The Vanilla Bean Baking Book: Recipes for Irresistible Everyday Favorites and Reinvented Classics

by Sarah Kieffer

Overview

A beautiful and thoughtful baking book with 100 recipes for delicious treats and desserts from the founder of the Saveur Award–winning Vanilla Bean baking blog.

Readers find the Vanilla Bean blog while hunting for the perfect chocolate cake or cinnamon roll recipe, or another everyday favorite. They stay for founder Sarah Kieffer’s simple approach to home baking, the utterly transporting, dreamlike quality of her photography, and her evocative storytelling.  Most of all, the Vanilla Bean blog celebrates the soulfulness of baking.

Kieffer mastered the art of home baking while working in tiny kitchens in the back of coffeehouses and bakeries in Minnesota. She began the Vanilla Bean blog to create a culinary heritage for her family, but soon became passionate about making the joys of baking accessible for all. With recipes that help simplify the process behind complicated techniques, Vanilla Bean has built a dedicated following of several hundred thousand loyal readers and won several awards, including the Reader’s Choice Award for best baking blog from Saveur.

The Vanilla Bean Baking Book is Kieffer’s debut cookbook, with 100 delicious tried-and-true recipes for the home baker. From everyday favorites such as Lemon Bread and Peanut Butter Cookies to inventive twists on classics such as Burnt Honey Buttercream Cake with Chocolate, Coffee Blondies, and Apple-Blackberry Turnovers, these irresistible treats will delight and inspire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583335840
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/08/2016
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	141,170
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah Kieffer, founder of The Vanilla Bean Blog, is a self-taught baker who has worked in professional bakeries and made the decision to become a home baker after her two children were born. Her work has been featured on Today and America’s Test Kitchen in The New York Times, Saveur, Pure Green Magazine, Food52, Mashable, The Kitchn, The Huffington Post, and Food + Wine, among others. She also contributes regularly and develops recipes for the websites Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, Food52, and Handmade Charlotte. When she’s not baking, she enjoys reading and rereading favorite books, spending time with her husband and two children, and drinking too much coffee.

Editorial Reviews

10/03/2016
Kieffer, of the Vanilla Bean blog, presents 100 dessert recipes for new and experienced bakers and cooks. In addition to vanilla, a variety of other flavors—maple, lemon, ginger,chocolate—are featured in pastry, pies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, and other sweets. Basic recipes include blueberry muffins, banana bread, brownies, and Straight-Up Apple Pie. The “wow” factor comes from the visually stunning cardamom braided knots, an inventive burnt honey buttercream cake with chocolate, an elegant cherry rhubarb crisp with white wine, and chocolate ganache cupcakes with basil buttercream. Vegans can indulge in the chocolate cake and dairy-free chocolate frosting. For making ice cream there is a “No-Churn” chapter that utilizes the decades-old technique of folding whipped cream into condensed milk and freezing. Vanilla and chocolate claros start the chapter before the author moves onto recipes for olive oil with vanilla bean ice cream; rosemary ice cream with chocolate lava cakes; and a s’mores ice cream cake. First-person headnotes bring the reader into Kiefer’s family and baking history, and step-by-step photos illustrate skills such as how to lattice. Stunning full-page photos round out this solid collection. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

09/15/2016
Not to be confused with vanilla-centric collections such as Shauna Sever's Pure Vanilla, this all-purpose baking book from award-winning blogger Kieffer (thevanillabeanblog.com) features traditional desserts and baked goods. Tasteful, no-frills photographs accompany reliable recipes for chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon rolls, pumpkin-olive oil bread, cherry-rhubarb crisp with white wine, and other homey treats. Additionally, there are unique chapters for no-churn ice creams and homemade staples (e.g., creme fraiche, coffee syrup). Kieffer has drawn inspiration from well-known chefs and publications, such as Nigella Lawson and Cook's Illustrated, and she gives credit where it's due. VERDICT Familiar and timeless without being superfluous, this highly recommended, well-executed baking book will thrill home bakers who like to keep things simple.

Library Journal

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