I'm in My Molly Yeh Phase of Life
More enthusiastic, opinionated, cookbook-obsessed people, please!
Hello, and welcome new subscribers! I was thrilled to see last week’s post about Deborah Balint and Instagram cookbook clubs get such a strong response.
This week’s guest (I like to pretend I’m hosting a talk show here on Substack), is Molly Yeh. The cookbook author, restaurant owner, and host of Girl Meets Farm on Food Network is also a fan of cookbook clubs. (Quote: “Start a cookbook club! It's the best thing I've ever joined.”)
Back in September I reached out to Molly to see if she’d be interested in developing a birthday cake recipe for the April cover of REAL SIMPLE magazine. (I’m the food director at the brand, and 2025 is our 25th anniversary—a good reason to celebrate, with cake of course.) The launch of that issue would dovetail nicely with the release of Molly’s new dessert-focused cookbook, Sweet Farm! (Bookshop/Amazon).
Molly said yes immediately and set out to develop a cake that is a) delicious, b) cover-worthy, and c) “simple”—not an easy balance to strike. First we went back and forth on concepts and then execution. Then Molly made cakes and sent photos that we’d ooh and aah over in the office. Along with my top editors and creative director, I vacillated between three layers and four…with frosting between them or jam?
The result was a one-bowl, three-layer lemon poppy seed cake with raspberry jam between the layers (simple!) and a marshamallow-y meringue frosting tinted pink with freeze-dried raspberry powder (cover-worthy!).
I’ve baked the cake four times now, and everyone goes crazy for it. It’s rich and moist, something I’ve discovered is an obsession of Molly’s—no light and fluffy cakes here, thank you very much. The frosting strikes an ideal balance between sweet and tart. Put simply, it’s a winner.
It always feels risky bringing a “celebrity” into a big project like this. (I’m not sure why I’m using quotes; Molly is a celebrity! It’s just a funny word.) Would she have the time to dedicate to the project? Would she respond to emails in a timely fashion? Would she be open to collaboration? Would she actually care?
Happily, the answer to all of those questions was yes! Let me tell you more things I like about Molly and Sweet Farm!:
She’s funny, both in person and on the page. I found myself laughing out loud a few times reading Sweet Farm! (From the intro: “I consider myself a sugar agnostic and believe there’s a time and a place for all sweeteners. Except for monk fruit. Get outta here.”) More cookbooks should be funny.
There is rigor and deep care/thought in her recipes. More than once she talked about laying awake at night trying to figure out a recipe.
Molly’s digging deep with some of her cookbook picks below. You’ll see that a few are on backorder, at least at Bookshop. I love that she stays friends with books she’s had for a while.
We have similar favorite dessert textures and flavors, although we diverge on toppings. I realize this is personal and may not pertain to you, but maybe it does! If yes, you need to get your hands on Sweet Farm! asap.
Find the recipe for your new favorite birthday cake here. You can also read my interview with Molly (where she claims to be bad at cleaning) and my story about the sweet salad chapter in her new book. Thanks for everything Molly—for holding strong dessert opinions, making a beautiful cake, and chatting cookbooks.
The Cookbookery Q&A with Molly Yeh
About how many cookbooks do you own?
MY: Hundreds.
How do you organize them?
MY: I don't.
What’s the first cookbook you remember cooking out of?
MY: Rick Bayless's book that he wrote with his daughter, Rick and Lanie’s Excellent Kitchen Adventures. My mom and I made the chicken and dumplings all the time. I also remember making the rugelach from Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook (Bookshop/Amazon).
What kind of cookbook reader/user are you?
MY: I sit down to read them literally every time I get a free moment to myself. I love reading books cover to cover, and I also love living in the world of each cookbook for a period of time and spending days or weeks just cooking out of one book. During Covid, I took a fake vacation to Italy and just cooked out of Emiko Davies' Florentine (Bookshop/Amazon) for a whole week; it was so delicious. In my daily life I make recipes from cookbooks almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I honestly just love them so much.
What is one cookbook you read, but don’t cook from?
MY: Rose Bakery's Breakfast, Lunch, Tea (Bookshop/Amazon). I truly just get lost in the photos. They were the photos that made me fall in love with food photography.
What do you find boring in a cookbook?
MY: Recipes without personality or an authentic tie to the author, things that could easily be found in a million places on the internet.
What is a cookbook that changed the way you cook?
MY: Cal Peternell's Twelve Recipes (Bookshop/Amazon)
What is a cookbook that totally transports you?
MY: Pasta Grannies (Bookshop/Amazon)
What is a cookbook that you find supremely useful?
MY: Lindsey S. Love's Chickpea Flour Does It All (Bookshop/Amazon). I love incorporating the extra protein/legumes in our daily lives, especially for my kids. And Nikki Dinki's More Veggies Please! (Bookshop/Amazon) is all about incorporating more veggies into comfort foods we already know and love.
What is a cookbook that you find supremely beautiful?
MY: Rose Bakery's Breakfast, Lunch, Tea. I love how the photos seem like they were taken from a fly on the wall in the bakery. Nothing is overly styled. It just shows natural, unfussy beauty.
What’s a recent recipe you made from a cookbook?
MY: The baked falafel from Sarah Waldman's Feeding a Family (Bookshop/Amazon). I loved it because it didn't require soaking the chickpeas overnight beforehand.
How did Sweet Farm! come to be?
MY: Between my undying love for creating sweets and the fact that I married a sugar beet farmer, there was no I way I couldn't write this book!
What was the hardest part about making the book?
MY: The very technical aspects required for baking and my own neuroticism surrounding cake moisture.
What is one thing you’re most proud of about Sweet Farm?
MY: Every part about it has a reason for being there. The methods, the ingredient amounts down to the 1/4 teaspoon, the ratios of fat to flour. I thought about everything until I could think no more.
You’re only allowed to cook from three books (aside from your own) for the rest of your life. What are they?
MY: Alex Stafford’s Bread Toast Crumbs (Bookshop/Amazon), Twelve Recipes (Bookshop/Amazon), Amy Thielen's New Midwestern Table (Bookshop/Amazon).
Interview has been lightly edited. If you purchase a book through one of these links, I may receive a small commission.
More to Nibble On
Zoe François featured Molly in her Substack and made the stunning Pomegranate Coconut Gelatin Mold from Sweet Farm! Watch the video in the post for the sexiest Jell-O jiggle I’ve ever seen.
Lukas Volger’s interview with Sapna Panjabi, author of the new book Dal Chawal
This week’s NYT Bestsellers: So Easy So Good at #2 and Every Day With Babs at #3. Congrats!
I paged through the e-galley of this one and can’t remember the last time I felt such a strong urge to cook through a book in its entirety. You’re going to want this; might as well-pre-order (Bookshop/Amazon).
What I cooked this week: Julia Turshen’s Simply Julia (Bookshop/Amazon) is a go-to for me when I need weeknight dinner inspo. This week I made her Baked Spinach Artichoke Chicken and Green Pasta. I really can’t recommend this book more for accessible, no-fuss recipes that always turn out.
Thanks for reading! Please heart this post and share any strong dessert opinions in the comments. I’ll go first—whipped cream is kinda meh. Can we still be friends?
Molly’s book had me laughing out loud as well. But the recipes aren’t messing around, everything I’ve cooked so far has been perfect!
So glad I’ve found your substack. I love cookbooks.
Incredibly inspiring! I read articles like this and it gives me so much hope that I’ll be that version of me in the near future! Love it! The cake is stunning and can’t wait to make it ❤️