In Defense Of Baking
Mar. 30th, 2026 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leeseokminTo date, the best gift I have ever received is Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person. While it isn’t the first cookbook I have owned (that honour goes to Kristina Cho’s Mooncakes & Milkbread—very SF choice, I’m aware), I’ve made more recipes from Dessert Person than any other cookbook in my possession.
This post is ambitious: it is a combination of an overview, highlighting my favourite recipes so far, outlining my baking goals in relation to Dessert Person this year, and an overall reflection of it after three years of baking from it. It is also a foray into writing—it’s been a while since I’ve written anything because of writer’s block but I’m hoping this takes away the fear of it, seeing as baking is my second favourite thing after writing.
What is Dessert Person?
Dessert Person is divided into seven sections, including a section dedicated to foundational recipes. On average, each section contains 15 recipes. For the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about the six primary sections. In total, there are 90 recipes, which are helpfully laid out in a recipe matrix, with the Y-axis representing the difficulty level (on a scale of 1-5), and the X-axis representing the total time for the recipe (inclusive of chill time). The recipe matrix is my favourite feature of the book because it simplifies the decision making process: if you’re at a certain skill level, and you only have a specific amount of time available to you, the matrix makes it easy to choose. It also presents an alternate method of progression through the recipes; following the matrix in order of difficulty allows you to build on your technical skill level as you bake.
Sitting down and writing this, I’ve realised that I haven’t actually baked through much of the book. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time thinking about baking from the book and perhaps, once or twice, I may have even purchased ingredients with the intention of trying out a recipe, but statistically, I’ve only made 20% of the recipes. For those curious, the section I’ve baked out of the most is the Bars & Cookies section (I did not know this before I sat down to write this post; it doesn’t entirely make sense) with the Layer Cakes & Fancy Desserts and Breads & Savoury sections tying for second (this makes more sense). For the extra curious, I’ve included a full list of the recipes and my progress within a particular section at the end of the overview; the recipes in bold are the ones I have attempted so far. Given that I’ve owned it for three years, I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Embarrassed? Frustrated? I thought about it a bit further and came to two conclusions as to why I’m only a fifth of the way through.
The first is that Saffitz takes a seasonal approach to recipe development. This is built into the page layout: the header of every recipe points out the season it is intended for. To no one’s surprise, the pies and tarts section is driven by summer produce (I did the math: of 15 recipes, 6 use summer produce). This is not a bad thing. After all, it is a universal fact that late June cherries are way better than the April harvest. The problem? Given that Saffitz resides in New York, and I lived in Kuala Lumpur between 2023 and 2025, the fruits that she calls for were inordinately expensive. It would be different if she had a recipe for durian pie (I think this would be delicious, since durian has a custard-like texture) but that is not the case.
The second issue is that the recipes often call for specialty ingredients. This was an easier problem to deal with in Kuala Lumpur, where local bakeries and home bakers alike are chasing standards set in Copenhagen. Ingredients like cornmeal, rye flour, and canned pumpkin puree are now available in export-focused grocery stores, and if not, they are available at Bake With Yen (a local chain of baking supplies that expanded in the wake of post-pandemic baking hobbyists). In Prague, however, these ingredients are difficult to find. Despite the proximity to the Nordic countries, the bakery standards in Prague have been slow to pick up. They’re improving—for sure—but nowhere near Malaysian levels, let alone Nordic ones. Hobby baking also appears focused on traditional Czech, Central European, or Eastern European recipes, which for the large part, are unfussy, often made with pantry staples and a whisk.
Here lies my challenge: how much progress will I make with Dessert Person in the next year, given that my access to ingredients has changed drastically?
Pies & Tarts (13% complete)
Bars & Cookies (33% complete)
Layer Cakes & Fancy Desserts (29% complete)
Breakfast & Brunch (13% complete)
Breads & Savoury Baking (27% complete)
Did you save room for dessert?
Of the 18 recipes I’ve made from this book, there are 5 that I absolutely adore. They are, in no particular order, the Pull-Apart Sour Cream and Chive Rolls, the Coffee Coffee Cake, the Strawberry Cornmeal Layer Cake, the Blueberry Slab Pie (video linked is modified from the original cookbook recipe, but I generally use the measurements from this), and the Meyer Lemon Tart with an honourable mention to the Peanut Butter and Concord Grape Sandwich Cookies.
