Erin Jeanne McDowell has a busy month ahead of her. Her fourth cookbook, “Bake Anything,” was just released, and she’s got a whirlwind book tour ahead of her throughout October and November, with stops all over the country. But the stop she’s probably most excited about? The one in Overbrook, Kansas.
The New York Times bestselling cookbook author, whose books include “The Book on Pie,” grew up baking with her grandmother during visits to her home in Overbrook. She’s excited that the small town is included on her book tour list alongside big cities like New York and Los Angeles.
“I always liked being in the kitchen with her,” says Erin. “I made things almost every time I went to my grandma's house, even if it was just like an elaborately decorated snack plate.”
Erin's grandmother, Jeanne, died before Erin published her first book, so Erin has included her middle name professionally as an homage to her. Now, she’ll stop in her grandmother’s hometown to celebrate her newest cookbook, sharing a love of baking in the place where she first learned it.
The philosophy behind the book is mixing and matching recipes to make your own creations. She relates the base recipes in the book — pudding, biscuits, sponge cake, puff pastry, brioche and more — to the “mother sauces” in foundational French cooking. The idea is to combine recipes together to create the ultimate baked good.
“This book is the first book I've written the way that I use my own recipes as a recipe writer,” says Erin. “If I'm thinking, ‘Okay, fall is coming up, I want to do a caramel apple cake,’ well, one of the things I'm going to do is look at my existing inventory of recipes and think, ‘Oh, well, I really want the cake to have the texture like this one, and I want the frosting to be caramel.”
The hope is that, with “Bake Anything,” bakers can use the recipes in the book to max out their creativity and bake anything they can dream up.
Along with the cookbook’s traditional written format comes scannable QR codes that unlock video tutorials, too. The video format allows for additional instruction by Erin, who finds great joy in teaching baking.
“As a teacher, I don't work in a bakery. I don't work in a restaurant. I don't get to physically feed people,” she says. “But what I get to do is help teach them to feed themselves and feed their community and feed their friends, make birthday cakes for their friends, for their kids, for their families, and mark those joyful daily kind of celebrations.”
The video format is a natural fit for Erin, who has built a following online with her upbeat guidance in the kitchen. She calls her community happy bakers, named after the phrase she says at the end of her videos. It’s also the name of her YouTube channel — Happy Baking.
“It does bring me a lot of joy,” says Erin. “The eternal hope is sending that message to people that this is something that can bring you some joy to your day.”
That encouragement and positivity are something Erin has become known for, both on the Internet and during her stint as a baking coach on Netflix’s “The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge.” She knows getting good at something can be intimidating.
“If people are scared of failure and they don't feel that positivity and that joy and that love of what you're doing, they're not going to keep doing it enough to get to that sweet spot themselves,” says Erin. “My whole philosophy is to be as encouraging as possible, to talk people through mistakes, to help troubleshoot mistakes. I try to write in a way that is as if I'm sitting on your shoulder in your kitchen, ‘Ratatouille’ style, talking you through the recipe.”
At the end of the day, Erin wants people to be able to invent the perfect creation in the kitchen and make it a reality — hopefully, with the help of “Bake Anything.”
Catch Erin — and her new book — and one of the local stops on her book tour. You can register for events and find more details at erinjeannemcdowell.com. You can also order signed copies of the book on her website.
October 15: Saltwell Farms in Overbrook, KS
October 17: Mid-Continent Public Library in Kansas City, MO
November 19: Andre’s Confisserie Suisse in Kansas City, MO
November 28: The Raven in Lawrence, KS
"I try to write in a way that is as if I'm sitting on your shoulder in your kitchen, ‘Ratatouille’ style, talking you through the recipe.”