Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries

In this delightful debut, Eat Cho Food blogger Cho presents dozens of sweet and savory treats inspired by Chinese-American bakeshops. To start, she offers her recipe for Chinese milk bread (akin to brioche or challah), which is repurposed for several recipes, such as coconut jasmine cream buns and miso corn buns. As Cho explains, ovens and baking were only recently introduced to Chinese culture, and thus there are plenty of goods that are steamed (egg custard buns), fried (Chinese doughnuts), or boiled (including jook, a slow-cooked rice porridge). Readers will relish Cho’s sentimental introductions, which focus on family (“My goong goong always wanted to be a baker,” she writes before sharing her late grandfather’s almond cookie recipe) and fusing Chinese and Western cultures (“It cracks me up that Bisquick has been Pau Pau’s secret ingredient,” she confesses in an intro to her grandmother’s steamed cupcakes). Some other recipes—such as deep-dish pepperoni bread and chocolate Nutella loaf—are a bit of a departure from the Chinese fare, but will appeal to those more familiar with Western baking, as will her thorough instructions, including Chinese cooking basics such as how to set up a steamer. This is a terrific introduction to a seldom explored baking niche. Agent: Katherine Cowles, Cowles Agency. (Oct.)