As a child, I went to quite a few hotel buffets. After the dessert table, what I looked forward to the most was the free flow of dinner rolls and salted butter. Salted butter was something of a novelty to me at that time—we were a margarine household—and the combination of a pillowy soft roll, smeared with salty butter, was a revelation every time. In fact, I would often ruin my appetite gorging on dinner rolls and dessert alone. I still do that at buffets now, albeit with a touch more moderation. Between this and a long-lasting addiction to anything sour cream and onion flavoured, the sour cream and chive rolls are my own personal kryptonite. I’ve made them four times now, and every time, I have to hold myself back from polishing half the tray. It’s dire. Saffitz’s recipe yields a particularly soft roll—she uses the tangzhong method, think Japanese milk bread—almost melt in your mouth, with the right balance of sourness and a good amount of chives. I have also substituted the chives for spring onion before and the result was just as phenomenal. If I had to choose between a toasted roll of this and garlic bread, the sour cream and chive roll would win four out of five times. It’s also so good for any kind of sandwich but especially a breakfast sandwich.
My aunt used to make something she called coffee cake. Later in life I found out that it was a pound cake recipe, with instant coffee added to milk to bring that punchy coffee flavour. Imagine, then, when I had a slice of coffee cake for the first time in San Francisco, and it didn’t taste like coffee; I only learned later than coffee cake meant a cake typically served with coffee. Saffitz’s Coffee Coffee Cake was the answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. It is a fiddly recipe that contains three components (cake batter, streusel topping and a coffee ribbon), but it is made for the coffee lover in your life. The first time, I massively fucked up the spice measurements and ended up with a cardamom flavoured mess (still delicious) but I’ve nailed it every time since. The one drawback however is that it is a huge serving (a 13” x 9” cake), making it an excellent choice for entertaining.
If I need to bring a dessert to a party, the Strawberry Cornmeal Layer Cake and the Blueberry Slab Pie are my go-tos. At my partner’s office Christmas party last year, I had people hunting me down to tell me how good the Blueberry Slab Pie was. I would describe both of them as medium effort recipes with high payoffs. The cornmeal cake has three components plus assembly, and the pie has two components plus assembly. Some components from both recipes can be made ahead and once everything is ready, comes together quickly. The cornmeal cake is a great play on strawberry shortcake; the texture is more tender than a traditional one, and as a pie crust lover first and foremost, the pie has the perfect ratio of filling to crust.
I will be honest: I have not nailed the Meyer Lemon Tart yet. My bad luck with lemon tarts began at 13, where my first attempt at a lemon meringue pie ended up with the crust falling apart and floating pieces half-baked into my lemon custard. The end result of my only attempt with Meyer Lemon Tart was not nearly as dramatic; I had simply overbaked the custard filling. I’m still bad at determining the doneness level of baked custard desserts and the jiggle test never fucking works. Or maybe the last time I made it, my oven just sucked. Even with an overbaked custard, this tart was delicious. I love lemon curd in general and this tart is not embarrassed of being so sour you feel it in your teeth.
The spectacle of dessert
Every year since 2023, I have told myself this is the year I bake every recipe from Dessert Person. Given that there’s nine months left in the year, it is unrealistic that this year is the year I do it. That, factored with the rising cost of ingredients and my current unemployment means that 2026 is not the year I do it. All that said, I want 2026 to be the year that I bake a minimum of 10 recipes from the book. I’ll be making the Carrot Pecan Cake for a friend’s birthday at the end of March, so that’s one recipe off the list.
Selecting the other nine recipes is a bit more difficult. What do I want to bake? Which bakes would push me to develop my skills further? Which ones utilise produce I can find easily in Prague? If I had to rank my favourite types of desserts in order, it would look like this: pies & tarts, puddings & custards, bread & pastries, with cakes and cookies battling it out for last place depending on the day. Ideally, I would spend the rest of the year completing the pies and tarts section but butter is a key (and expensive!) ingredient in pie/tart dough, so it is not meant to be.
