The book is divided into chapters by category – Classic Cakes, Timeless Cookies & Bars, Traditional Pies, Lost & Found, Foreign Affairs, Commercial Favorites and Curious Confections – and each features several very well known recipes, as well as the somewhat surprising stories behind them. In the Cookies chapter you’ll learn the difference between blondies and brownies, and that blondies actually came first. In the Commercial Favorites section, you’ll discover how Oreos became one of the most iconic cookies in the world. And in the Curious Confections chapter, the urban legend behind Urban Legend Cookies (a.k.a. Neiman Marcus cookies) will be uncovered. Some of the stories might be familiar to you, and some might be complete new, but stories like these are fun to learn and will get you more excited about baking and giving the recipes a try in your own kitchen.

The stories are told in a very fun, conversational tone and that carries over into the recipes, which are very detailed but simple enough that you’ll feel like you’re making an old family recipe. There are photos for every recipe, if the stories alone aren’t quite enough to motivate you to start baking. Once you’ve baked, you’ll definitely start to share the stories and facts from the book with friends and family, making the baked goods even more exciting to everyone who eats them.

These Fresh Strawberry Margaritas are a summertime favorite. They’re made with lots of fresh strawberries, freshly squeezed lime juice, tequila and a splash of triple sec, all blended up with ice. They’re sweet and are a very enjoyable way to cool down on a hot summer afternoon. Unless my strawberries are super sweet to start out, I like to add some additional sugar to my mix to highlight their sweetness – because if you’re having a blended drink, part of the fun is when it tastes like a treat to drink. I serve them in glasses rimmed with sugar, although a rim of salt makes for a nice contrast to the sweetness of the berries if you prefer your margaritas with salt.

These margaritas are not too strong because there are a lot of strawberries in them adding a good amount of fruit to balance out the booze. Depending on how big your glasses are, you might very well get more than servings out of this blender of margaritas. As a result, it is important to give your mix a taste while you’re making it up. If your strawberries aren’t sweet enough, you may need to add some extra sugar. If you like your drinks on the stronger side, or are planning for many small servings, you might need to add additional tequila (rule of thumb is 1.5 – 2 oz per drink).

Fresh Strawberry Margaritas
12 oz fresh strawberries, hulled
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1 cup tequila
1/4 cup triple sec
1/3 cup sugar (or to taste)
3-4 cups ice
strawberries, for garnish
sugar (or salt), for rims

Cut one strawberry to garnish each glass and rub that berry around the top edge of each of your glasses. Dip glass rims in sugar and set aside.
In a blender, combine lime juice, tequila, triple sec, sugar and fresh strawberries. Fill blender with 3-4 cups ice (or to top, depending on the size of your blender).
Blend at low speed to combine ingredients and crush ice, then blend at high speed for 30-60 seconds, until very smooth. Add more sugar and/or tequila, as needed and blend again if necessary.
Pour into sugar-rimmed glasses and serve.

Serves 6, depending on glass size.

The cake is very simple to make and gets its chocolate flavor from cocoa  powder. I recommend using Dutch process cocoa powder in this recipe, which gives the cake a slightly deeper chocolate flavor. If you only have natural cocoa powder, there is no need to worry because the recipe will still work out, it will just have a very slightly different chocolate flavor to it. If you happen to have some chocolate extract in your pantry, this recipe is the perfect place to use it and you can add 1 tsp of chocolate extract in with the vanilla. My Vanilla Bean Pound Cake recipe is a classic pound cake recipe that doesn’t use any leavening agents, but since cocoa powder is much denser than flour is, the Chocolate Pound Cake needs a little bit of leavening to ensure that it is light and not too heavy feeling.

Once you’ve baked your cake, there is a lot you can do with it. It is good when sliced thick and served plain, with a cup of coffee on the side. You could top it with a scoop of whipped cream and some fresh fruit to dress it up a little bit. Strawberries and raspberries go very well with this cake.  If you decide you want to boost the chocolate flavor up a few notches, make a quick ganache with dark chocolate and heavy cream and pour it over the top of the loaf before serving it.

Chocolate Pound Cake
1 1/3 cups cake flour, sifted
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (pref. dutch process)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk (pref. whole)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9×5-inch baking pan and line the bottom with a small piece of parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, sift together cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract.
Stir 1/3 of the flour mixture into the butter mixture, followed by half of the milk. Stir in an additional third of the flour mixture, followed by the remaining milk. Stir in remaining flour, mixing just until no streaks of dry ingredients remain and batter is uniform. Pour into prepared cake pan.
Bake for about 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.
Allow cake to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 1 cake; Serves 10.

Sifting flour is a way of aerating your flour and making sure that there are no large lumps in it. Flour is very finely milled and it is typically packed in small bags, where it gets packed down easily. This is especially true of cake flour, which has an exceptionally fine texture. Depending on the climate you live in, your flour might also develop lumps due to very high humidity and it can even attract small bugs, and sifting eliminates both of these problems. When a recipe calls for sifting flour together with other ingredients – such as cocoa powder, leavening agents or salt – it is to help disperse those ingredients into one mixture before adding them to a recipe.

Aerated flour – as opposed to packed-down flour – is easier to mix in to recipes. For most recipes, giving your flour a few gentle stirs with a knife or whisk to aerate it while it is in your storage container is enough agitation to break up any big lumps that might be present and prepare the flour for use in a recipe. As long as you are gentle and don’t pack the flour very firmly into your measuring cup you shouldn’t have any problems when you use it, even if the recipe calls for sifting your flour after measuring.

When a recipe calls for flour to be sifted before measuring (i.e. “1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour”), however, you should take care to sift your flour before measuring. Sifted flour does have more air dispersed in it than unsifted flour, and there are some delicate recipes where having the flour as aerated as possible – such as angel food cakes – will produce a better, lighter finished product.