Baking by the Numbers: "Modern Art Desserts"

For the second time I'm breaking my ethics rule on writing about cookbooks without first cooking from said cookbooks. My office floor is stacked high with worthwhile books I will eventually put to the truest test (do the recipes actually work?), but increasingly I'm gaining respect for publishers who are putting out books real cooks want to use. And while I may never attempt anything in the latest, I know too many youngs who will seize on it as if it were Red Velvet Shots. So, like Root to Stalk Cooking, this is genius. Produced by the pastry chef at the anti-Starbucks Blue Bottle Coffee Company, it's a guidebook to re-creating painterly masterworks from Thiebaud and Mondrian and Diebenkorn and several more. I spend a fairish amount of time in art museums and was still taken by how many takes on newer artists were included. But I got enough of the homages to (almost) wish I weren't the sort of baker happy just to wow guests with cinnamon and apples. If you prize cerebral presentation, though, this is one cool cookbook.

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