I managed to narrow down the list to the following nine recipes (also asterisked above), in no particular order: Flourless Chocolate Wave Cake, Pistachio Linzer Tart, Blackberry Caramel Tart, Peach Melba Tart, Brown Butter & Sage Sables, Minty Lime Bars, Brown Butter Corn Muffins, A Little Bit of Everything Bagels, and Miso Buttermilk Biscuits.
Most of these are sweet recipes, rather than savoury ones, but they fall into one of two categories: recipes I’ve been meaning to make for a long time or recipes that present a new baking challenge for me. The Blackberry Caramel tart, for example, is something I’ve been meaning to bake since I received the book, and was impossible because even at the peak of the season, blackberries start at RM 22 for 125 grams in Malaysia. For context, the recipe calls for 510 grams of blackberries—I do not have that kind of money! In Prague, however, berry season is a thing! I might even be able to get my berries from the farmer’s market! I could make a day of it! I’m already excited, picturing preparing my tart case on Friday and making a trip to the market early on Saturday morning. Realistically, I’ll only wake up at 11, get to the market at noon, grumble at the berries that have been picked over and take my ass to Tesco. I will still hold onto the ideal version for a chance it might happen.
I chose the sable because it will present me with a new challenge. I am not good at making short cookie doughs but I love short cookies. I also think it will be interesting flavour wise as brown butter and sage are often used in a savoury cooking context rather than in desserts. As for the bagel, the cooking method alone is enough of a challenge and that's before factoring in having to shape a bagel. If I nail it, however, I can join legions of tradwives in the weekly task of restocking my kitchen with homemade bread—I do want to be this kind of household, but obviously not in a trad wife way. It’s more of a seize the means of production way. And I’ll be able to have an everything bagel breakfast sandwich, which I haven’t had since 2022.
In an ideal world, I’ll follow through with my selection and write a post at the end of the year detailing the bakes, so let’s keep our fingers crossed and look out for that.
I am a dessert person
It feels egregious to review a cookbook without having cooked more than 50% of the recipes which is why I’ve chosen to reflect on my experience so far instead of prescribing a rating to it.
Saffitz says it herself in the introduction: Dessert Person is a defense of baking … I wrote this book to celebrate and defend my love of desserts, and also to empower reluctant home bakers to work with new ingredients, attempt new techniques, and bake with more confidence (13).
I’m here to say that while it is a good book, it is not for the baker who is starting from 0.
Within the recipe matrix, recipes with a difficulty rating of 1 could be accomplished within 1-2 hours, which is fair as I assume someone starting from 0 wouldn’t want to spend more time making something. Some options I found were the Miso Buttermilk Biscuits, the Kabocha Turmeric Tea Cake, the Spiced Honey and Rye Cake, the Almond Butter Banana Bread and the Poppy Seed Almond Cake. These weren’t complicated technique wise: most of the cake batter can be made with a whisk but all of them required either a specialty ingredient or equipment.
Even if you made the argument that ingredients like miso and almond butter have become pantry staples, it is untrue from a non-American perspective. An ethnic household that doesn’t eat Japanese food regularly isn’t going to know what to do with leftover miso (sorry, Mom) and unless I had a severe peanut allergy, I would never choose almond butter over peanut butter. In a largely monoethnic society like Czechia, miso isn’t stocked in Tesco. This means that even to make the most basic recipe from this cookbook, you’d have to buy ingredients that you might not have a use for outside of the recipe. It makes more sense to buy/gift Dessert Person to someone who is already on their baking journey, who is willing to change up the flavour profile on a classic because they’re ready to experiment and have fun with baking rather than someone trying to build up their basics.
Before I watched Sohla El-Waylly’s pound cake tutorial, I always assumed I’d creamed my butter and sugar long enough. I went on to fuck up that poundcake recipe because I weighed out 87 grams of flour instead of 187 grams (rookie mistake, I’m aware) but I learned two very important things from it. The first is that most homebakers are not carrying out a step for long enough and the second being that if the amount of an ingredient strikes your baking intuition as being wrong, it probably is.
Eric Kim talked about recipe literacy on Instagram sometime last year, and it has stuck with me since. I bring this up because to follow through with Dessert Person, you need a moderate to high level of recipe literacy. Following a recipe can take you far, but there are some skills you develop through practice. ‘Only with cooking do people have trouble accepting that sometimes the recipe doesn’t come out because you haven’t graduated that class yet. So try again!’ Kim says.
