Everyone Can Bake: Simple Recipes to Master and Mix

Shop Notes:

I'm a little in love with this book, honestly.  I know, I know, I sell these cookbooks and I want you to buy every single one.  But, for a backseat pastry chef like me, I feel like Dominique Ansel is finally letting me into a club that I'd be happy to be a member of.  And that club is made of people who can really make both delicious and incredibly unique desserts and then just show up at a dinner party with their creation where they will certainly bask in the glow of folks talking about that dish for years to come.  Surely, this must have been what Rocky Balboa or John Paul Jones felt like at some point.

Other cookbook authors (and certainly chefs) have tried to write similar books with, in my opinion, less success.  Ansel has provided readers with a series of core recipes that he uses as a baseline to riff different flavor and textural combinations on.  He also provides his thoughts and additional recipes for how to match complementary components, say mousses and syrups with cakes, that will help readers build out their own special mix of flavors and textures.  He provides ample examples if you prefer to follow the prescribed path, but his goal is to show you how to make your dessert adventure.

When I read this book I feel like I can make the best brownie ever known (minus the rosemary) or those bright and decadent pastries the Parisians do so abundantly well.  Grapefruit Tarragon Pavlova, anyone?  Or maybe with blueberries and muscadine?  Or bourbon, nutmeg, and blackberries.  Who knows?  The sky is the limit.

From the Publisher:

Named one of the best cookbooks of the season by The New York Times, Chowhound, Eater, Food ; Wine, Forbes, and more.

Acclaimed pastry chef Dominique Ansel shares his simple, foolproof recipes for tarts, cakes, jams, buttercreams, and more "building blocks" of desserts for home cooks to master and mix as they please.

Dominique Ansel is the creator of beautiful, innovative, and delicious desserts, from the Frozen S'More to the Cronut®, the croissant-doughnut hybrid that took the world by storm. He has been called the world's best pastry chef. But this wasn't always the case.

Raised in a large, working-class family in rural France, Ansel could not afford college and instead began work as a baker's apprentice at age sixteen. There, he learned the basics of how to make tender chocolate cakes, silky custards, buttery shortbread, and more.

Ansel shares these essential, go-to recipes for the first time. With easy-to-follow instructions and kitchen tips, home cooks can master the building-blocks of desserts. These crucial components can be mixed in a variety of ways, and Ansel will show you how: his vanilla tart shell can be rolled out and stamped into cookies; shaped and filled with lemon curd; or even crumbled into a topping for ice cream.

This cookbook will inspire beginners and experienced home cooks alike to bake as imaginatively as Ansel himself.