Better Baking

Updating classic baked goods with flavourful whole grains, nuts, flours, fruits, vegetables, and fats.

After more than a dozen years developing recipes for food and health magazines and collaborating with noted pastry chefs, Genevieve Ko was determined to create treats that were just as indulgent as their original counterparts, as well as more full flavoured and nourishing. In a word, better. Healthful oils prove superior to butter, giving Mocha Chip Cookies crisp shells and molten insides, liberating the citrus in Lemon Layer Cake with Olive Oil Curd, and tenderizing Melting Walnut Snowballs. Refined white sugar pales beside concentrated sweeteners like pure maple syrup, brown sugar, and molasses in muffins and granola. Pomegranate Pistachio Baklava uses reduced pomegranate syrup instead of the usual saccharine one. Nubbly flours with personality—whole wheat, spelt, rye, buckwheat, graham flour, and almond flour—bring richness to such desserts as Glazed Apple Cider Doughnuts. And pureed fruits and vegetables (beets in Red Velvet Roulade with Strawberry Cream Cheese; grated zucchini in Chocolate School Party Sheet Cake) keep desserts extra moist.

One hundred and fifty recipes:
• Cookies • Crisps • Muffins • Scones, Biscuits and Morning Pastries • Bars • Puddings and Custards • Quick Breads • Cobblers, Crisps, and Crumbles • Cakes • Tarts • Pies

About the Author

Genevieve Ko has collaborated with many chefs on books, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Pichet Ong, and Sarabeth Levine. She has been an editor at Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, and Gourmet and has written for Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Self, and more.