Saffitz is not a bad recipe writer. Quite the opposite, in fact: she makes it a point to give visual, tactile and audible cues for a recipe on top of estimated time frames to achieve the result. That, along with uploading video tutorials for some of her recipes to her YouTube channel, allows one to follow along better and develop that all important recipe literacy. She makes it a point to explain the why’s of a technique/ingredient choice within her written recipes, and occasionally delves into more detail on her channel.
Even with this, I am able to bake better through the book because I have, at the very least, a moderate level of recipe literacy. I know what properly creamed butter and sugar looks like and how to check on the proofing progress of a yeasted dough without relying on time. I know the visual cues of properly aerated eggs and sugar, and just how slowly I have to stream oil into that mixture in order for it to emulsify. I know that my KitchenAid takes less time with small batch recipes, but if I’m making bread dough, my Kenwood is the real workhorse. I’ve tested the hotspots in the oven and can make bread rise in the dead of winter. This takes practice and fucking up and finding out. A baker starting from zero doesn’t have this frame of reference and given that baking is expensive, is more likely to give up when they inevitably mess up.
I also love the concept of the foundational recipes section. Saffitz includes staple recipes such as a sweet tart dough, an all purpose crumble mixture and a pie crust recipe. For those inclined to experiment, the foundational recipes section allows you to mix and match to come up with your own recipe without going through the pains of recipe development (one day, I will dedicate myself to understanding recipe development; today is not that day). For example, I’ve made a masala chai cardamom bun with a masala chai soak by tweaking the ingredients and ratios from the foundational recipes section.
Overall, I’d say Dessert Person is a wonderful cookbook. From the 18 recipes I’ve made, only 1 has been a failure. I suspect that may be a me error, rather than a recipe writing error and one day, I’ll probably give the recipe a go again. It’s a worthwhile gift for the intermediate to advanced baker in your life and if you enjoy classic flavours with a twist, there’s definitely a recipe in here for you. I think it is organised well and written well and despite the sheer amount of information and visuals it throws at you, it finds a way to not overwhelm. Saffitz is diligent about providing step-by-step visual guides when necessary alongside written instructions for technical recipes.
It truly reads (and tastes) like a celebration of baking, and is proof you can become a Dessert Person.
P.S: Between writing this post and actually posting it, I ended up making the Carrot and Pecan cake. I am not a carrot cake person. This cake has converted me—it’s ridiculously moist and everything works in harmony.
This post is ambitious: it is a combination of an overview, highlighting my favourite recipes so far, outlining my baking goals in relation to Dessert Person this year, and an overall reflection of it after three years of baking from it. It is also a foray into writing—it’s been a while since I’ve written anything because of writer’s block but I’m hoping this takes away the fear of it, seeing as baking is my second favourite thing after writing.
What is Dessert Person?
Dessert Person is divided into seven sections, including a section dedicated to foundational recipes. On average, each section contains 15 recipes. For the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about the six primary sections. In total, there are 90 recipes, which are helpfully laid out in a recipe matrix, with the Y-axis representing the difficulty level (on a scale of 1-5), and the X-axis representing the total time for the recipe (inclusive of chill time). The recipe matrix is my favourite feature of the book because it simplifies the decision making process: if you’re at a certain skill level, and you only have a specific amount of time available to you, the matrix makes it easy to choose. It also presents an alternate method of progression through the recipes; following the matrix in order of difficulty allows you to build on your technical skill level as you bake.
Sitting down and writing this, I’ve realised that I haven’t actually baked through much of the book. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time thinking about baking from the book and perhaps, once or twice, I may have even purchased ingredients with the intention of trying out a recipe, but statistically, I’ve only made 20% of the recipes. For those curious, the section I’ve baked out of the most is the Bars & Cookies section (I did not know this before I sat down to write this post; it doesn’t entirely make sense) with the Layer Cakes & Fancy Desserts and Breads & Savoury sections tying for second (this makes more sense). For the extra curious, I’ve included a full list of the recipes and my progress within a particular section at the end of the overview; the recipes in bold are the ones I have attempted so far. Given that I’ve owned it for three years, I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Embarrassed? Frustrated? I thought about it a bit further and came to two conclusions as to why I’m only a fifth of the way through.
