Kitchen Tape

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Dorie Greenspan, one of the most beloved and trusted voices in baking. We talk about the decades-spanning body of work that has made Dorie such a constant presence in home kitchens, from her collaborations with icons like Pierre Hermé and Julia Child to the warmth, clarity, and curiosity that define her own books. The conversation invites us into her sweet world and moves through intuition, endurance, recipe writing, family, the choice for a fully illustrated book and the quiet discipline of making people feel cared for through food.

And at the very end, Dorie receives a reveal that’s been building quietly across the entire season!

LEAVE A COMMENT TO WIN A COPY OF HER NEW BOOK!

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Mentioned in this episode:
• Dorie’s Anytime Cakes: A James Beard Award Winner's Collection of 100+ Simple Illustrated Recipes
• Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple
• Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook
• Dorie’s Cookies
• Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere
• Around My French Table: More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours
• Baking: From My Home to Yours
• Baking with Julia: Savor the Joys of Baking with America's Best Bakers
• The Settlement Cookbook by Simon Kander
• The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne
• Sift by Nicola Lamb
• A Book of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David
• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Helen Goh, internationally acclaimed pastry chef, longtime Ottolenghi collaborator, columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian, and author of Baking and the Meaning of Life and Sweet. Featuring 100 recipes that weave together Helen’s Malaysian and Australian heritage with Western and Middle Eastern influences, Baking and the Meaning of Life asks a larger question beneath the recipes: how do we build meaning in our lives? Through eight essays woven throughout the book, Helen explores baking as a practice of mindfulness, agency, competence, ritual, and connection — not simply as a way to make food, but as one of the many small acts that help us create purpose and community in a chaotic world. The conversation moves through her enviable cookbook collection, existentialism, the meanings of color, psychology, flavor, memory, and the quiet rigor behind recipes that feel both deeply comforting and profoundly intentional.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Baking and the Meaning of Life: How to Find Joy in 100 Recipes
• Sweet by Helen Goh and Yotam Ottolenghi
• Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee
• Kate Spade Green
• The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book
• The Flavor Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
• Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti
• Flour Hour Baking Podcast hosted by Jeremiah Duarte Bills and Amanda Faber
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• Ma Vie en Rose by Rose Levy Beranbaum
• The Artful Baker by Cenk Sonmezsoy
• Jikoni by Ravinder Bhogal

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Ella Quittner, author of Obsessed with the Best, to talk about what happens when curiosity meets obsessive recipe testing. Built around dozens of head-to-head comparisons, Ella’s book asks not just what tastes best, but how we arrive there — through repetition, methodology, instinct, and the strange culture of mass food discourse. We discuss the lineage of deeply practical cookbooks, the rise of personality-driven food media, and how humor, rigor, and experimentation can coexist on the same page. We dig into the epic photography in her cookbook, including, a portrait in bed with dessert. And why the perfect whipped cream matters!

Mentioned in this episode:
• Obsessed with the Best: 100+ Methodically Perfected Recipes Based on 20+ Head-to-Head Tests
• Joy of Cooking
• The New Basics Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso
• The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt
• Sweet Enough by Alison Roman
• Food Is a Feeling by Carla Lalli Music
• Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush
• Hello, Home Cooking by Ham El-Waylly

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Lisa Donovan, James Beard Award–winning author of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, now widely regarded as one of the definitive food memoirs of our time. We talk about hunger as both subject and structure — emotional, creative, intellectual, and literal — and dig into the discipline of memoir, writing food as personal narrative, and claiming authority in a voice shaped by appetite, loss, labor, and desire. The conversation moves through literary lineage, publishing realities, and why food writing endures when it tells the truth plainly, without performance.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan
• David Black Literary Agency
• Dear Women: Own Your Stories by Lisa Donovan for Food & Wine
• M. F. K. Fisher
• Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
• When French Women Cook by Madeleine Kamman
• Everything Is Under Control by Phyllis Grant
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron
• Desserts by Pierre Hermé and Dorie Greenspan
• Bernard Clayton Jr. (books)
• Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer
• Samin Nosrat

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Tanya Bush, author of Will This Make You Happy, to talk about baking as a way of moving through a year — emotionally, creatively, and practically. We discuss what it means to write from inside your own life, how recipes can hold both structure and feeling, and how Tanya expands the cookbook form through narrative, gently pushing against its traditional boundaries. We talk about what it means to break the mold without losing usefulness, and why baking often becomes a way to ask questions rather than answer them. The conversation moves between storytelling, routine, and the quiet search for meaning in everyday acts of making.

