My friend Kate has a generous penchant for getting me great cookbooks. One of my favorites is Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic ($23.10 at Amazon). This amazing volume is great for novice bakers, or those who wish to know more about the science of baking. The collection includes clear directions, illustrations, and impressive description of how the test kitchen arrived at each recipe.

We have loved every recipe we have tried thus far in this book, but last weekend’s hit was the Chewy, Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownies (a recipe achieved by the BI test kitchen after a mere 50+ test batches!). This recipe was easy enough to serve as a baking project with Laurel, and the results were overwhelmingly received by us and several visitors through the weekend.