The first is that Saffitz takes a seasonal approach to recipe development. This is built into the page layout: the header of every recipe points out the season it is intended for. To no one’s surprise, the pies and tarts section is driven by summer produce (I did the math: of 15 recipes, 6 use summer produce). This is not a bad thing. After all, it is a universal fact that late June cherries are way better than the April harvest. The problem? Given that Saffitz resides in New York, and I lived in Kuala Lumpur between 2023 and 2025, the fruits that she calls for were inordinately expensive. It would be different if she had a recipe for durian pie (I think this would be delicious, since durian has a custard-like texture) but that is not the case.
The second issue is that the recipes often call for specialty ingredients. This was an easier problem to deal with in Kuala Lumpur, where local bakeries and home bakers alike are chasing standards set in Copenhagen. Ingredients like cornmeal, rye flour, and canned pumpkin puree are now available in export-focused grocery stores, and if not, they are available at Bake With Yen (a local chain of baking supplies that expanded in the wake of post-pandemic baking hobbyists). In Prague, however, these ingredients are difficult to find. Despite the proximity to the Nordic countries, the bakery standards in Prague have been slow to pick up. They’re improving—for sure—but nowhere near Malaysian levels, let alone Nordic ones. Hobby baking also appears focused on traditional Czech, Central European, or Eastern European recipes, which for the large part, are unfussy, often made with pantry staples and a whisk.
Here lies my challenge: how much progress will I make with Dessert Person in the next year, given that my access to ingredients has changed drastically?
Recipe Breakdown
Loaf Cakes & Single Layer Cakes (7% complete)- Spiced Honey and Rye Cake
- Almond Butter Banana Bread
- Poppy Seed Almond Cake
- Kabocha Turmeric Tea Cake
- Spiced Persimmon Cake
- Marscarpone Cake with Red Wine Prunes
- Pear-Chestnut Cake
- Double-Apple Crumble Cake
- Rhubarb Cake
- Rice Pudding Cake with Mango Caramel
- Ricotta Cake with Kumquat Marmalade
- Flourless Chocolate Wave Cake*
- Blood Orange and Olive Oil Upside-Down Cake
- Goat Cheese Cake with Honey and Figs
- Pineapple and Pecan Upside-Down Cake
Pies & Tarts (13% complete)
- Cranberry-Pomegranate Mousse Pie
- Plum Galette with Polenta and Pistachios
- Pistachio Linzer Tart*
- Salty Nut Tart with Rosemary
- Apple Tart
- Caramelized Honey Pumpkin Pie
- Apple and Concord Grape Crumble Pie
- Blackberry Caramel Tart*
- Apricot and Cream Brioche Tart
- Meyer Lemon Tart
- Foolproof Tarte Tatin
- Sour Cherry Pie
- Quince and Almond Tart with Rose
- Blueberry Slab Pie
- Peach Melba Tart*
Bars & Cookies (33% complete)
- Marcona Almond Cookies
- Salted Halvah Blondies
- Brown Butter and Sage Sables*
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Cinnamon Sugar Palmiers
- Malted "Forever" Brownies
- Pistachio Pinwheels
- Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies
- Aunt Rose's Mondel Bread
- Coconut Thumbprints
- Oat and Pecan Brittle Cookies
- Minty Lime Bars*
- Thrice-Baked Rye Cookies
- Earl Grey and Apricot Hamantaschen
- Peanut Butter and Concord Grape Sandwich Cookies
Layer Cakes & Fancy Desserts (29% complete)
- Classic Birthday Cake
- Confetti Cake
- Carrot and Pecan Cake*
- Strawberry Cornmeal Layer Cake
- Chocolate Buttermilk Cake
- Chocolate-Hazelnut Galette des Rois
- Strawberry Rhubarb Pavlovas with Rose
- Tarte Tropezienne
- Fruitcake
- Gateau Basque
- All Coconut Cake
- Black Sesame Paris-Brest
- Preserved Lemon Meringue Cake
- Croquembouche
Breakfast & Brunch (13% complete)
- Seedy Maple Breakfast Muffins
- Coffee Coffee Cake
- Buckwheat Blueberry Skillet Pancake
- Brown Butter Corn Muffins*
- Classic English Muffins
- Brioche Twists with Coriander Sugar
- Strawberry-Almond Bostock
- Babkallah
- Speculoos Babka
- St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
- Walnut-Maple Buns
