Cookbook Recipe Testing, Vol. 1

Welcome to another rendition of my Latest Recipe Testing series.

Lots of exciting things to share with you today! I thought it would be fun to take a break from recipes, and show you some cookbook behind the scenes.

Fourth Cookbook Coming in 2025

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m working on my fourth cookbook. It’s going to be my biggest, most polished book yet: 100 recipes covering many baking categories like breads, muffins, pies, cakes, cookies, cupcakes, etc. A handful of recipes will be from my website, but most (about 75) will be completely new and exclusive to the book. So in between the new recipes you find published on my website, I’ve also been testing new recipes for the book!

Lately I’ve been working my way through the cookie chapter, as well as the yeasted breads chapter.

The book will be published in 2025. I’m giving myself enough time and creative space to produce my best work for this project, while simultaneously keeping my website updated with new content. (And keeping my head on straight.)

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Anyway, here’s a sneak peek at some of the recently developed cookbook recipes. I promise they are worth the wait. This is not the photography you’ll see in the book; these are photos taken for reference during the testing process.

Chocolate cherry cookies: A chewy, extra fudge-like cookie with a sweet maraschino cherry in the center. And of course, a generous drizzle of melted chocolate on top. This one took a bit of testing as the cherry released a lot of liquid and created over-spreading.

This fall-favorite recipe for brown butter pumpkin oatmeal cookies is getting a glow-up for its debut in print, with a little sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice on top of the brown butter glaze. The hardest part about testing these cookies and rewriting the recipe for the book was determining exactly how much moisture you need to blot out of the pumpkin… and figuring out how to write that in the instructions! (The easiest part was finding plenty of people who wanted to taste test them.)

You may have tried chocolate crinkles, and maybe even lemon crinkles, but ohmygoodness you haven’t truly loved a crinkle cookie until you’ve tried these pistachio crinkles. They practically melt in your mouth, and taste testers RAVED. I am really excited about this new cookie recipe.

Here’s another peek at these, before I figured out how to get them to properly crinkle like the photo above. I had lots of happy friends and neighbors and even my dentist (who else brings cookies to their dentist?!) taste test the first few batches.

I also stepped off the beaten cookie path and in a different direction with a savory cookie recipe! These slice-and-bake-style savory cookies are perfect for adding to a cheese and charcuterie board, or simply enjoying with a glass of wine. I know they don’t look like much (this is just an iPhone photo!), but they’re salty, peppery, herby, and hard to stop eating.

And what’s a cookie chapter without a new holiday cookie recipe?! These chocolate peppermint sandwich cookies include a festive peppermint buttercream. Even Santa will have to wait until the book comes out to try these. Sorry, Santa!

I also spent a lot of time working on a new crumb cake-style cookie. These cookies were an absolute mess when I first started. The crumb topping either (1) spread all over the place or (2) looked like ground beef. The final recipe you’ll find in the book stays nicely put on the cookies, and they’re less ground-beefy-looking. LOL. Excuse the blurry photo, this is a screenshot of a video I took…

You’ll also find these fan-favorite peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in the book, too!

Have you seen my Instagram stories about the strawberry lemon cookie saga? The swirl concept just wasn’t working; the texture was way off and the lemon flavor wasn’t shining through as much as I wanted. At some point, I had to give up and move on. However, you’ll find another strawberry lemon cookie and while they aren’t swirled, they are EVEN BETTER… and probably my favorite new cookie recipe in the book. I have the rest of my team testing them this week.

There will be about 15 cookie recipes in the book, so this is just a little preview. 🙂

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Moving on to the yeasted bread chapter…

I can’t get enough of this cinnamon raisin swirl bread, which I adapted from my homemade cinnamon swirl bread, with some adjustments. It is super soft, extra cinnamon-swirly, and makes the most delicious cinnamon raisin toast.

I get a lot of questions about making homemade sandwich bread with whole wheat flour, and usually point readers in the direction of this multigrain bread. But I have a new sandwich bread recipe going in the book that includes oats and whole wheat flour, and it’s unbelievably soft and flavorful.

Right now, I have new recipes for jalapeño cheddar bread and brioche-style sandwich rolls in the works, and you’ll be sure to find my popular pizza dough and soft pretzel recipes in the book as well. This is my 1st cookbook with some savory recipes in it. (Quiche, stromboli, cheesy popovers!)

My team and I are also testing seasonal pie/crisp recipes right now using spring and summer fruits that you can’t get any other time of year. I’ve never been more excited to work on a project, and I can’t wait for it to all come together. Thank you for your patience!!

More to come soon. In the meantime, I’m sharing some behind-the-scenes snippets on my Instagram Stories, so be sure to pop in and check them out. And if you want even more, here is my cookbook recipe testing, volume 2.

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Q: Which of these new recipes are you most excited to try?