Zoë François Wrote Her Life Story, One Cookie at a Time

Plus, big news about her next book!

Welcome new subscribers! I’m thrilled to see so many Bombe Squad members here. Hopefully I’ll meet some of you in person at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee in April.

A quick Cookbookery Collective recap: I’m your host, the food director at REAL SIMPLE, a five-time cookbook author, a former personal chef, and a certified cookbook obsessive. Each week in this newsletter a member of the cookbook community answers the Cookbookery Q&A. My interview with myself (finally someone asked me all the right questions) is here.

This week, baking superstar Zoë François answers my tough (tough!) questions. A TV host and the author of 10 cookbooks—including Zoë Bakes Cakes (Bookshop/Amazon) and eight in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Bookshop/Amazon) series—Zoë is one of the few recipe developers that I trust implicitly. Her latest is Zoë Bakes Cookies (Bookshop/Amazon), and if it was just a collection of recipes I would still want it on my shelves. But Zoë turned the book into much more than that.

Photo: Wing Ho

The chapters are divided by stages in her life, starting with her youth on a Vermont commune, through her college years when she launched a cookie cart business, and onto her Midwestern adulthood, with chapters of beloved family recipes in the mix. Woven together, the chapter intros and recipe headnotes make this book a memoir of sorts, or as she calls it below, her life story.

And, of course, since this is Zoë, a trained pastry chef with years of experience, the book is also a tremendous baking resource, packed with info on the hows and whys of cookie baking. My favorite example: the Cookie Academy chapter includes six pages breaking down her chocolate chip cookie recipe and how each ingredient affects the final product.

I recently learned that Zoë shot the photos for the book, and I tell you, that blew me away. I am forever in awe of multi-hyphenates (see, Rawaan).

I also learned what Zoë is baking up next in the cookbook department. After her cake and cookie books comes… PIE! I have not confirmed the name, but can only imagine it will be called Zoë Bakes Pies. I can’t wait. Pies are my baking nemesis. Thanks for sharing the news with us Zoë!

The Cookbookery Q&A with Zoë François

About how many cookbooks do you own?

ZF: 800+. Ninety-eight percent of them are baking and pastry focused. I’ve been collecting them since high school when I was gifted Lee Bailey’s Country Desserts. I still have that book and love it with all my heart.

How do you organize them?

ZF: To call what I do with them organization would be a stretch of the imagination. I get about 10 to 30 new books per season, so it’s all I can do to get them on a shelf. They are often flowing onto the floor and any other surface I can cover. My husband may have bandied about the term “cookbook hoarder” on the occasions he’s had to move the collection from one house to another.

How did Zoë Bakes Cookies come to be?

ZF: My first food memory was going to Jewish bakeries in Brooklyn with my mom and Bubbe when I was a toddler in the 1960s to buy rugelach. Much later in 1989, I took a semester off from the University of Vermont to start a cookie company, Zoë’s Cookies, based on a fictitious business plan I wrote in a stultifyingly dull business class. Cookies are my baking origin story, and it made perfect sense they’d be the subject of my first cookbook. But it wasn’t until number 10, and I’m so glad I waited. Writing the book unveiled family stories I had never heard before. I learned about the strength and courage of my ancestors through their baking. I think if I had written it sooner, it would have been a very different book and not nearly as deeply personal or as good.

What was the hardest part about making the book?

ZF: My mom told me a story about the Munn Cookie recipe from my late Bubbe. It turns out that my Jewish ancestors had baked them to survive the Russian revolution in Kiev. The money from those cookies was how they paid for the voyage to the USA and started a new life. After hearing that story, I knew this book was much more than just my love letter to cookies, it was my life story and I asked my publisher for more time to write it.

What is the first cookbook you remember cooking out of?

ZF: It was the Time Life Book on French cuisine during a home ec class in middle school. I made a chocolate mousse using coffee grounds, because I didn’t realize the recipe meant brewed coffee. It was a gritty mess, but I fell in love with the process.

What kind of cookbook reader/user are you?