- A Little Bit of Everything Bagels*
- Spelt Croissants
- Kouign-amann
- Cherry Cream Cheese Danishes
Breads & Savoury Baking (27% complete)
- Loaded Corn Bread
- Miso Buttermilk Biscuits*
- Tomato Tart with Spices and Herby Feta
- Gougeres
- Caramelized Endive Galette
- Crispy Mushroom Galette
- Creamy Greens Pie with Baked Eggs
- Clam and Fennel Pizza with Gemolataa
- Soft and Crispy Focaccia
- Honey Tahini Challa (my first and only failure…)
- Feta-Za'atar Flatbread with Charred Eggplant Dip
- Pigs in a Brioche Blanket
- Ricotta and Broccoli Rabe Pie
- All Allium Deep-Dish Quiche
- Pull-Apart Sour Cream and Chive Rolls
Did you save room for dessert?
Of the 18 recipes I’ve made from this book, there are 5 that I absolutely adore. They are, in no particular order, the Pull-Apart Sour Cream and Chive Rolls, the Coffee Coffee Cake, the Strawberry Cornmeal Layer Cake, the Blueberry Slab Pie (video linked is modified from the original cookbook recipe, but I generally use the measurements from this), and the Meyer Lemon Tart with an honourable mention to the Peanut Butter and Concord Grape Sandwich Cookies.
As a child, I went to quite a few hotel buffets. After the dessert table, what I looked forward to the most was the free flow of dinner rolls and salted butter. Salted butter was something of a novelty to me at that time—we were a margarine household—and the combination of a pillowy soft roll, smeared with salty butter, was a revelation every time. In fact, I would often ruin my appetite gorging on dinner rolls and dessert alone. I still do that at buffets now, albeit with a touch more moderation. Between this and a long-lasting addiction to anything sour cream and onion flavoured, the sour cream and chive rolls are my own personal kryptonite. I’ve made them four times now, and every time, I have to hold myself back from polishing half the tray. It’s dire. Saffitz’s recipe yields a particularly soft roll—she uses the tangzhong method, think Japanese milk bread—almost melt in your mouth, with the right balance of sourness and a good amount of chives. I have also substituted the chives for spring onion before and the result was just as phenomenal. If I had to choose between a toasted roll of this and garlic bread, the sour cream and chive roll would win four out of five times. It’s also so good for any kind of sandwich but especially a breakfast sandwich.
My aunt used to make something she called coffee cake. Later in life I found out that it was a pound cake recipe, with instant coffee added to milk to bring that punchy coffee flavour. Imagine, then, when I had a slice of coffee cake for the first time in San Francisco, and it didn’t taste like coffee; I only learned later than coffee cake meant a cake typically served with coffee. Saffitz’s Coffee Coffee Cake was the answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. It is a fiddly recipe that contains three components (cake batter, streusel topping and a coffee ribbon), but it is made for the coffee lover in your life. The first time, I massively fucked up the spice measurements and ended up with a cardamom flavoured mess (still delicious) but I’ve nailed it every time since. The one drawback however is that it is a huge serving (a 13” x 9” cake), making it an excellent choice for entertaining.
If I need to bring a dessert to a party, the Strawberry Cornmeal Layer Cake and the Blueberry Slab Pie are my go-tos. At my partner’s office Christmas party last year, I had people hunting me down to tell me how good the Blueberry Slab Pie was. I would describe both of them as medium effort recipes with high payoffs. The cornmeal cake has three components plus assembly, and the pie has two components plus assembly. Some components from both recipes can be made ahead and once everything is ready, comes together quickly. The cornmeal cake is a great play on strawberry shortcake; the texture is more tender than a traditional one, and as a pie crust lover first and foremost, the pie has the perfect ratio of filling to crust.
