7 Cookbooks You’ll Actually Love + 8 Food Novels to Devour
I love a good cookbook. My collection ranges from YouTuber books to the 365 things you can make in a Crock-Pot. And whenever I’m looking to experiment, the first thing I do is sit on my kitchen floor and start pulling books from the shelves.
Disclaimer: The following post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, I’ll receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Admittedly, there are a handful of cookbooks I love a little extra. These are the recipe books studded with ragged post-it notes, stained pages, and extra flexible spines. There are even recipes in some of these books that I actually follow. I know! How shocking!
So, this is just a short sweet post to share some of my favorite cookbooks, why I love them, and which ones I have on my Christmas list. I’d love to get a conversation going about what your favorite books are in the comments, too. I would love to add some new ones to my collection!
Elle Jay at Home’s Top 7 Cook Books
There are 8 cookbooks that I love just a little bit more than the rest. Ranked in order of how often I use them, these books are packed with wonderful recipes, of course, but they have a little something extra, too.
The Best Baking Cookbook: Taste of Home Baking Book
Within the Taste of Home Baking Book’s pages, hundreds of home bakers sent in the recipes that have worked for them through the years. If ever you wanted to bake as part of a community, it’s through this cookbook.
Some authors admit to not testing every single recipe in their book. That’s not the case with a great compilation book like this. You know that every submission was tested by its parent. And maybe it’s just me, but it feels like a book filled with love from the second you open its pages.
My copy is well-loved with oil stains on some of the pages, flour sticking some of them together, and sticky notes bookmarking things I want to try. The spine is broken, so it opens up to how to make a pie crust because I rely on the proportions from one of the recipes, even though I always add whiskey and use butter instead of shortening.
But of all my cookbooks, this one is my absolute favorite.
The Cookbook I Bought for the Pictures: Crazy About Cookies
I was given a copy of Crazy About Cookies to review when I was interning at ModernMom way back when. It was fun to read through and test things out. There are so many tips for creating themed cookies for every holiday and party you could imagine.
But the reason I wanted a copy for myself was the mid century modern gingerbread house in the back. I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen! Since then, though, I’ve fallen for a number of the recipes and relied on the royal icing tips on a number of occasions.
I even went and bought another of her books, Crazy About Cupcakes, too. It’s the same concept of mix-and-match cake and frosting recipes with themed party plans. It’s so much fun for baking with your kids!
The Best Bread Cookbook: Bread Making
My husband bought this book because he wanted to make baguettes. There was this whole period after our honeymoon where he thought he was going to make a bunch of baguettes every week for his lunch.
However, since then, this has become the best bread resource ever. When I was dealing with my sourdough starter, and repeatedly messing it up, this book helped me get it on track.
And when I was testing pizza dough recipes, the knowledge in these pages taught me the correct texture to look for and how to develop stronger flavor.
With this book, yes, the recipes are great! But the number one reason this book is my favorite is that it reads like a textbook on everything you ever needed to know about bread making.
A Cookbook I Bought from a Youtuber: Eat What You Watch
You know I love Binging with Babish. Andrew Rea recreates recipes from movies and TV, and he’s hilarious while doing it. I don’t even think I have a favorite… okay, maybe the Parks and Rec burger episode.
The recipe in this book I love best is the recipe for cheddar grits. It’s a recipe based on My Cousin Vinny, and it’s gold. Now, I prefer to do it with smoked gouda instead of cheddar, but we’ll talk about that later.
This is a book I just like to sit down and flip through. Truthfully, I just loved the show and wanted to collect a little piece of it. The recipes are fun. It makes me hopeful for my own foodie career. It’s just the kind of book that feels good to flip through.
Cookbooks I Bought Because of a TV Show: Bob’s Burgers and The Adventurous Eater’s Club
This one is a tie. On the one hand, I love Bob’s Burgers. It’s a hilarious show about a family running an unsuccessful burger joint despite creating gourmet burgers with punny names. This book is full of recipes created based on the Burger of the Day from Bob’s blackboard.
Hubs’ best friend came to visit, and we spent the day searching for black garlic just to make the Bet it All on Black Garlic Burger. We didn’t end up finding any. But we did use roasted garlic, and the recipe still turned out great. Plus, it was an adventure!
The Adventurous Eater’s Club comes from Misha Collins. I love him as Castiel from Supernatural, of course. But he’s also a humanitarian who runs a worldwide charity scavenger hunt. So when this lovable goofball created a cookbook with his wife and kids, I needed it.
The recipes are made to get your kids interested in all kinds of foods, but the best part is that his kids made up nonsensical (and some interesting) recipes. The idea is that you should let your kids play with food when you can so they learn to try new things and eat without fear.
A Cookbook from a Restaurant I Loved: Lemonade
Back when we lived in LA, Hubs’ office was in the heart of Venice, just across the street from this place called Lemonade. For some reason, I had to pick him up at the office, but he was running late. With the $10 I had in my pocket, I walked into Lemonade and got a side of truffle macaroni and cheese and a dessert.
Honestly, I don’t remember what the dessert was, but I have never stopped craving that macaroni and cheese. Holy cow was it delicious!
So, when I stumbled on this cookbook with all their secrets, I had to get it. No, the mac and cheese isn’t in here, and yes, that was disappointing. However, the quality recipes in here plus the gorgeous photography serve as constant inspiration.
Books About Food that You’ll Love, Too!
If you love food so much that you want to read about it, too, I’m with you. Here’s my food-love novel list, aka your Christmas shopping list.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
I mistakenly started reading this postpartum and spent a good bit of this sobbing, but it’s a beautiful story about a pepper-loving girl told from a variety of perspectives. Love for family and food is all here for you!
Delicious by Ruth Reichl
This is a perfectly cozy novel about a young woman scared to bake despite her talent. She takes a job with a New York food magazine, and finds a series of mysterious letters between young food-love Lulu and her role model, James Beard.
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Set in and after WWII, in a small village occupied by Germans, a family holds the secrets to a terrible tragedy. You can’t go wrong with anything by Joanne Harris.
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell
Okay, this isn’t a novel, but it’s hilarious, hard to put down, and still fun even if you’ve already seen the movie. As a food blogger, it’s inspirational to see the work behind-the-scenes.
The whole Chocolat series by Joanne Harris
There are 3 (soon to be 4) books in the world of Chocolat, and each is fabulous. Chocolat, The Girl with No Shadow, and Peaches for Monsieur le Curé all stand alone, but they’re better together. The semi-supernatural world of Vianne Rocher set in a cozy corner of France drips with chocolatey descriptions and intriguing storylines.
The fourth book, The Strawberry Thief is coming out in August 2020, and I can’t want to get my copy.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for a great gift for a food lover, something special for a cookbook enthusiast, or a self-care treat for your own chocolate-covered soul, I hope you’ve found something here to help.
These are my favorites, but I would love to hear about yours! Comment below and let me know what your best-loved cookbook is. And don’t forget to subscribe for weekly updates and a nifty weekly meal planning and grocery list worksheet.
