What a beautiful coincidence the tenth anniversary of Cook from scratch it’s this year and The Cake Bible celebrates its 35th anniversary at the same time! I am so honored to serve as an editor on this wonderful publication dedicated to the home baker, and this year I will be writing a special essay for each of its bimonthly editions.
I’d like to share some highlights about what it took to give my book such lasting relevance and to become a book that changed the lives and careers of many people. When I contacted Maria Guarnaschelli, editor of William Morrow, with my idea to write a book about pie, one of her first questions was how much money I hoped to make. My response without hesitation was that I would do it for no money if I could have a photo of each cake. And his response was that he couldn’t accept such a generous offer. But I knew I had earned his notoriously hard-won respect. And years later, Maria told me I was the only one who approached her offering to write the book royalty-free and, ironically, I was the only one actually making any money!
In those days, cookbooks were not big sellers, especially cookbooks. William Morrow had just published two cookbooks written by major industry celebrities, both of which failed. Maria asked me to prepare a lunch for her and publisher Sherry Arden to impress her with my cooking and baking skills and try to convince her to publish my book.
When they arrived at my apartment, I had Cordon Rosé champagne waiting for me. Maria was so anxious for the lunch to be a success that she nervously asked Sherry if she wanted to sit down but it came out like “shit”! To my dismay, I was the only one giggling uncontrollably, while the other two pretended nothing strange had happened. But the lunch led to the much desired book deal!
Maria and I looked to see if there were any non-religious books with the word “Bible” in the title, and all we found was The Bible of weaponswhich reassured us that it wouldn’t be risky to use it for a gentler topic. So, he made a mock-up of the cover and one day, as he was carrying it in the elevator, all the other passengers looked at the cover and stood up a little straighter. I realized that if I was going to call my book a Bible, it had to be 100% error free. Then, after the final pass, I read the entire 1,000-page manuscript on a tape recorder and played it back against the original, finding many errors in the numbers the transcriber made while typing manually. I insisted that the book not go to print until every error I found had been corrected. By doing these rigorous tests, anyone who followed the recipe was virtually guaranteed success. And that’s how word of mouth sold the book.
Maria asked me if I had anyone in mind for the foreword, and my response was that Maida Heatter, the reigning queen of baking, would be my dream choice. The fact that I didn’t know her and that she had just written the foreword for one of those two failed baking books didn’t discourage me enough from contacting her. Maida’s response after seeing the manuscript was, “I see what you have done and I will do it.” It was the golden seal of approval. The rest is history.
