My cookbook MARBLED, SWIRLED, and LAYERED

I’ve been working on my first cookbook Marbled, Swirled, and Layered, for the past three years. Here’s a sneak peak of the book that will be released November 1st, 2016!

There is something slightly surreal about physically holding in my hand a copy of the first cookbook I’ve been working on for the past three years. After laboring on the recipes, writing the book and staring at the edits and all the physical print outs and virtual digital files of Marbled, Swirled, and Layered, I feel like you’ve seen it a million times already. BUT I also have never seen it PHYSICALLY bound together, as a real hardcover book. It’s sort of like when I went to see Mt. Rushmore a few years ago. I’ve seen these four presidents carved into the side of a mountain before because of all the photos and movie scenes that feature it. But I’ve actually never seen it before in real life. And it’s a freaky déjà vu feeling.

People keep on asking me if I am excited about the book coming out. And I am. Incredibly excited, beyond anything I could every possibly accurately describe in words. But I’m also nervous, so very nervous, about folks having it in their hands. And absolutely ecstatically happy. And also like I want to throw up a bit. It’s such a mix of emotions, ranging from a manic sort of throw-your-hands-in-the-air and run-down-the-street screaming MY BOOK IS REAL feeling to a panic sort of bury-my-face-in-my-pillow and never-face-anyone-again feeling. I want people to love this book as much as I do. And I’m fearful they won’t.

But in the end, this is happening. My book comes out November 1st (tomorrow!) and if I had to pick an emotion in the world-wind of various feelings that I have, it would be relief. Because finally FINALLY it will be out there and folks can see what I have been working on for so long. This labor of love is now real and the recipes that I’ve been working on for so long can finally see the light of day. The shift from writing a blog where I make a recipe and can post it the very next day to writing a book where I make a recipe and people can make it…two to three years later…was difficult. These recipes. I want people to make these recipes! They are so fun to make and ever more fun to eat. I love these recipes!

Recipes like my sparkling dark chocolate and raspberry-cream cheese chewy cookies, which I just made a batch of for my first book signing for the Northern California Independent Bookseller Association, are the sort of perfect example of punchy intense flavor coupled with the perfect chew and bite for a cookie. And the rosemary caramel and dark chocolate-potato chip tart drove ALL my recipe testers bonkers when I sent them the recipe to try out. I brought a version of it to a San Francisco Professional Food Society workshop that I was leading and people couldn’t stop raving about it. And when folks ask me what my favorite recipe in the book is (how can I answer that question? That’s like asking who your favorite child is?) I usually point them to either the Italian spice-tomato and Parmesan-garlic pretzel knots or my chocolate chip and reverse chip cookies. The honest truth is, I adore ALL these recipes and have been impatiently waiting for my book to come out so people can have the recipe and experience how good these items are!

On top of that, each recipe has one or two (occasionally three) variations that you can make. And I’ve included extensive tips and tricks and hints that hopefully will make baking easier for you in the kitchen. I’ve even written some (hopefully) informative sidebars on topics like how to customize your chocolate chip cookie, using different flours for texture in your baked goods and ways to create color using natural ingredients. In fact I created so many awesome and informative sidebars and front matter that a lot of it had to be cut from the book! I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the all extra material.

Tomorrow my book finally gets released. Folks can order it from a variety of places online, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble as well as your local independent bookstores through IndieBound. But if you have a local bookstore that you love, I definitely encourage you to visit them and see if they stock it. I used to be a former independent bookseller and I know how important it is to support those small independent stores. And if you DO see it in the wild, please send me a picture! You can post it on my Facebook wall or Instagram it and tag me with @eatthelove #marbledswirledlayered. Or you can just email it to me! The fact that it is out there makes me so very happy. I can’t wait for folks to bake my recipes!

And if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ll be doing a signing at Omnivore Books on Wednesday, November 9th. There will be other book signings around the San Francisco Bay Area later in November and December if you can’t make it to that event but the Omnivore Books event is my launch party and I’ll be baking samples for it that you won’t be able to get anywhere else! I hope to see you there. The other book signings event details are to come.

And if you live in Chicago or St. Louis, I’ll also be there in mid-December. More details and information to come for those too!