Bon Appetit Desserts

What kind of people would take on the crazy challenge of creating three huge—and I do mean huge—cookbooks in the space of about five years?

Well, I guess that would be us.

But, really, the topic at hand is a natural. For more than fifty years,
Bon Appétit
has been creating the most luscious cakes, cheesecakes, pies, puddings, frozen desserts, candies, and cookies on the planet. Our commitment to dessert recipes is unparalleled in magazine history. The hard part was trimming the list down to “only” 650 recipes … or a few more (we couldn’t help ourselves).

Of course, I turned to senior food editor Sarah Tenaglia and associate food editor Lena Birnbaum for the monumental task of selecting the recipes that would best represent the fantastic scope and delicious diversity of our acclaimed desserts. And that’s just what they did—incorporating everything from a simple, classic vanilla ice cream to a showstopping three-tiered wedding cake. Then they and food department colleagues Janet McCracken and Selma Morrow evaluated every recipe to make sure each was up to date. They retested some (not many needed it) and even created a few brand-new ones just for this book. Then our longtime food editor Kristine Kidd evaluated the recipes and assigned each a “whisk rating” to let you know at a glance the difficulty level of those Old-Fashioned Brownies (one whisk) or the Profiteroles with Caramel Sauce (four whisks).

Because we also wanted this to be the definitive guide to dessert preparation, we included extensive recipe headnotes, tips, sidebars, and chapters on stocking your dessert pantry, buying the proper equipment, and mastering baking techniques. These were researched and written by an expert group of
Bon Appétit
staffers and contributors: Amy Albert, Nina Elder, Camille Hahn, Jeanne Thiel Kelley, Janet McCracken, and Rochelle Palermo. And on pages 636-37, you’ll find the names of the dozens of men and women who made this book what it is by creating and testing recipes, copyediting and proofreading, and checking every fact. I’m grateful to all of them for their commitment to
Bon Appétit’s
legendary quality and exacting standards.

Executive editor Victoria von Biel saw from the beginning what this book could and should be—not just a compendium of delicious recipes, but the comprehensive desserts cookbook everyone would want to keep, and use repeatedly. Victoria—herself an enthusiastic and expert dessert maker who gets an eager assist in the kitchen from her two daughters—oversaw the
book’s creation and made sure that every aspect was considered from the point of view of the cook at home, whether that meant offering detailed instructions on beating egg whites or defining culinary terms we sometimes take for granted.

Needless to say, the logistics involved in putting together a book like this are daunting, and I’m beyond grateful to editorial business director Marcy MacDonald for handling with her usual aplomb the tasks of clearing rights to every recipe, obtaining permissions, shepherding the contract process, working with our colleagues at Andrews McMeel, and coordinating all the in-house business matters (which are endless and vital). Many thanks as well to Marcy’s assistant, Zoë Alexander, and to my assistant, Marcia Hartmann Lewis, who did double duty: managing my insane schedule and working with Zoë to secure and give proper credit for each of the recipes in the book. Frederika Brookfield lent her considerable expertise to the publicity and public relations aspects.