I will be honest: I have not nailed the Meyer Lemon Tart yet. My bad luck with lemon tarts began at 13, where my first attempt at a lemon meringue pie ended up with the crust falling apart and floating pieces half-baked into my lemon custard. The end result of my only attempt with Meyer Lemon Tart was not nearly as dramatic; I had simply overbaked the custard filling. I’m still bad at determining the doneness level of baked custard desserts and the jiggle test never fucking works. Or maybe the last time I made it, my oven just sucked. Even with an overbaked custard, this tart was delicious. I love lemon curd in general and this tart is not embarrassed of being so sour you feel it in your teeth.
The spectacle of dessert
Every year since 2023, I have told myself this is the year I bake every recipe from Dessert Person. Given that there’s nine months left in the year, it is unrealistic that this year is the year I do it. That, factored with the rising cost of ingredients and my current unemployment means that 2026 is not the year I do it. All that said, I want 2026 to be the year that I bake a minimum of 10 recipes from the book. I’ll be making the Carrot Pecan Cake for a friend’s birthday at the end of March, so that’s one recipe off the list.
Selecting the other nine recipes is a bit more difficult. What do I want to bake? Which bakes would push me to develop my skills further? Which ones utilise produce I can find easily in Prague? If I had to rank my favourite types of desserts in order, it would look like this: pies & tarts, puddings & custards, bread & pastries, with cakes and cookies battling it out for last place depending on the day. Ideally, I would spend the rest of the year completing the pies and tarts section but butter is a key (and expensive!) ingredient in pie/tart dough, so it is not meant to be.
I managed to narrow down the list to the following nine recipes (also asterisked above), in no particular order: Flourless Chocolate Wave Cake, Pistachio Linzer Tart, Blackberry Caramel Tart, Peach Melba Tart, Brown Butter & Sage Sables, Minty Lime Bars, Brown Butter Corn Muffins, A Little Bit of Everything Bagels, and Miso Buttermilk Biscuits.
Most of these are sweet recipes, rather than savoury ones, but they fall into one of two categories: recipes I’ve been meaning to make for a long time or recipes that present a new baking challenge for me. The Blackberry Caramel tart, for example, is something I’ve been meaning to bake since I received the book, and was impossible because even at the peak of the season, blackberries start at RM 22 for 125 grams in Malaysia. For context, the recipe calls for 510 grams of blackberries—I do not have that kind of money! In Prague, however, berry season is a thing! I might even be able to get my berries from the farmer’s market! I could make a day of it! I’m already excited, picturing preparing my tart case on Friday and making a trip to the market early on Saturday morning. Realistically, I’ll only wake up at 11, get to the market at noon, grumble at the berries that have been picked over and take my ass to Tesco. I will still hold onto the ideal version for a chance it might happen.
I chose the sable because it will present me with a new challenge. I am not good at making short cookie doughs but I love short cookies. I also think it will be interesting flavour wise as brown butter and sage are often used in a savoury cooking context rather than in desserts. As for the bagel, the cooking method alone is enough of a challenge and that's before factoring in having to shape a bagel. If I nail it, however, I can join legions of tradwives in the weekly task of restocking my kitchen with homemade bread—I do want to be this kind of household, but obviously not in a trad wife way. It’s more of a seize the means of production way. And I’ll be able to have an everything bagel breakfast sandwich, which I haven’t had since 2022.
In an ideal world, I’ll follow through with my selection and write a post at the end of the year detailing the bakes, so let’s keep our fingers crossed and look out for that.
I am a dessert person
It feels egregious to review a cookbook without having cooked more than 50% of the recipes which is why I’ve chosen to reflect on my experience so far instead of prescribing a rating to it.
Saffitz says it herself in the introduction: Dessert Person is a defense of baking … I wrote this book to celebrate and defend my love of desserts, and also to empower reluctant home bakers to work with new ingredients, attempt new techniques, and bake with more confidence (13).
I’m here to say that while it is a good book, it is not for the baker who is starting from 0.
Within the recipe matrix, recipes with a difficulty rating of 1 could be accomplished within 1-2 hours, which is fair as I assume someone starting from 0 wouldn’t want to spend more time making something. Some options I found were the Miso Buttermilk Biscuits, the Kabocha Turmeric Tea Cake, the Spiced Honey and Rye Cake, the Almond Butter Banana Bread and the Poppy Seed Almond Cake. These weren’t complicated technique wise: most of the cake batter can be made with a whisk but all of them required either a specialty ingredient or equipment.
Even if you made the argument that ingredients like miso and almond butter have become pantry staples, it is untrue from a non-American perspective. An ethnic household that doesn’t eat Japanese food regularly isn’t going to know what to do with leftover miso (sorry, Mom) and unless I had a severe peanut allergy, I would never choose almond butter over peanut butter. In a largely monoethnic society like Czechia, miso isn’t stocked in Tesco. This means that even to make the most basic recipe from this cookbook, you’d have to buy ingredients that you might not have a use for outside of the recipe. It makes more sense to buy/gift Dessert Person to someone who is already on their baking journey, who is willing to change up the flavour profile on a classic because they’re ready to experiment and have fun with baking rather than someone trying to build up their basics.
Before I watched Sohla El-Waylly’s pound cake tutorial, I always assumed I’d creamed my butter and sugar long enough. I went on to fuck up that poundcake recipe because I weighed out 87 grams of flour instead of 187 grams (rookie mistake, I’m aware) but I learned two very important things from it. The first is that most homebakers are not carrying out a step for long enough and the second being that if the amount of an ingredient strikes your baking intuition as being wrong, it probably is.
Eric Kim talked about recipe literacy on Instagram sometime last year, and it has stuck with me since. I bring this up because to follow through with Dessert Person, you need a moderate to high level of recipe literacy. Following a recipe can take you far, but there are some skills you develop through practice. ‘Only with cooking do people have trouble accepting that sometimes the recipe doesn’t come out because you haven’t graduated that class yet. So try again!’ Kim says.
Saffitz is not a bad recipe writer. Quite the opposite, in fact: she makes it a point to give visual, tactile and audible cues for a recipe on top of estimated time frames to achieve the result. That, along with uploading video tutorials for some of her recipes to her YouTube channel, allows one to follow along better and develop that all important recipe literacy. She makes it a point to explain the why’s of a technique/ingredient choice within her written recipes, and occasionally delves into more detail on her channel.
Even with this, I am able to bake better through the book because I have, at the very least, a moderate level of recipe literacy. I know what properly creamed butter and sugar looks like and how to check on the proofing progress of a yeasted dough without relying on time. I know the visual cues of properly aerated eggs and sugar, and just how slowly I have to stream oil into that mixture in order for it to emulsify. I know that my KitchenAid takes less time with small batch recipes, but if I’m making bread dough, my Kenwood is the real workhorse. I’ve tested the hotspots in the oven and can make bread rise in the dead of winter. This takes practice and fucking up and finding out. A baker starting from zero doesn’t have this frame of reference and given that baking is expensive, is more likely to give up when they inevitably mess up.
I also love the concept of the foundational recipes section. Saffitz includes staple recipes such as a sweet tart dough, an all purpose crumble mixture and a pie crust recipe. For those inclined to experiment, the foundational recipes section allows you to mix and match to come up with your own recipe without going through the pains of recipe development (one day, I will dedicate myself to understanding recipe development; today is not that day). For example, I’ve made a masala chai cardamom bun with a masala chai soak by tweaking the ingredients and ratios from the foundational recipes section.
Overall, I’d say Dessert Person is a wonderful cookbook. From the 18 recipes I’ve made, only 1 has been a failure. I suspect that may be a me error, rather than a recipe writing error and one day, I’ll probably give the recipe a go again. It’s a worthwhile gift for the intermediate to advanced baker in your life and if you enjoy classic flavours with a twist, there’s definitely a recipe in here for you. I think it is organised well and written well and despite the sheer amount of information and visuals it throws at you, it finds a way to not overwhelm. Saffitz is diligent about providing step-by-step visual guides when necessary alongside written instructions for technical recipes.
It truly reads (and tastes) like a celebration of baking, and is proof you can become a Dessert Person.
P.S: Between writing this post and actually posting it, I ended up making the Carrot and Pecan cake. I am not a carrot cake person. This cake has converted me—it’s ridiculously moist and everything works in harmony.
