Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu

Two years ago, I discovered a blog called Dessert First, a beautiful and really cool blog about baking. I noticed, because I was especially interested in this blog, that the author was really fascinating: she went to pastry school in the evenings after work and after graduation, she eventually quit her job to work in a bakery-- one in Oakland that I had been meaning to visit. Not only that, but she lived in San Francisco and she had a Chinese last name. I felt a connection, though I realized that just because someone bakes, lives in San Francisco and is Chinese does not make one a kindred spirit. It's silly, but I had this vague idea that if I commented on her blog often enough, she would notice me among her hundreds (hundreds!) of other followers and we would become friends. Just like that. Of course that didn't happen.

A year later, I was taking an online writing workshop in feature article writing. One of our assignments was to write a profile of someone we did not know. That meant coming out of our comfort zone to ask someone we didn't know for an interview and then writing the piece. I thought that this would be the perfect excuse to meet this blogger, named Anita. And the perfect excuse to push me out of my comfort zone.

Since Anita is a very nice person, she agreed to meet me at a bakery for the interview, and we talked and ate and drank hot cocoa for about an hour. During that time, she mostly talked about herself, but I also said I was interested in baking and offered to share my lovely, big kitchen for any baking projects she had. She said she was baking out of a postage-stamp-sized apartment kitchen. I also offered to help her get information from Ten Speed Press about submissions, since I have friends there. We did that whole, "yeah, we should get together sometime" thing.

But I was persistent for once in my life. I made it happen. After a few months of email correspondence, we eventually spent a Sunday in my kitchen making cinnamon rolls and lemon bars. Then, I invited her along with me to go the Cheese School of San Francisco class I had been wanting to attend. I was being proactive!

Soon after that, Anita emailed to ask for advice. She had been approached by a publishing company to write a cookie cookbook, and I helped her negotiate her contract. Since the contract had a completely unreasonable deadline, she enlisted three of her friends to help test the recipes. Thus, I spent several months last year baking cookies and feeding my happy friends. Many, many happy friends. The book is Field Guide to Cookies, and came out last winter.

The pocket-sized volume is a brick packed with 100 cookie recipes from around the world, each with a short historical explanation and background information. It's really quite comprehensive, which is surprising for a cookie cookbook. A full-color section in the middle shows pictures of each cookie, and there are several photographs of cookies that I baked, packed in a shoebox, and handed over to Anita, who brought them on a plane to Philadelphia for the photo shoot! If you have a copy, check out the molasses spice cookies and linzer cookies. I made those!

Since she did such a great job on that book, Anita's publisher has asked her to do another Field Guide book for them. This one on candy. When she told me, I immediately offered to help test recipes again! And, well, that's another blog post entirely.

Field Guide to Cookies by Anita Chu