the cook stack

Once I finished cooking through all of Dining In, I decided that I wanted to cook my way through another cookbook. The tough part, with an approximately 100 book collection, was deciding which book.

So, I spent a few weeks between Christmas and mid-January 2026 “test driving” some of my cookbooks. The books I chose were:

1. Cook This Book by Molly Baz – like Dining In, the recipes appeared straightforward but interesting
2. Milk Street: Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball – I wanted a few more quick and easy dinners to put in our menu rotation
3. Simple Thai Food by Leela Punyaratabandhu – ever since moving to the suburbs, my husband and I have been on the hunt for good Thai takeout. I thought diving deep into a single country’s cuisine would be a wonderful learning experience, and we could fill the Thai food void in our local restaurants
4. Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi – this book has rave reviews on the Cookbook Lovers subreddit and most recipes can be made gluten-free for my husband to eat

Ultimately, I selected 2 books, Cook This Book and Snacking Cakes. Milk Street: Tuesday Nights and Simple Thai Food both seemed too ambitious for this year for me. From Simple Thai Food, I learned to make restaurant-quality yellow curry, but it took an hour of work just to make the yellow curry paste with a mortar and pestle. Delicious and something to look forward to in the future, but not exactly weeknight friendly. I made several winners from Milk Street: Tuesday Nights, but they were only winners for my husband and myself. There is not enough in the book that my kids would eat, as the flavors are too *interesting*, for lack of a better word. Moreover, the book clocks in at nearly 200 recipes. I would have to commit to making my husband and I a second dinner after the kids go to bed about four days a week in 2026. Not right now!

So, this leaves me with Cook This Book and Snacking Cakes, two books I am very excited about.

Cook This Book has 95 recipes, broken into 11 chapters:

• Chicken (8 recipes)
• Beef, Pork, and Lamb (8 recipes)
• Seafood (9 recipes)
• Eggs (8 recipes)
• Noodles (9 recipes)
• Grains and Legumes (6 recipes)
• Salads (10 recipes)
• Vegetables (16 recipes)
• Soup (5 recipes)
• Snacks (7 recipes)
• Baking (9 recipes)

I like this chapter division – with the exception of a breakfast and sandwich section, the chapter subjects cover just about every food group we like to eat. I also like that the number of recipes in each chapter is incredibly balanced for a cookbook (this is unusual, as cookbook fanatics like me know). Only the “Vegetables” chapter has more than 10 recipes, and all other chapters range from 5-10 recipes. Like with Dining In, I am going to begin this project with the vegetable chapter.

Here are some other first impressions of this book:

• At first glance, Molly Baz seems similar to Alison Roman – millennial chefs and food writers with relatively simple recipes that deliver on big flavors. I am looking forward to understanding the nuances that distinguish them; I cannot put my finger on it now, but they are distinct
• Cook This Book uses lots of slang. Like nearly every other book review, I find these nicknames annoying. When skimming the table of contents, there are some recipes I cannot figure out what the main ingredient or flavor profile is supposed to be. The names only come in handy when trying to convince a small child to try a “sweetie P” or “jammy pepp” rather than a “sweet potato” or “bell pepper”, respectively
• The photography in Cook This Book is not my favorite. There appears to be some filter on all the images that makes it hard to see the colors and textures of the food in detail
• I do like the way Molly Baz writes her recipe instructions. They are very clear, and she has a whole section at the beginning of each recipe walking you through the mise en place. Most cookbooks require one, two, or even three read-throughs of the recipe to figure out the mise yourself

Now, since Cook This Book has just 9 baking recipes, which is not enough for my sweet tooth, I would also like to bake my way through Snacking Cakes as a side project. There are about 50 cakes. I have read through the book once, but have not yet tallied all of the recipes. The three main chapters are “Fruity Cakes”, “Warm and Toasty Cakes”, and “Chocolate Cakes”. I will say, as to be expected for a book on mostly one-bowl cakes, the recipes tend to blend together. There were not many that stood out as being super interesting. But, I did note that it is the unusual baking book that contains recipes both my husband and I would enjoy together.

I think that is plenty of work to kick off 2026 in the kitchen; I am looking forward to documenting my progress on a blog as well, which in of itself is a new project for me!

I’ll leave you with a photo of the cookbook stack on my kitchen counter for this month: