Midwest Made

Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland

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By Shauna Sever

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A Love Letter to America’s Heartland, the Great Midwest

When it comes to defining what we know as all-American baking, everything from Bundt cakes to brownies have roots that can be traced to the great Midwest. German, Scandinavian, Polish, French, and Italian immigrant families baked their way to the American Midwest, instilling in it pies, breads, cookies, and pastries that manage to feel distinctly home-grown.



After more than a decade of living in California, author Shauna Sever rediscovered the storied, simple pleasures of home baking in her Midwestern kitchen. This unique collection of more than 125 recipes includes refreshed favorites and new treats:

  • Rhubarb and Raspberry Swedish Flop
  • Danish Kringle
  • Secret-Ingredient Cherry Slab Pie
  • German Lebkuchen
  • Scotch-a-Roos
  • Smoky Cheddar-Crusted Cornish Pasties


. . . and more, which will make any kitchen feel like a Midwestern home.

    Excerpt

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    INTRODUCTION

    Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it’s more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware.

    —Charles Baxter, A Feast of Love

    IN THE MIDWEST, OUR LOVE OF BAKING IS REAL AND IT’S DEEP. As “America’s Bread Basket,” we believe in No Carb Left Behind. We love our local bakeries where we’re treated like family as much as we love to bake at home. Firing up our ovens gets us through long, cold winters, while our kitschy-but-irresistible icebox desserts delight at every summer picnic and potluck.

    Midwestern recipes tend to be handed down through generations, most with dynamic immigrant influences. While the big cities of the Midwest have become culinary hotspots, in many of the rural communities, your neighbors are far more likely to be farmers. The bounty of native grains, top-quality dairy, and vibrant seasonal fruits here are legendary. From the Dakotas to Ohio, from Minnesota to Missouri, the Midwest is a veritable quilt of twelve states full of history, values, recipes, people, and places that make up the baking culture of the Heartland.

    But up until a few years ago, I thought about all this as much as I wondered about the differences between kolacky and kolaches. I was thousands of miles away from my own culinary history, and I felt great about the whole thing. When I’d left the Midwest for California at the age of twenty-five, a newly minted bride with my Ohio-born husband, I had no curiosity about the place where we grew up, especially not the food. I was all about heading west and discovering a life that was, to me, “actually interesting.” I was all about the glitter.

    With my journalism degree in hand, I managed to work fairly often as a “generalist” television host and reporter, talking about everything from pop culture and red carpets to sports, cars, or technology. After several years, even with some of the world’s most gorgeous movie stars inches from my face and all that glittering, it started to feel stale. Glittering is exhausting.

    As a counterpoint, to keep a record of my baking hobby and exercise my atrophying writing muscles, I set up a blog. During a textbook quarter-life crisis, it allowed me to consider what I actually loved doing. Landing a part-time job as a recipe writer for a Michelin-starred chef taught me volumes about great food and pastry, and the craft of writing recipes.

    In late 2007, we left Los Angeles for San Francisco. Moving to one of the world’s great food cities accelerated all the second thoughts I was having about my already-shaky career path. And as a capper to all of that, within weeks of moving to the Bay Area, I was expecting our first baby. Sometimes the universe whispers to you to get your attention, and sometimes it lobs a few grenades at your head.

    Once our daughter, Caroline, was born in August 2008, the blog became a place for me to not lose my mind as a new mother, and help overcome my postpartum depression. (I would throw myself back into work much sooner after our son, Andrew, was born in 2013 to avoid slipping back into the depths, which was exhausting, but relatively effective.) As the blog grew with intention, it was inspired by what was happening in California’s vibrant food scene and trend-focused bakeries. Through a series of fortuitous events, I was introduced to a marvelous editor who would open the door for me to write my first cookbook in 2012. I wrote two more cookbooks after that, and got back to doing television, but this time the food-focused kind, loving the work and feeling that any glittering that was required by the job was an honest, low-key sort that I could get behind.

    In California, I never really thought much about the food from the Midwest, and especially not the baking. Why would I? Other parts of the country have much more definitive food personalities—we all know what to expect from sweets in the South, the edgy bakeries of Brooklyn, or even dessert in California (and yes, they do occasionally eat dessert out there). And I wasn’t alone in this thinking; not much light has been shone on the baking culture of the enormous swath of land in between those hotspots.

    But with all the inventiveness encouraged in California, I still always craved tradition. I’d revisit it time and again, through family recipes, feeling almost rebellious for making my mom’s cherry shortcake squares with their lollipop red canned pie filling in my San Francisco kitchen, when loads of fresh cherries awaited at my neighborhood farmers’ market.

    Over our five years in LA, and eight more in San Francisco, Scott and I started to wonder whether we were really meant to raise California kids. We’d talk about all the what-ifs, here and there, as most big transitions tend to begin. There weren’t really any serious plans in place to leave. But you know what happens when you start to put ideas out into the universe like that. Just as a tube pan of benign batter emerges from the oven as an airy, showstopping angel food cake, things were rising.

    In October 2015, after thirteen years of California living, Scott got a job offer that would really change up his commute. With just a couple days’ consideration, we headed back to Chicago to be close to family and friends, increase our hot dog intake, and give our two young kids more seasons and less exposure to kale.

    With a one-way flight, I left my flip-flops-in-January days behind, and moved back to my home state of Illinois. I didn’t know what I’d do next personally or professionally, or what motherhood would look like in the suburbs of Chicago, a place I had only known as a child-free person. But halfway through the flight, I had my answer. Barely off the tarmac, I planned to reexamine my midwestern roots and show them to my kids the best way I knew how—by firing up my oven. Even before my baking pans were unpacked, I was digging for recipes, newspaper clippings, and old community cookbooks. People I barely knew lent me their favorite church recipe collections, tabbed with Post-its to indicate their favorites. Exchanging recipes with a midwesterner is a bit like playing therapist—deeply buried memories are revealed, and everyone takes home extra reading material.

    Taking a closer look at recipes I’d always considered pedestrian, I started connecting the dots. Visiting local bakeries and asking questions about things I’d eaten since childhood without a second thought was like peeling a big, juicy September apple. I began to see that within the simplest or most kitschy recipes lay a whole lot of intention and character. Here are my Five Baking Tenets of the Great Midwest.

    BAKE BIG. Every cozy, big-batch recipe is a chance to slow down, gather, share, and connect. The 9 × 13 and the Bundt reign supreme.

    BAKE EASY. Whether the recipe is old school or new, simple is beautiful. Be practical and resourceful with your time, effort, and ingredients. No fuss or fancy pants, please. And if there’s an extra push required, the results need to be worth it.

    BAKE WITH PURPOSE. The through line of midwestern baking is context. Be it a birthday or a Wednesday, let the distinct seasons, local traditions, seasonal produce, stellar grains and dairy, or just the fickle weather outside your kitchen window inspire you to bake with intention. Working with local and seasonal ingredients might be buzzwords to some, but it’s a way of life in the Midwest. When Janice from up the block drops 11 pounds of backyard rhubarb on your front porch, you’ll find purpose real quick.

    BAKE IN THE PRESENT. The midwestern recipe box tends to sit happily at the intersection of tradition and modernity. You might find just as many handwritten, 1960s-motif notecards and recipe labels torn off bags and boxes as you do printouts from Epicurious. In this book, I’ve opted to tent-pole the recipe list with the beloved midwestern pillars of Pie, Bars, and casual Counter Cakes, and fill out the story with recipes inspired by seasons and occasions, sprinkling them with techniques and tricks I’ve discovered from years of developing fresher, smarter recipes that are low on prepackaged and processed ingredients.

    BAKE FROM THE PAST. Perhaps the most important tenet of all. Bake what your mama (and grandmama, and her mama) gave you. Heirloom recipes and family traditions are the backbone of midwestern baking.

    But if there can be only one, all-encompassing way to explain what makes the baking story of the Midwest so captivating, it’s this: Without immigrants, this book you’re holding, its author, and the region’s unique culinary landscape at large, simply wouldn’t exist.

    As it happens, I’m an optimal cross-section of the various cultures that make up this region. From German to Swedish, Irish to Greek and Italian, I’m a true Midwestern Mutt, with a sweet tooth that was raised on everything from Sicilian butter cookies to baklava. One glance at a midwesterner’s holiday cookie tin tells all you need to know about the impressive range of international influences in our baking traditions.

