BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts

by Stella Parks, J. Kenji López-Alt (Foreword by)

Overview

Winner of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award (Baking and Desserts)

A New York Times bestseller and named a Best Baking Book of the Year by the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Bon Appétit, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Amazon, and more.

"The most groundbreaking book on baking in years. Full stop." —Saveur

From One-Bowl Devil’s Food Layer Cake to a flawless Cherry Pie that’s crisp even on the very bottom, BraveTart is a celebration of classic American desserts. Whether down-home delights like Blueberry Muffins and Glossy Fudge Brownies or supermarket mainstays such as Vanilla Wafers and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream, your favorites are all here. These meticulously tested recipes bring an award-winning pastry chef’s expertise into your kitchen, along with advice on how to “mix it up” with over 200 customizable variations—in short, exactly what you’d expect from a cookbook penned by a senior editor at Serious Eats. Yet BraveTart is much more than a cookbook, as Stella Parks delves into the surprising stories of how our favorite desserts came to be, from chocolate chip cookies that predate the Tollhouse Inn to the prohibition-era origins of ice cream sodas and floats. With a foreword by The Food Lab’s J. Kenji López-Alt, vintage advertisements for these historical desserts, and breathtaking photography from Penny De Los Santos, BraveTart is sure to become an American classic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393239867
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/15/2017
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	95,249
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 10.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Stella Parks is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She was named one of America’s Best New Pastry Chefs by Food & Wine. When not at home in Lexington, Kentucky, Stella can be found at the Serious Eats test kitchen in Brooklyn, New York.

J. Kenji López-Alt is a chef, parent, and New York Times best-selling author of The Food Lab and Every Night Is Pizza Night. He is a wildly popular New York Times food columnist; the chief culinary advisor for Serious Eats; and the host of Kenji’s Cooking Show, which has more than a million subscribers on YouTube. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Editorial Reviews

…[the] layout, photographs and scope pulled me in. I stayed and kept reading because Parks has done her homework…with pages of source notes to prove it. If this sort of scholarly effort puts you off, don't let it…By taking the evolution of American baking's cultural and commercial history seriously, Parks challenges those who might consider it dowdy when compared with serious European pastry. Fair enough. But it takes a book as smart, thorough and creative as BraveTart to persuade me to put women's work and the goods they produce in proper perspective—and I consider myself an ardent-feminist home baker. I promise not to call this kind of baking dowdy again.

The New York Times Book Review - Cree LeFavour

★ 05/01/2017
Parks, a senior editor at Serious Eats and the creator of the Bravetart blog, has written a cookbook that is as interesting to read as it is to cook from. Home cooks will stock up on butter, sugar, flour and other baking necessities before diving into the cookbook, as the recipes here are ones readers will want to make immediately. If they don’t rush to the kitchen after seeing the recipe for glossy fudge brownies with swirls of condensed milk, it’s only because they’ve decided to make the red-wine velvet cake or souffléed cheesecake instead. Tricks such as roasting sugar or adding browned butter to brownies for a richer, nuttier flavor make Parks’s recipes more complicated than those in some other cookbooks, but recipes are written simply enough that an ambitious beginning cook can succeed. Each recipe also offers possible modifications: a simple white cake with marshmallow buttercream can, with a few tweaks, be transformed into an apple-cider spice cake, a hazelnut torte, or lemon-sunshine cake. Wherever possible, Parks offers gluten-free substitutions for her recipes. Parks is known for her recreations of iconic American supermarket treats, with recipes for such indulgences as fudge stripes cookies, Twinkies (hint: use club soda to keep them soft), and even homemade Cool Whip. From elegant homespun desserts to homemade Wonder Bread, Parks’s cookbook offers a Cracker Jack blend (yes, there’s a recipe for that, too) of ingenuity and whimsy. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Why is BraveTart my new go-to? Because joy leaps off every page of it. . . . [Parks] insists on precision with her recipes, but she never forgets that sugary treats make people happy. . . . BraveTart made me excited to bake, and then backed up that excitement with researched recipes that work. I’m not sure there’s higher praise you can give a cookbook."

Food52

"If you want to emerge from lockdown a better baker, start with Stella Parks’s excellent book."

Eater

"One of the most engaging baking books to be published in years… Parks adds a remarkable new voice to the world of baking books. Combine smarts with whimsy and you get delicious results."

Washington Post

"I was consumed by all the information on its pages. I read it like a book, absorbing the information, some of it new to me, and much of it debunking commonly held beliefs about cooking and baking."

David Lebovitz

"Wonderful fun to read. A coveted gift for anyone whose ears prick up at the jingle of an ice cream truck."

Bon Appétit

"Stella Parks has completely converted a heretofore-resolute non-baker. How’s that for an achievement? . . . [BraveTart] speaks to my food-soul in a very special way."

Tim Gunn

"[BraveTart] is both a terrific showcase of those quintessential desserts and a case for the American dessert itself. . . Parks' writing is as engaging as her recipes."

|Los Angeles Times

"Few recipe writers are as precise as Stella Parks, a former pastry chef whose instructions always fill me with a sense of clearheaded confidence."

New York Times Magazine - Tejal Rao

"Parks uses [food science] to give people new tools to become better bakers, a better understanding of baking, and an emphatic reminder of why every one loved these cookies, cakes, and other sweets in the first place."

GrubStreet

"As if it’s not impressive enough that Stella Parks whips up her own Twinkies and animal crackers, Snickers and sprinkles, she can also tell us who invented them, when, why and how."

Food & Wine

"[Bravetart] will join the ranks of the timeless and transformative. Stella Park’s knowledge is formidable and her baked goods are brilliant, exactly the type of things we crave."

Southern Living

"Lushly illustrated recipes. . . Parks is a serious cook, interested in the history of how those desserts became iconic, and one who applies her serious culinary education to what others might consider frivolous ends."

The Atlantic

08/01/2017
Parks, an award-winning pastry chef and longtime writer for the popular food blog Serious Eats (SeriousEats.com), has attracted attention for her playful, scratch-made versions of classic American desserts and packaged foods. After illuminating the history of snickerdoodles, Pop-Tarts®, Twinkies, and dozens of other sweets, she shares meticulous instructions for re-creating them at home. Parks's measurements and directions are fabulously unambiguous—you'll never wonder if eggs should be fridge cold or if leftovers can be stored. Her multicomponent recipes for Milky Way bars, Thin Mints, and Fig Newtons will delight ambitious bakers. Novices, however, may prefer to start with the easier and less costly cookies and brownies near the front of the book. VERDICT A treat for history buffs and bakers looking to grow their technical skill via copycat recipes. Though innovative and well-researched, this book is too exacting for everyday use and makes widely loved everyday treats less accessible.

Library Journal