recipes, and creating beautiful and delicious baked creations. With Baking with Dorie, she has created sweet and savory baked goods for special occasions or for everyday.
Maybe it’s all those years of baking experience that makes this cookbook so special. There are recipes that she’s discovered from traveling to different parts of the world, like the Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake, the Swedish Fika Cake, the Glenorchy Flapjacks (an oat cookie from New Zealand), or the gorgeous Lisbon Chocolate Cake that’s featured on the cover.
But she also has a lot of recipes that focus on those flavors that we grew up with here in America and love. She spends a lot of time in the cookie chapter, for example, talking about everyone’s favorite, those chocolate chippers. She starts with the recipe for her Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies and then goes on to offer up five other options, like the One Big Break-Apart Chipper or Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies Paris Style or her World Peace Cookies 2.0.
These pockets of favorite recipe clusters are her “Sweethearts,” and these include her chippers, brioche breads (which includes Brioche Sticky Buns and Chocolate Babka), her celebration cakes (Devil’s Food Party Cake, Lemon Meringue Layer Cake, or her Double-Decker Salted Caramel Cake, for example), or apple pies and tarts (which includes a Mulled Butter Apple Pie, Apple Galette, Apple Pandowdy, and the classic Tarte Tatin).
And all of her experience in baking translates to recipes that can be tackled by beginners but with flavors that are sophisticated and so tantalizing that no one would believe you hadn’t taken some classes on pastry. You can start with a recipe like the Whip-it-up-Quick Cornbread or the Park Avenue Brownies (her husband named them that because they’re “thin and rich”), then move on to the French Riviera Lemon Tart (which Dorie calls a “magic trick” for being so easy yet so decadent) or the Vegetable Ribbon Tart, and then try out a Cinnamon Raisin Bread or a Jelly Roll Cake or the Gouda Gougeres or the Clam Chowder Pie.
Throughout, she offers up ideas for playing around with the recipes, whether it’s to add unusual ingredients or to change her updated recipe to the original. She gives tips for using a store-bought pie crust for the pies, for example, or how to make things ahead and freeze them, saving you time on the day of the bake. And—I love this—she warns you if a recipe takes a long time or requires hours in the fridge to set, so you’ll know that right off.
I’ve been a big fan of Dorie Greenspan for many years, but the year I used Dorie’s Cookies for almost all my Christmas cookies, she stole my heart forever. I still have one aunt who never asks for anything from me except for batches of her Lemon Sugar Cookies. Dorie just understands how to make flavors sing with recipes that should be complicated but really aren’t. Baking with Dorie is filled with recipes just like that. She has taken out all the unnecessary steps and explained her thought process in a way that builds a baker’s confidence, connection to the ingredients, and creativity. The simplicity of her recipes make this a perfect cookbook for beginners, but her flavorful creations make it ideal for all sweet and savory chefs of any level.
Egalleys for Baking with Dorie were provided by Mariner Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