Mentioned in this episode:

Will This Make You Happy: Stories and Recipes from a Year of Baking by Tanya Bush

“Party Girl” (1995) Trailer

Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts: The Recipes of Del Posto’s James Beard Award–Winning Pastry Chef by Brooks Headley

Cooking As Though You Might Cook Again by Daniel Licht

Ruby Tandoh

Chloe Rose Crabtree, Bake Street London

Oliver Lee Costello, Toad Bakery

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen: A Memoir and Cookbook by Laurie Colwin

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Maria Zizka to talk about the art of collaboration in cookbook publishing. We dig into Maria’s own canon alongside the many influential books she’s helped bring into the world as a co-author, ghostwriter, and translator — working closely with some of the industry’s most respected voices. From shaping tone and structure to translating vision across cultures, projects, and personalities, Maria shares what it means to be a steady creative partner, how trust is built behind the scenes, and why some of the most enduring cookbooks are the result of deep, generous collaboration rather than singular authorship.

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Carrie Bachman, a renowned publicist and longtime champion of cookbook authors, to talk about advocacy, trust, and the quiet power behind a book’s success. From shaping long-term author careers to navigating launches, festivals, and press cycles, Carrie shares how taste, timing, and deep belief in a project help books find their readers — and why publicity, at its best, is about stewardship as much as strategy.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Big Bites: Wholesome, Comforting Recipes That Are Big on Flavor, Nourishment, and Fun by Kat Ashmore
• Gluten-Free Orange-Ricotta Company Cake (Kat Ashmore)
• Dorie Greenspan (including Dorie’s Anytime Cakes)
• Ina Garten
• Marcella Hazan
• Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen
• The Betty Crocker Cookbook
• William Morrow (now part of HarperCollins)
• Barbara Kafka
• Julia Child
• Jacques Pépin
• Emeril Lagasse
• Heartland Masala by Jyoti Mukharji
• Umma by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn
• American Library Association Conference
• Fancy Food Show
• Sisterly Love Collective
• The New Making of a Cook by Madeleine Kamman
• Nathan Myhrvold
• Darlingside

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Claire Gilhuly to talk about the editor’s role in shaping a cookbook from idea to finished pages. We dig into how Claire works with authors to refine voice, structure recipes, and build books that feel cohesive, usable, and distinct. The conversation moves through what makes a proposal stand out, how editorial vision develops across a list, and the balance between guiding a project and protecting what makes it singular. Claire also guides us through the full editorial team behind a book — bringing into view the many hands, roles, and decisions that shape a cookbook from the margins, often out of sight.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Après All Day by Kelley Epstein
• The Butter Book by Anna Stockwell
• Cake Picnic by Elisa Sunga
• Party Tricks and Tin to Table by Anna Hezel
• The Flavor of Fire by Kelsey Barnard Clark
• Every Season Is Soup Season and Platters and Boards by Shelly Westerhausen Worcel
• By Heart by Hailee Catalano
• Black Sea by Caroline Eden
• Ama by Josef Centeno
• Dobre Dobre by Laurel Kratochvila
• The Silver Palate Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso
• Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson
• Mochitsuki by Kristen Morita
• Small Victories by Julia Turshen
• Le Sud by Rebekah Peppler
• Islas by Von Diaz
• The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum
• Tenderheart by Hetty McKinnon
• Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker
• Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Aran Goyoaga, the James Beard Award–winning creator of Cannelle et Vanille and author of multiple groundbreaking gluten-free baking books, including The Art of Gluten-Free Bread. We talk about building technical authority in a space once dismissed as niche, how Aran’s work has reshaped expectations around gluten-free bread and pastry, and what it means to evolve from blogger to bestselling author while holding onto craft. We also cover Aran's evolution, workflow and recommended practices for someone who wants to photogragh their own books. The conversation moves through innovation, testing, photography, and the discipline required to make alternative baking feel both rigorous and deeply nourishing.

Mentioned in this episode:
• The Art of Gluten-Free Bread
• Cannelle et Vanille
• Small Plates and Sweet Treats
• Cannelle et Vanille
• Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple
• 101 Cookbooks by Heidi Swanson
• Orangette by Molly Wizenberg
• Smitten Kitchen
• Dorothy Brand
• Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond
• Justine Doiron
• Hetty McKinnon
• America’s Test Kitchen

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Jennifer Chong, cookbook and commercial photographer and host of the Photo Dump podcast, to talk about the role images play in how a cookbook is understood, used, and remembered. From shaping first impressions to guiding how a recipe is cooked, we dig into why photography is not secondary to the text, but integral to a book’s success. We also explore how Jennifer’s approach shifts between cookbooks and commercial work, what makes a strong image on the page, and how collaboration, trust, and clarity on set translate into photographs that hold up over time.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Jennifer Chong — website
• The Help Yourself Cookbook for Kids by Ruby Roth
• Cook This Book by Molly Baz
• Gjelina Cooks by Travis Lett
• Ren Fuller
• Photo Dump