    The second I defined these tenets of midwestern baking, I was all in. The fancy food world of the West Coast had nothing on this rediscovery. I had no problem telling whoever would listen that at Christmastime, I’d much rather pop open one of my family’s old Hostess fruitcake tins with the certainty of finding Gramma’s completely perfect sugar cookies, decorated only with a smattering of coarse rainbow sugar, than see the latest Pinterest hero on the dessert buffet. I was over the glittering. Give me that dull shine any day. It feels so good.

    When I turned out the first batch of Gramma’s sugar cookies in our new house and brought them along to Christmas dinner at my auntie Amy’s, I became so much more emotional than any sane person should be over a cookie. When my kids grabbed two at a time from the tin, thinking no one saw them, just as I had at their ages, it sent me straight to the Kleenex zone. I was home, with my people, our food, our traditions, and so much more to learn with new eyes as a baker, writer, mother, and human.

    As I unpacked the last of our boxes that December, leaving the sandals and skirts in storage, and clipping tags off my kids’ first-ever pairs of snow pants, I thought about how much our lives would change beyond the weather. I thought about what I want my kids’ midwestern upbringing to become, as they will now experience their childhood here, just as I did. I want my children to have detailed, active food memories tied to this place, to treasure the dull shine, and not have to run away from it to appreciate it, as I did.

    I first wanted to create this book for them, a snapshot of the comfort baking from home—a new heirloom cookbook. But it’s for you, too—I’m hoping that everyone can find a little bit of themselves in these pages. If you are indeed from the Midwest, I’m betting you’ll find some things that are sweetly familiar. I’m so glad you’re here.

    There’s a shocking amount of ground, heritage, and recipes to cover in a place so many people consider “fly-over country.” But that’s part of the beauty of the great Midwest. We like to lie low, and then out of nowhere, blow minds and take names with our hidden stories and talents. And then sort of play off the compliments. Dull shine at its very best.




    With all the cultural input that coexists here from centuries of immigrant history, I hesitate to call the Midwest a “melting pot” as so many others do. As you cross state lines—and even just county lines—you begin to notice that communities hang onto their ancestral roots, and play them up. Recipes that show up in one place won’t necessarily be found all over the region. The hometown of a person will greatly affect their perspective on the Midwest’s culinary landscape.

    My experience as a Chicago-born, Great Lakes–focused midwesterner is one thing; what my Bold North friends bake and eat in areas so far up in Minnesota that they’re practically in Canada—is very different. As is the take of people who grew up farming in the Plains, or those in Ohio that can practically reach out their windows and touch Kentucky or Pennsylvania, or the palpable difference when crossing from northern to southern Illinois, Indiana, or Missouri.

    That said, there’s still just enough crossover from state to state that it’s not really practical to categorize a Midwest cookbook by state. As you make your way through this book, you’ll find some specialties unique to specific places and clear lines to their sources, alongside recipes with that broader, quintessential midwestern essence that’s better tasted than told.

    And with that, I hope to showcase the character of this great region, where the values of heritage and kindness are shown through the service and exchange of the homemade. Not for kudos, not for the purposes of “glittering,” but to add to the patina of a place that calls you back home, no matter how long you’ve been away.




    In My Pantry

    A fully stocked baker’s pantry is a thing of unparalleled joy and makes me feel that I have great control over my life. Here are my staples.

    STARCHY

    UNBLEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR. Nothing will influence the outcome of a baked good like the type of flour and how it’s measured. I like working with unbleached all-purpose flour for most baked goods. My brands of choice in the North (where the wheat is hard winter wheat, and higher in protein than the soft wheat of the South) are Ceresota and King Arthur, with protein contents hovering around 11.5 percent that are great for doughs. I’m also happy to use Gold Medal unbleached, which is slightly lower in protein, consistent across state lines, and easy to find in American stores. Even if I use cups and spoons for the rest of the recipe, I’ll always weigh my flour for ease and accuracy. In this book, 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour weighs 128 grams. If you opt to measure by volume, whisk the container or flour first to aerate it, then spoon it into the cup, then level it off lightly with the back of a knife. If you use bleached flour, it won’t throw off the entire recipe, but it will have a lower protein content and you can expect a slightly different result.

