Miglore Kristen - Food52 Genius Desserts: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KRISTEN MIGLORE is the creative director at Food52.com. She abandoned a career in economics in 2007 to pursue a masters degree in food studies from New York University and a culinary degree from the Institute of Culinary Education. Her writing has since been published in the Wall Street Journal, Saveur, and the Atlantic, and she was nominated for a James Beard Award for Food52s Genius Recipes column in 2014. The column led to the Genius Recipes cookbook in 2015, which won an IACP award in 2016 and became a New York Times best seller. She lives in Brooklyn and usually has a pastry in her purse.

THANK-YOUS

To Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs, my dear bosses, mentors, and friends, for guiding the good ship Food52 (and me) since 2009, and never turning down a test cookie.

To the Ten Speed team: Aaron Wehner, Hannah Rahill, Julie Bennett, Kelly Snowden, Emma Campion, Margaux Keres, Lisa Ferkel, and Serena Sigona, for being a pleasure to work with for many years now, and letting me keep the story about Maida Heatters elephant omelet.

To my sweet Mike Dunkley, who I married with cobbler and ice cream floats, and who helped me eat the leftovers and talk out every last little thing. To my brother Billy Miglore, my sharpest, most honest proofreader and partner in used cookbook scavenging.

To my mom Susan Miglore, for teaching me how to measure at the meniscus and my dad Allen Miglore, who loves all cookies indiscriminately. To my grandmother Grace Cowan, who kept oatmeal cream pies in the fridge, and to the rest of the Cowan clan. To my grandparents Mike and Thann Miglore, who told me that I could be the dessert princess, because Grandma was already the dessert queen, and to the rest of the Miglore family. To my family-in-law Art, Tuny, Dan, Erin, and Riley Dunkley, aka the pie-cobbler-crisp fan club.

To our longtime photographer and dulce de leche consultant James Ransom, for making this book the moodiest and richest compendium of splatters and crumbs this world will ever see. To our art director Alexis Anthony, for building all of the achingly beautiful scenes for me to smear whipped cream on. To Jamess photo crew, Sarah Wight and Mark Weinberg, and our own Amanda Widis and Eddie Barrera, for stepping up when it mattered most in the studio.

To Erin Jeanne McDowell, a real live Sugar Plum Fairy, for leading the baking styling team of Allison Bruns Buford, Sarah Jampel, and Yossy Arefi, for swooping frostings and building bonus Eton Messes (turn to !) just for fun, and sharing all her tips when cakes and cookies misbehaved. To our test kitchen director Josh Cohen for patiently shepherding every recipe retest (and re-retest) and a good half-ton of sugar through the kitchen, leading a team of crack cooks including Shani Frymer, Chris Roberts, Molly Corrigan, Caroline Lange, Erica Graff, Scott Cavagnaro, Taylor Murray, and Amelia Rampe.

To Makinze Gore, for assisting me in the kitchen every Saturday (and magically remembering what kind of molasses we used last time) for the better part of a year, always with a calm smile, even when we were putting away dishes until the wee hours. To Ali Slagle, for organizing me and holding my hand backstage, and Sarah Jampel, for years of baking advice and cheerleadingand to both, for holding the record for most genius tips. To Kenzi Wilbur, Marian Bull, Brette Warshaw, and Joanna Sciarrino, for editing the column all these years, no matter what time it came in. To Lyna Vuong, our Julia Child Foundation Fellow, for literally building this book by transcribing recipes and organizing our recipes for shoots better than I knew how. To CB Owens, for applying his laser eyes at the last hour, as hes done for every Food52 book since Genius Recipes . To Tim McSweeney, for helping bring the chart on my favorite pages () to life. And to all of my recipe testing heroes: Stephanie Bourgeois and other brave members of the Food52 team, Lauren Shockey, Mara del Mar Cuadra, Anna Gass, Dawne Shonfield, and the Food52 Baking Club on Facebook, whose velocity in volunteering brought me to tears.

To Nick Malgieri, Charlotte Druckman, Anita Shepherd, Lori Galvin, Raquel Pelzel, Marian Burros, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Emily Luchetti, Anita Jaisinghani, Sherry Yard, Mindy Fox, and Matt Sartwell, who were especially giving with their time and wisdom.

And most of all, to the geniuses in these pages and the hundreds of Food52 community members, home bakers, cookbook authors, editors, writers, and pastry chefs who generously gave their time and advice to strengthen this bookI wish there were enough pages to thank each of you personally.

GENIUS TIPSTERS

Below are the peoplesome given names and some chosen Food52 avatarswhose tips I could pinpoint most directly in this book, but countless others enriched this collection with their emails, comments, calls, debates, Instagrams, tasting notes, jokes, and more. I promised to return the favor, so I hope you find new gems in this book.

Charlotte Druckman

Bobbi Lin

calendargirl

Anita Shepherd

Ali Slagle

Fairmount_market

Merrill Stubbs

WhiskyMead

Joanne Chang

Mindy Fox

Tina Ujlaki

Joan Heymont

Shuna Lydon

Brette & Sheri Warshaw

Gena Hamshaw

Luisa Weiss

Nick Malgieri & Nancy Nicholas

BakerRB

Jenny Rosenstrach

Alexandra Stafford

J. Kenji Lpez-Alt

Max Falkowitz

Victor Hazan

asbrink

Diane Morgan

Rivka

Gabriella Gershenson

Lauren Shockey

Molly Yeh

karen

Nozlee Samadzadeh

Sarah Jampel

Amanda Hesser

Emily Connor

samanthaalison

Rachel Khong

Elana Carlson

Trucster

JJ Goode

mrslarkin

Ina-Janine

Peggy Dunagan

Emily Stephenson

hardlikearmour

Molly Stevens

drbabs

Marian Bull

Kate Heddings

Lori Galvin

Peter Miller

Antonia James

Emily Kaiser Thelin

Melissa Clark

Nora Singley

Russ Parsons

Nicole Krasinski

Megan Scott

Kate Leahy

Cheryl Redmond

Jessica Robison

Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

FROM FRANOIS PAYARD

This is a recipe that defies all logic: it looks and acts like a rich, chewy chocolate cookie, but lacks many of the ingredients we think of as nonnegotiable (butter, flour, egg yolks). This also means that its gluten-free, dairy-free, and Passover-friendly.

But none of these abstentions, as strategic as they seem, were by design. When French pastry chef Franois Payard opened his first patisserie in Manhattan in 1997, he didnt want to compete with iconic American cookies, so he based this one off a French macaron, a featherlight confection with a chewy middle and a thin, crisp outer shell thats made from little more than egg whites, ground almonds, and sugar.

Ironically, the cookie that he came up with feels quintessentially American. The middles are fudgy and studded with toasted walnuts; the surface is fetchingly crackled and shiny. Its essentially a (yes, lighter and more delicately chewy) good, old-fashioned brownie.