The Boozy Baker: 75 Recipes for Spirited Sweets »

Lucy Baker is a food writer and recipe tester, and a contributing columnist for SeriousEats.com and the site’s recipes editor. Baker has written articles for numerous publications, both online and in print, including Edible Brooklyn, Publishers Weekly, Popular Mechanics, McSweeney’s, and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

The Boozy Baker is a fun collection of recipes for cakes, pies, tarts, cookies, and more, all of which contain a healthy dose of alcohol. Home bakers will recognize classic treats such as profiteroles, peach cobbler, and spiced Bundt cake, and be delighted by the ways they are reinvented with chocolate stout, almond liqueur, and even Jägermeister. Featuring more than 30 full-color photographs, the book also includes sidebars throughout with instructions for preparing funky cocktails that add a punchy compliment to many of the recipes.

Whether you are a pastry perfectionist or a one-bowl beginner, a bonafide mixologist or just looking for a way to polish off a few dusty bottles, this cookbook is sure to become a favorite, its pages splattered with chocolate, sprinkled with sugar, and garnished with a twist.

Library Journal

In her first cookbook, appropriately named food writer and contributing columnist for SeriousEats.com Baker gives lovers of desserts and spirits a book that is one part mixology and three parts baking. She includes 25 recipes for drinks alongside 75 recipes for cakes, pies, cookies, and spoon desserts; each is a classic or original dessert that is infused with an alcohol—spirits, liqueurs, wine, or beer. Desserts run the spectrum from rustic (Fig Galette) to sophisticated (Vin Santo-Vanilla Panna Cotta with Apricot Compote) to a combination of the two (Beer Profiteroles with Chocolate-Beer Sauce), and while some will pack a punch, the alcohol content in others is somewhat negligible. In case your bar isn't well stocked, most recipes include alcohol substitutions. The index contains entries for alcohols by type—useful for using up that bottle of crème de menthe.Verdict Featuring drinks and a broad variety of desserts, this grown-up baker's delight is a good choice for libraries with limited budgets. Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone's Booze Cakes (reviewed below) is a good complement.—Pauline Baughman, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR