Books

Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts

Here you will find the quickest lemon tart, a lattice-free linzer torte (mixed entirely in the food processor), one-bowl French chocolate torte (yes, the real thing, but easier to make), imaginative ways with ice cream, chic puddings and mousses to swoon over, and gooey pies with no-fault press-in crusts. Even soufflés for beginners. And you won’t need a rolling pin, a pastry brush, or the skills of a professional baker.

As always, you’ll find well tested recipes with tips for success that will make all cooks—even those nervous about baking—confident in the kitchen. Plus there are more than 100 ideas for spur-of-the-moment desserts that don’t even involve baking, including fantastic ideas for ways to dress up a bar of chocolate, a pint of strawberries, a handful of dried fruit, fresh cheese, gingerbread, amaretti, and more.

“The baking expert tempts again” —New York Times

"Simple yet inventive desserts....Every page tempts" —Washington Post

“Effortless sophisticated desserts. . . . perfect for short-staffed dinner parties and midweek dessert cravings” —Library Journal

“Simple but brilliant” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“No time? No baking skills? No problem. With this cookbook, baking genius Alice Medrich proves that you don’t need fancy techniques, equipment, or hours on end to create fabulous homemade desserts. The flexible, forgiving recipes in this collection are uncomplicated (not even a rolling pin is required). . . . These desserts range from simple and rustic to luxurious and sophisticated—but all are a snap to put together” —Fine Cooking

“Alice Medrich just took quick, simple sweets one step further. In her eighth cookbook, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts, the Berkeley pastry chef extraordinaire makes hosting and entertaining a no-brainer. With impressive desserts that can be prepared quickly or ahead of time - and quite often both - Medrich is a pro at soothing the home baker. . . . Her desserts - from artful and elegant to cozy and classic - are all presented with zero pretension” —San Francisco Chronicle

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies

Designed by Jennifer Morla, shot by Deborah Jones, art directed by Sara Slavin, and edited by the legendary Ann Bramson—I couldn’t have asked for a better team. Originally conceived of as The Cookie Project, this is the updated, retrofitted, modernized version of Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies (Warner Books, 1999), with more recipes than ever and lots of new ideas. You’ll find the best of the old book with some significant changes (for example, my choice of flour shifts from bleached to unbleached, I updated chocolate information, and I offer weight as well as volume measures for all ingredients) and lots of new recipes. I indulge in my favorite flavors (in addition to chocolate) like coconut, sesame seeds, peanut butter, and lemon. I experiment with meringues, play with freeze dried fruit, reinvent chocolate chip cookies, and surprise even myself with gluten-free cookies.

2011 Best Book: Baking Sweet or Savory, IACP
2010 Best of the Best Award, Food and Wine Magazine

Pure Dessert

I take a new tact here. This book is ingredient driven, with ever-simpler recipes for the sophisticated palate and geared to the home cook. Chapters are organized by ingredient (Milk and Butter, Flours and Grains, Nuts and Seeds, Chocolate, Herbs and Spices, Fruit, Wines and Spirits…) rather than type of dessert. Pure was always a quiet, simple book in my mind. I never expected any awards, so I was thrilled to be a James Beard and IACP finalist.

2008 Best Book: Baking and Dessert nominee, James Beard Foundation
2008 Best Book: Bread, Other Baking and Sweets finalist, IACP

“Medrich has imagination, style and taste that seem several leagues ahead of other bakers” —New York Times

Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales From a Life in Chocolate

Mostly cookbook, with just enough memoir. Between chapters, I tell my story—my first taste of bittersweet chocolate, the opening and eventual sale of Cocolat, my first and second cookbooks, my work on the 1997 new Joy of Cooking, the early years of Scharffen Berger Chocolate, and everything in between. You might say it’s all about love, loss, and what I baked, ate, and learned. Even if you skip the stories, you still get the first book ever published in this country with recipes for cacao nibs, the first and only explanation and manual for using high percentage chocolates in baking and desserts, and one of the best explanations of tempering with instructions for nonscientists. A book for everyone passionate about chocolate.

2004 Cookbook of the Year, IACP
2004 Best Book: Single Subject, IACP
2003 Best of the Best Award, Food and Wine Magazine

Chocolate Holidays

You’ll find great seasonal, special occasion, and holiday chocolate recipes in this small book, beautifully designed by Jennifer Morla, styled and art directed by Sara Slavin, and shot by Michael LaMotte. Originally published as A Year in Chocolate (Warner Books, 2001), this new edition has updated chocolate information. In addition to great recipes, Chocolate Holidays is a great-looking book for an unbelievably low price. Everyone should buy ten.

A Year in Chocolate

Updated and republished as Chocolate Holidays (Artisan, 2001)

Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies

Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies is a simple book filled with great cookies, great techniques, and great advice. Beginners loved it, and so did my colleagues. It is out of print now, and expensive to find on the net. My latest book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies, includes updated and expanded versions of the best recipes from Cookies and Brownies and much, much, much more.

1999 Best of the Best Award, Food and Wine Magazine

“Medrich is the ultimate dessert expert.” —Los Angeles Daily News

Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat Desserts

Chocolate and Art is a collection of possibly the richest “light” desserts in the world, and an unsurpassed guidebook for using real butter, chocolate, cream, nuts, and other ingredients in you-can’t-tell-the-difference desserts with less fat.

It was the era of low-fat everything, and I was mad. This book was my riposte, chin out, to all of the misguided horrors—indiscriminate use of fruit purees, too many egg whites, weird fat substitutions, and too much sugar—perpetrated upon the dessert-loving public. It pays to get angry Chocolate and the Art received more press than a senator, a Cookbook of the Year award from the James Beard Foundation (my second), and accolades from our favorite skeptic and curmudgeon, Jeffrey Steingarten. Best of all, working with less fat taught me more than I ever knew about my craft. The low-fat era is over, but the recipes hold up.

1995 Cookbook of the Year, James Beard Foundation
1995 Best Book: Healthy Focus, James Beard Foundation
2010 Best Books of the Last Fifteen Years, Epicurious.com

“Medrich is the ultimate dessert expert.” —Los Angeles Daily News

Cocolat: Extraordinary Chocolate Desserts

Cocolat was my debut. The best desserts from my dessert company, Cocolat, are dished up here, with enormous detail so that motivated home cooks or budding pastry chefs could produce them. Even better than sweeping the major cookbook awards for the year was learning how much I love writing cookbooks and teaching.

1991 Cookbook of the Year, James Beard Foundation
1991 Perrier Best Food Photography, James Beard Foundation
1991 Julia Child Award: Best First Cookbook, IACP
1991 Best Book: Bread, Other Baking and Sweets, IACP
2010 Named one of the best thirteen baking books, James Beard Foundation

“Aptly named Madam Cocolat…her enthusiasm and extraordinary dedication to tchocoalte desserts as well as her personal approach to recipes and techniques make this book a must for chocolate lovers”—Jacques Pepin