    BREAD FLOUR. Even higher in protein than all-purpose, this is ideal for when you want a nice sturdy or chewy bread product, such as pizza crusts, pretzels, or sturdy sandwich loaves. I like King Arthur or Gold Medal unbleached bread flours. Because I use less bread flour than all-purpose, I often keep it sealed in the freezer for longer storage.

    CAKE FLOUR. Bleached, and low-protein (about 7 percent), and more finely textured than all-purpose. Best for special occasion cakes needing a light, airy crumb. I don’t often use cake flour, but when I do, I use Swans Down.

    CORNSTARCH. The MVP. I know there are a million ways to thicken a pie filling or a custard, but I don’t want all of them cluttering up my already chaotic cabinets. I just buy cornstarch. Cheap, easy, and versatile.

    YEAST. Yeast is a thesis-level topic and it can be crazy-making trying to convert from one form or another. To keep it easy, I only use dry instant yeast, not active dry or cakes. I buy SAF brand in bulk or Fleischmann’s in glass jars. If you buy packets, each envelope should contain 2¼ teaspoons/7 grams per envelope, but even with packets, I measure to be sure (I do this with unflavored gelatin packets, too, by the way, which should be 2½ teaspoons/5.8 grams each).

    In theory, one should be able to just add instant yeast to a dough without first proofing it in a warm liquid. However, I find this to be iffy on its success rate, and after too many situations where I’ve been driven to the brink by a dough with visible yeast granules in it even after a long rise, I pretty much always give instant yeast a quick warm bath in a small amount of the liquid from a recipe while I pull the rest of my ingredients together. Also, I bake with yeast often enough that I buy it in larger quantities and keep it in the fridge, so this warm soak helps to “wake it up” a bit. So, in nearly every recipe involving yeast in this book, you’ll see I have you dissolve instant yeast in a little liquid first, just to make everything a bit more foolproof.

    CREAMY

    BUTTER. I use salted butter on my bread like it’s going out of style, but for baking, it’s exclusively unsalted. In the centuries of baking, it’s a relatively new school way of doing things, as most midwestern bakers tend to reach for salted butter, even now. Salted butter means well-preserved butter, and it lasts longer both in storage and on grocery store shelves. To that end, unsalted butter will be a fresher product. Additionally, the balance of salty and sweet is very important in great baked goods, and if you use salted butter and don’t adjust the salt in these recipes, you’ll end up with an oversalted product. Best just to use unsalted and avoid the guesswork.

    You’ll also notice several recipes calling for European-style butter, which has a slightly higher butterfat content than American butters, and can make a big difference in recipes deserving a bold, buttery flavor. When I need the extra richness from a European-style butter, I most often use Kerrygold, Plugra, or look for small-batch butters from local farms with a butterfat percentage of at least 82 percent. It’s a little more spendy, but the flavor and texture payoff is worth it when it’s called for. Cultured butter is also a fun thing to try for butter-forward baked goods to give a little edge. Regular unsalted butter can be substituted in the same amounts without the recipe failing, it just may not sing in exactly the same way.

    HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM. There’s plenty in these pages, in both whipped and liquid form. Make sure you are getting “heavy whipping cream” and not plain “whipping cream” or “light cream,” which are lower in milkfat and don’t behave the same way in recipes.

    MILK. Again, with the full-fat! I always use whole for baking, low-fat for drinking. If a recipe just needs a little moisture and the amount is in tablespoons, such as to thin a mixture slightly or make an egg wash, low-fat is fine. But you will taste and see the difference when you use larger amounts in batters and doughs.

    BUTTERMILK. This one can be low-fat. (Somewhere a nutritionist is exhaling.) Just make sure you shake it well every time you use it and don’t heat it on its own or it will separate.

    EGGS. Large eggs only, in the neighborhood of 50 grams per whole egg. If you need only the whites or the yolks for a recipe, store the remainder in the fridge for two or three days, tops. (Egg whites can be frozen individually in ice cubes trays, popped out, and stored in freezer bags for up to a year. I’m not a fan of freezing yolks, as they become oddly gelatinous unless you add sugar or salt, and even that isn’t foolproof.) Save frustration and trying to remember how many whites or yolks you’ve stored by weighing out what you need for your next recipe. Whites weigh approximately 30 grams each; the yolks, 20 grams.

    SWEET

    WHITE GRANULATED SUGAR. The controversial queen of the larder. I like pure cane like Domino or C&H and usually weigh it—200 grams per cup.

    LIGHT AND DARK BROWN SUGARS. Light brown sugar is a key ingredient in midwestern baking. Forever it seemed, I was a dark brown sugar devotee for flavor and color. And I still love it. But what I’ve learned is if the Midwest had a flavor, it would likely be the combination of butter and light brown sugar. Light brown sugar whispers instead of shouting, and still lends moisture and chew. Dark brown is great when you really need to punch up depth in some way. In extreme cases, such as for gingerbread-y things, I sometimes go even further and look for dark muscovado sugar. Measure these moist sugars by packing them firmly into your measuring cup, or even better, weigh them, too—225 grams per cup.

    CONFECTIONERS’ SUGAR. Nothing adds the pretty or conceals flaws like a dusting of this stuff. Sometimes you need it for frostings, sometimes for making doughs meltingly tender. Either way, its super annoying to be out of it, so I make it a staple. Spoon it into your measuring cup and level it off like flour, or weigh it at 120 grams per cup.

    CORN SYRUP. Not many appearances in this book and not in great volume, but where it shows up, it’s essential for texture, even if you just need a spoonful. Light is more versatile, and it keeps forever.

    SALTY

    FINE SEA SALT. My salt preference for baking. It dissolves easily and has a clean flavor, especially great for recipes where you really want that crave-worthy sweet-salty thing happening and the salt really needs to sing. It tends to come in boxes or in taller, narrower canisters than iodized. I even find it at the dollar store sometimes. Fine sea salt has a level of saltiness somewhere between regular iodized table salt and Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt (Morton brand kosher salt is coarser, denser, and the saltiest of them all, so I avoid it). So if you only have table salt, use scant measurements of what’s called for. For Diamond Crystal, use a slightly rounded measurement.

    FLAKY SEA SALT. The crown jewel of salts. I typically reach for Maldon brand, which is readily available. Can be used as a finishing salt sprinkled over the tops of cookies, bars, savory baked goods, and more. Flaky sea salt mixed into a cookie dough adds marvelous little surprise sparks of salt throughout, often combined with a light backdrop of fine sea salt (as in the Caramel Canvas Blondies here). It’s an easy way to bring a simple, old-school recipe up to modern tastes.

    HARMONIZERS

    VANILLA. I reach for pure vanilla extract for almost every recipe, and keep a jar of pure vanilla bean paste for when I want both vanilla flavor and the aesthetic of vanilla bean flecks in a light-colored frosting, filling, or ice cream without having to scrape beans.

    SPICES. I have a fairly standard spice selection, but there are a few I upgrade for a little extra ka-pow in my baking. First is Vietnamese cinnamon, also labeled Saigon cinnamon. It tastes like Red Hots cinnamon candy and is a world away from the dusty stuff we grew up with. Same goes for using whole nutmeg, freshly grated with a Microplane, over preground. Chinese five-spice powder makes a few appearances, and its zippy character helps to elevate things that might only use, say, cinnamon, and is revelatory in fruit desserts, especially apples, pears, cherries, and other stone fruits, making people ask, “What’s in this?!” (in a good way).

    CITRUS ZEST. Finely grated with a Microplane. I’m happiest when I can get organic, unwaxed citrus fruits so I don’t have to worry about scrubbing like crazy to avoid sprinkling pesticides into my efforts.

    CHOCOLATE. I most often reach for 60% bittersweet chocolate, either in bar form or chips. I also have a bar or two of extra bittersweet chocolate, something in the neighborhood of 75%, when a really sweet base needs bitter contrast. Changing up the chocolate in a recipe, both in quality and cacao percentage, is the easiest way to modernize the flavor of a recipe and give it a little edge. High-quality semisweet is used here and there in this book, and even some milk chocolate, too, which, if we’re being honest and not food snobs, is basically life-giving when it comes to eating straight up.