ZF: At this point in my baking life, I mostly I use cookbooks as inspiration. As I was learning, I would lean on certain authors (Rose Levy Berenbaum, James Beard, Maida Heatter, Julia Child & Dorie Greenspan, Flo Braker, Nick Malgieri, Lindsey Shere, Claudia Fleming and many more) to teach me how to bake.

What is one cookbook you read, but don’t cook from?

ZF: I found myself moved by Tom Colicchio’s book, Why I Cook (Bookshop/Amazon). I did make his famous brussels sprouts recipe, but mostly I was in it for the stories about his culinary journey. There is not one single dessert in the book, so it’s shocking I even own it, haha.

What do you find boring in a cookbook?

ZF: It isn’t the subject, but often the writing that loses me. Writing and cooking/baking are two separate and equally challenging skills; it is the rare chef who can do both beautifully. I could read an account of an empty ketchup bottle by David Lebovitz and be on the edge of my seat. Not everyone can pull that off. Also, a professional kitchen “war story” must be exceptionally compelling to move me. I worked in restaurant kitchens and found the crazy behavior tiresome, so reading about it just bores me.

What is a cookbook that changed the way you cook?

ZF: Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course (Bookshop/Amazon) was a game changer for me and most pastry chefs in the ‘90s. She was combining flavors in ways that blew my mind. Herbs and spices that were once reserved for savory dishes were being infused into desserts. She also took the sugar down a notch, which I was so grateful for.

What is a cookbook that totally transports you?

ZF: I am going to Sicily this spring and bought Victoria Granof’s book, Sicily, My Sweet (Bookshop/Amazon), to get a better understanding of Sicilian baking. She completely transported me to the island, it’s culture and history. She’s a wonderful chef, and her writing is both moving and full of humor. I bought it for the recipes, but fell in love with her stories.

What is a cookbook that you find supremely useful?

ZF: Well, there are so many, but the ones that I try to live up to are Dorie Greenspan’s books. She has such an easy, inviting and informative style of writing. She understands that her audience may be professional bakers or novices, and she writes to both. It is a delicate balance of sharing information without tipping into intimidation or TMI.

What is the last recipe you made from a cookbook?

ZF: The Avocado Crème Brûlée from Paola Velez’s debut cookbook, Bodega Bakes (Bookshop/Amazon).

What’s one book you’re sheepish to admit you’ve never cooked out of?

ZF: Dessert Person (Bookshop/Amazon) by Claire Saffitz, which I own, and think is so beautifully done. I just haven’t baked from it, YET!

What is one thing you’re proud of about Zoë Bakes Cookies?

ZF: I’ve sold a million books over the 10 titles I’ve written, but Zoë Bakes Cookies (Bookshop/Amazon) was my first NYTimes bestseller moment, so I am very proud of that. This book is so deeply part of my DNA, and that was scary to put out in the world. I was overwhelmed and grateful when it became a bestseller because before that moment it felt very private. When I write, I am alone, and it really feels like an intimate process. Then I share it and hope people respond.

Heads up: the Morning Cookies from the Vermont Commune chapter of Zoë Bakes Cookies are fantastic—chewy and delicious—straight from the freezer.

You’re only allowed to cook from three books (aside from your own) for the rest of your life. What are they?

ZF: NOOOOOO! It’s too hard, my people live very long lives. I love my whole collection, much to my husband’s dismay as we get ready to move them again.

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

• I’m noticing a trend of cookbook titles with exclamation points, including Hot Date! of course, the upcoming Galette!, and the just released (and probably bestselling) You Got This! Any others to add to the list?

• I got a sneak peek of Dorie’s upcoming book, and it’s just as wonderful as you would expect.

• Cookbooks’ “backdoor influence”

• I’m enjoying Saveur’s smart cookbook coverage, including this interview. It’s worth seeking out the Spring/Summer print issue for “The Age of the Culinary-Ish” story (and everything else).

Thanks to Zoë for chatting cookbooks and to you for reading! I’d love to get to know each other better. Please say hi in the comments, tell us more about your Substack if you have one, and what cookbook you’re crushing on right now.