The Fearless Baker: Simple Secrets for Baking Like a Pro

In her first cookbook, McDowell, a baking columnist for Food52, endeavors to make baking easier and more understandable for home cooks. She distills the professional tips she’s learned over the years and offers advice that both new and experienced bakers will find indispensable. Her recipes run the gamut from simple chocolate chip cookies to the more involved chocolate palmiers, made with homemade puff pastry, and chocolate cream pie with whipped peanut butter cream. Her sense of fun is felt throughout the book with recipes such as PB&J Whoopie Pies and a caramel corn layer cake. She adds twists to recipes to make them her own, such as with salted caramel-swirled meringues; grapefruit meringue pie; and raspberry-ripple crunch bars, an innovation that she explains came to her in a dream. Comprehensive tips on baking and decorating cakes and pies accompany tempting recipes, including for pound cupcakes made with honey-caramel glaze, mocha cake with a coffee and white chocolate ganache, and a simple cider caramel apple pie. Her clearly written recipes and tips, explained in a friendly, encouraging voice, will inspire confidence in experienced and novice bakers alike. (Oct.)