This year let us help take some stress out of the holiday season. We’ve put together a list of 10 baking books—full of mouth-watering and easy to follow recipes—that are the perfect guides for your festive baking needs. From classic holiday cookies to decadent hot chocolate, these books have got you covered!


Holiday Cookies by Elisabet der Nederlanden

This instant holiday classic is packed with 50 recipes, each gorgeously photographed and meticulously tested, along with dozens of decorating and packaging ideas. Filled with reimagined favorites like Giant Molasses Spice Cookies and Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies; confections like Peppermint Bark, Smoked Almond and Cacao Nib Brittle, and Dark Chocolate–Hazelnut Fudge; and detailed instructions for gorgeous gingerbread houses, cookie place cards, and edible ornaments, this is a cookie book like no other. Because the recipes are easy to scale up or down, Holiday Cookies is perfect for cookie exchanges, gift-giving, and just enjoying throughout the season. From a veteran baker and recipe developer, each cookie in this collection is guaranteed to be a stand-out, and destined to become your new Christmas classic.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


Baking with Mary Berry by Mary Berry

A sweet and savory collection of more than 100 foolproof recipes from the reigning “Queen of Baking,” Mary Berry.

Baking with Mary Berry draws on Mary’s more than 60 years in the kitchen, with tips and step-by-step instructions for bakers just starting out and full-color photographs of finished dishes throughout. The recipes follow Mary’s prescription for dishes that are no fuss, practical, and foolproof—from breakfast goods to cookies, cakes, pastries, and pies, to special occasion desserts such as cheesecake and soufflés, to British favorites that will inspire.


Handmade Gifts from the Kitchen by Alison Walker

A delightful gift in itself, as well as providing a beautiful collection of culinary gift ideas for you to make and bake at home for friends and family. In a world where mass-produced is the norm, homemade carries a certain potency of care and thought, and indulgent fudge, warming liqueurs, spicy chutneys, sweet and crumbly homemade biscuits are easy to make, affordable, and meaningful gifts.

And it’s not just the making, it’s the wrapping, too. Decorative jars, tins, baskets, and boxes add a personal touch that ensures these gifts will still be remembered long after the food has been enjoyed. Handmade Gifts from the Kitchen offers ideas for wrapping your gifts in a stunning and stylish way, so that every gift is special.


Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

The definitive guide to cookies from around the world, with more than 100 recipes and variations on such tried-and-true classics as gingersnaps, whoopie pies, and pinwheels as well as traditional international favorites like pizzelles, baklava, and alfajores.

This delectable guide introduces readers to the best techniques for creating drop, bar, molded, rolled, and sandwich variations. Every cookie is photographed in glorious full color, with step-by-step instructions on how to prepare, bake, and store your creations. Entries include fascinating historical background, helpful baking notes, and serving suggestions for each delicious variety.

Whether you’re a baking novice or veteran pastry chef, mouthwatering home-baked confections are just minutes away with Field Guide to Cookies!


Butter Celebrates! By Rosie Daykin

What’s a celebration without something delicious that’s been baked with love? Rosie Daykin, author of Butter Baked Goods and owner of the Vancouver bakery of the same name, believes that celebrating is about much more than just circling a date on the calendar. It’s a chance to spend time with your family and friends, to laugh really hard, to let things get a little chaotic, and to eat lots of delicious baked goods.

Whether you’re an experienced baker or just starting out, Rosie’s straightforward recipes are easy to follow and will produce irresistible results. Butter Celebrates! takes you into Butter’s pink-and-pistachio slice-of-heaven world, where every day is worth celebrating. It will inspire you to celebrate life and to create new traditions and memories along the way.


