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Resource Center – Essential Baking Cookbooks

Besides the reference books, there are other cookbooks that I use for researching recipes and ideas. On this list, I’m going to focus on baking – unfortunately, I just don’t have room to list ALL of the baking books I love. These have a wide variety of styles and recipes. I’ll highlight some single subject books on another Resource List. These authors represent some of the best out there. It’s very hard for me to select who to include and who not to. As I’ve participated in the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), I’ve had the opportunity to meet all of the authors listed below.  You would not go wrong adding any of these books to your book shelf.

If you have other baking books like these that you use, let me know what they are!

I love to bake, but baking has to be exact. The first two baking books are written by a friend of mine and her recipes are excellent and the instructions are easy to follow. The first book covers a wide range of baking recipes. The second book is to get your kids in the kitchen and get them baking. Carly and I have done a number of recipes from this book.

The Art and Soul of Baking was written with Sur La Table and won the IACP 2009 Baking Book of the Year award. Baking Kids Love was her second book with Sur La Table and features both Cindy and her daughter.

Cindy Muschet lives in Los Angeles and teaches Baking and Pastry at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School.

Another friend of mine is George Geary. George has a strong background in baking and pastry having been the staff chef for a number of organizations in Southern California including Disneyland. George has written 10 books and now travels and teaches around the globe. I met George a number of years ago when he would teach at Central Market in Austin. I had the opportunity to work with him in a number of classes over the years. I’ve also had the pleasure of hosting George for a class here in Huntsville.

George’s recipes are always excellent, well written and well tested. The first book is a general baking book and has a wide variety of recipes. The other book is really the second edition of his first book about cheesecakes. George certainly knows a thing or two about this subject – during his time a Paramount Studios, George made the cheesecakes for the Television Show “Golden Girls.”

Another great baking author is Rose Levy Beranbaum. She has written a number of excellent books. For Rose, I’m going to list three books.

The first one was released in October 2014 and is a more general baking book. Full disclosure: I don’t own this book….yet. But I have the other two I’m going to list.

One of Rose’s early books was “The Cake Bible.” If you want to explore a lot of cakes, this is the book. Her follow up to this one is “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes.” Rose’s Heavenly Cakes won the IACP 2010 Cookbook of the Year Award, the highest cookbook award from the IACP.

Any of these would be great additions to your library. However, these are only three of the many books Rose has written. Be sure to explore anything she has written! (The Link below will take you to her page at Amazon.com.)

There are just SO many great baking books, but I can’t list them all. I’m going to close out this list with Alice Medrich. Alice is one of Carly’s favorite authors because she writes about Chocolate and other great desserts.

In fact, the “Penguin Brownies” that we did in one of the Home Chef episodes is one of Alice’s recipes. If you want to check out that video, click here.

Her books have won too many awards to mention, but with titles like “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies” and “Seriously Bitter Sweet: The Ultimate Dessert Maker’s Guide to Chocolate,” how could you go wrong with ANY of them.

Be sure to check out all of her books on her Amazon.com page with the link below.

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