Bakeable •Midwestern cookbook author Shauna Sever pays homage to the country’s heartland.
Five simple baking rules and an heirloom recipe prompted a cookbook that defines home cooking in the heartland.
ACHRISTMASTIME OF GRAMMA’S HEIRLOOM BATCH SUGAR COOKIES FINALLY CONVINCED SHAUNA SEVER THAT SHE NEEDED TO WRITE THE BOOK.
Surrounded by family during her first winter since moving back to Chicago, she watched her children, Caroline and Andrew, slowly savor each crispy yet tender, sprinkle-covered cookie. Every year prior, they would hungrily stuff the delicate cookies in their mouths after a long plane ride from San Francisco to see family for the holidays. That’s when Shauna realized that these cookies, in this place—it’s just different.
“It all clicked and I noticed all the things I had taken for granted growing up in the Midwest,” she says. She wanted to share this feeling with cooks everywhere, and her cookbook Midwest Made was born.
Right on the cover, Shauna defines five specific tenets every Midwestern baker knows: bake big, bake easy, bake with purpose, bake from the past and bake in the present.
These “five big rules” guided her as she hit the road—and the library—to hunt down the essential recipes that tell the story of the region. Her first stop was a special keepsake: a scrap of paper handwritten by her late grandmother with 10 carefully selected recipes. “It felt like such a gift...this list of what she felt defined ‘Midwestern’ for her and for our family.”
Reaching beyond this special list, Shauna traveled to community bakeries everywhere from Iowa to Missouri to Wisconsin, and scoured vintage church cookbooks and historical tomes to make sure she covered the whole story of baking in the region.
She landed on more than 100 recipes for her book, but a handful remain closest to her heart. Of course, those sugar cookies straight from Gramma’s recipe folder are included, as is a specialty from her childhood: Swedish flop. “It’s a great thing to make around the holidays because it feels extra special.”
This take on coffee cake with a not-too-sweet frosting is a staple in Chicago bakeries. Shauna lightens up the taste of the yeasted cake with the addition of tangy fruit jam.
In typical “bake big” fashion, this cake packs 12 servings. If that’s a little too large for your household at the holidays, “think of people who might not normally get a gift—someone like your mail carrier,” says Shauna. “Take this ‘problem’ of having too much and turn it into generosity.”
After all, spreading sweetness around is just the
Midwestern way.
Find Shauna’s cookbook, at