Bake Club: 101 Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen

A single Instagram post during the 2020 pandemic from Tosi, a James Beard Award winner, cookbook author, and founder and owner of NYC’s Milk Bar, led to the creation of the Bake Club newsletter and Instagram sessions. Now Tosi funnels everything she has taught that virtual band of bakers into her latest ingeniously inventive cookbook. After an overview of basic baking ingredients and tools, the book breaks down into chapters such as “DIY Pantry,” “Dropoffable, Snacks,” and “Fancy Desserts.” Recipes themselves range from caramel sauce to English muffins to chocolate mirror cake. Perennial favorites, such as marshmallow treats (with assorted variations) and the classic condensed-milk version of fudge, are included, as well as more Milk Bar–specific recipes, including the one for cinnamon-toast cereal. Baking purists may blanche at some of Tosi’s culinary approaches, such as her version of lemon bars, which uses a boxed lemon cake mix in the crust and cream cheese in the filing. But Tosi’s easy, breezy writing style and welcoming tone will encourage both baking novices and longtime sweet chefs to give her way a try.