3 ‘The Cookie That Changed My Life’
by Nancy Silverton with Carolyn Carreño
While many home bakers were getting into sourdough during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Nancy Silverton — the award-winning Los Angeles chef and restaurateur behind La Brea Bakery and Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza — turned her attention toward classic American baked goods.
Inspired by an experience with a peanut butter cookie from the Los Angeles bakery Friends & Family, Silverton put her baking skills to the test, homing in on recipes to make “the absolute best version of the familiar baked goods that we all know and love,” she writes in the introduction to her new cookbook.
Chapters include breakfast fare, cookies, casual and dressedup cakes and cupcakes, pies and tarts, seasonal fruit desserts and, of course, breads.
Some of her recipes do require a few extra steps, but the results are worth it, she says.
SILVERTON SAYS >>
“Maybe it is my age setting in, but more and more I find myself asking: Do we really need matcha in our pound cake? Lavender in shortbread? Pie on a stick? Cake in a jar? Or bacon in any dessert? The answer, for me, is a definite ‘No.’ Creative, yes. But for me, these creations aren’t craveable, and that was the ultimate criterion for a recipe to make it into this book. … Nothing excites me more than when I bite into one of these familiar treats only to discover that it has been done to perfection.”
DETAILS >> “The Cookie That Changed My Life and More Than 100 Other Classic Cakes, Cookies, Muffins, and Pies That Will Change Yours,” by Nancy Silverton with Carolynn Carreño (Alfred A. Knopf, $40), can be found at local independent bookstores and online.