    BLACK COCOA POWDER. This ultradark, insanely intense cocoa is the key player when I want to take a recipe running on cocoa powder to the next level (such as the Wednesday Night Brownies here). I consider this cocoa to be “Oreo” flavored. I rarely swap out all the cocoa in a recipe for black cocoa, as a little of this—like just a couple tablespoons exchanged—goes a long way. Black cocoa is Dutch-processed, so keep that in mind when using it in a recipe.

    NUTS.

    Genre:

    • "I am absolutely in love with Shauna's book. It's filled to the brim with all the simple, sentimental kinds of baked goods that are so much a part of the heartbeat of the midwest. They all belong at family gatherings, on a window sill, at a casual celebration. This is the kind of cookbook that could never just sit on my shelf. It will be covered with flour and smears of butter in no time!"—Ree Drummond, best selling authorof The Pioneer Woman Cooks
    • Don't even open this book unless you're prepared to rush to the kitchen to bake-it's that inspiring. With Sever's new book, we enter a world where home baking is treasured, where recipes are passed down through generations, where bakers, new and seasoned, revel in the bounty of the region, and where there's always something sweet on the kitchen counter. Midwest Made is as warm, generous, and inviting as an Ozark Skillet Cake.—Dorie Greenspan, award-winning author of Everyday Dorie and Dorie's Cookies
    • "Shauna Sever's deep look at the Midwest through its carbs in Midwest Made took me by actual surprise. Maybe it's that you can feel her connection to this place through stories about kranskakes, kuchens, runzas, and the people who bake them, or maybe it's because it feels like she's right there with you when you read her prose. Whatever the magic is, Shauna and her Midwestern glitter has made me want to BAKE!"—Vivian Howard, award-winning host of PBS's AChef's Life and author of Deep Run Roots
    • "The baking traditions of the Midwest are as deep as anywhere I know of. That said, I'd want to eat anything Shauna Sever bakes, no matter where in the world she is."

      Francis Lam, host of The Splendid Table
    • "Midwest Made is a stunning ode to everything that's great about baked goods of this region: they're cozy and crave-worthy, and tied to generations-old recipes that are perfect for making during a snowstorm. Shauna has packed so much soul and deliciousness into this book that you'll have no choice but to start creaming the butter and sugar immediately."—-Molly Yeh, author of Molly on the Range and host of Girl Meets Farm
    • "When it comes to her recipes, there's no stopping (and no choosing): coffee caramel monkey bread, Cleveland-style cassata cake, red berries and cream gelatin mold, Swedish limpa, big soft pretzels, State Street brownies (born in 1893 at the Palmer House in Chicago), Dutch letters from Pella, Iowa, and something simply called a "pan full of happy." Great color photographs, clear directions that soothe home bakers, and an oven's worth of tips solidify this as a must-read and -have."—-Booklist
    • "Baker Sever (Pure Vanilla) highlights more than 125 sweet and savory Midwestern dishes in this enticing and homey cookbook. ...Sever delivers hit after hit in a collection that will appeal to bakers of all skill levels."—-Publishers Weekly, starred review
    • "The great baking traditions of Europe have been passed down through immigrant families in the Midwest for generations. Sever is determined to share each and every one of them: from a nutty Slovenian (or Croatian, depending on who you ask) potica to an airy, meringue-filled German schaum torte, there's a dessert here for everyone."—-Epicurious
    • "Longtime blogger, baker, and book author Shauna Sever is also a native Midwestener, and this cookbook pays homage to all the wonderful baked goods of the region, many of which have roots in various immigrant cuisines....You'll be throwing more potlucks just for an excuse to bake these recipes."—-Chowhound
    • "Sever's newest book [is] grand and gorgeous,"—- Louisa Chu, Chicago Tribune
    • "Regional baked goods shine in Shauna Sever's "Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland"... A lot of yum in these pages."—-Star Tribune

    On Sale
    Oct 22, 2019
    Page Count
    328 pages
    Publisher
    Running Press
    ISBN-13
    9780762464517

    Shauna Sever

    About the Author

    Shauna Sever is the author of Pure Vanilla, Marshmallow Madness, and Real Sweet. She is a radio contributor for The Splendid Table, and has appeared on the TODAY Show and Food Network.Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Food52, Bon Appetit, The Kitchn, Family Circle, Real Simple, Midwest Living Magazine, and many others. She lives with her husband and two children in Chicago.

    Learn more about this author