Hot Chocolate by Michael Turback

No longer just a simple, syrupy sweet drink, today’s hot chocolates are brimming with extraordinary flavors like cayenne, vanilla beans, Nutella, buttered rum, pistachios, wasabi, peanut butter, and malted milk balls. Featuring white chocolate foam, marshmallow cream, and frozen and fondue versions, the 60 recipes presented in Hot Chocolate are setting trends in haute chocolate consumption. Contributed by the world’s preeminent chocolatiers, including Vosges Haut-Chocolat, Serendipity 3, Citizen Cake, Fran’s Chocolates, Scharffen Berger Chocolate, and many more, these imaginative modern variations are for the hip chocoholic of any age.

A cup of hot chocolate is twice as rich in antioxidants as a glass of red wine. And, some would say, is just as intoxicating.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


The Perfect Cookie by The Editors at America’s Test Kitchen

Portable, fun to make, easy to gift, and open to countless flavor variations, cookies are everyone’s favorite sweet treat.

America’s Test Kitchen has years of experience making the very best cookies; in The Perfect Cookie, the test kitchen has collected all of that knowledge in one place for the definitive guide to cookie baking. This comprehensive anthology includes kitchen-tested, never-fail recipes for cookie jar classics, in addition to recipes for rich and chewy brownies, fruit-and-crumble-topped bars, quick no-bake confections, holiday favorites, and even candies like fudge and truffles. And, as only the test kitchen can, there are tips and tricks throughout the chapters, as well as an introductory section to get you started with insight on everything from what makes a cookie chewy versus crispy to what baking sheet you should buy so that your cookies bake evenly every time. The result? The perfect cookie.


Cookie Love by Mindy Segal and Kate Leahy

A new, edgier take on baking cookies, from a James Beard Award-winning chef and the owner of the popular Chicago restaurant, HotChocolate.

Mindy Segal is serious about cookies. And Cookie Love is your new go-to, never-fail reference for turn-out-perfectly-every-time cookie recipes. Mindy shares all of her secrets for turning classic recipes into more elevated, fun interpretations of everyone’s favorite sweet treat.

Inside you’ll find more than sixty perfected recipes for every kind of cookie including drop cookies, bars, sandwich cookies, shortbread, thumbprints, and more, as well as the best tricks and tools of the trade and everything you need to know to build the ideal cookie pantry.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


The Seasonal Baker by John Barricelli

Known for his delicious and gorgeous baked goods, John Barricelli of the SoNo Baking Company in Norwalk, Connecticut, has become a local celebrity. In The Seasonal Baker, he brings everyday baking with fruits and vegetables within reach for home cooks, offering 135 sweet and savory recipes for all seasons.

John patiently walks readers through his recipes for breakfast treats, quick breads, poached fruits, cookies, pies, cakes, quiches, pizzas, and more. He shares his Pears “Belle Hélène,” using the fall’s bounty and including suggestions for how best to submerge fruit for poaching and he presents Joan’s Carrot Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting and Spiced Pecans for a cozy winter treat.

In his follow-up to his acclaimed The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook, John showcases the diversity of the produce, keeping us connected to the seasons. He also includes a definitive shopping guide on how to buy and prepare fruits and vegetables, and how best to store them for later use.

Through fall, winter, spring, and summer, this is the book you’ll turn to again and again for recipes that feel like home.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


Perfect Pies & More by Michele Stuart

After the success of Perfect Pies, National Pie Baking Champion (27 times!) Michele Stuart went back into the kitchen—the same kitchen in Vermont where she first dreamed up the award-winning creations that inspired her to open the popular Michele’s Pies shops. Returning there also meant returning to the cherished pies she learned to bake under her grandmother’s and mother’s watchful eyes, as well as the wonderful cakes, cookies, and other sweet treats that became their family tradition.

In her newest cookbook, Perfect Pies & More, Stuart delves deeper into her roots while creating delicious new memories made with love and care. Inside, you’ll find tantalizing recipes—some easy-to-bake, some requiring a bit more finesse—for dozens of her favorite fruit, nut, and cream pies, and so much more.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


Happy Baking!

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