Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women's Voices: A Cookbook

(Hardback)

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50+ recipes, short essays, interviews, and quotes from some of the best bakers, activists, and outspoken women in our country today

The 2016 election. The January 6th insurrection. Impeachment, twice.

For many women, baking now has a new meaning. Its an outlet for expressing our feelings about the current state of American politics and culture. Its a way to deal with our stress and anxiety, and, yes, rage and fury.

Rage Baking offers more than 50 cookie, cake, tart, and pie recipeswith beautiful photography by Jerelle Guyto help relieve these emotions. And it goes further. Inside youll also find inspirational essays, reflections, and interviews with well-known bakers and impassioned feminists and activists alike to help motivate you to take action and organize in your communities.

Be inspired with recipes, such as:
-Oatmeal Cookies from Ruth Reichl
-Lemon Bars from Vallery Lomas
-Swedish Visiting Cake from Dorie Greenspan
-Rum Raisin Brownies from Julia Turshen
-Root Beer Cake with ChocolateRoot Beer Glaze from Carla Hall
-Classic Southern Pecan Pie from Cecile Richards
-Almond and Chocolate Leche Cake from Pati Jinich
-Chocolate Cherry Biscotti from Grace Young
-And essays, interviews, and poetry by Ani DiFranco, Jennifer Finey Boylan, Elle Simone, Hali Bey Ramdene, and Von Diaz, among others.

Timely, fun, and creative, this cookbook speaks to both skilled and beginner bakers who are looking for new ways to use their sweetest skills to combine food and activism. Rage Baking brings women together with humor and passion as a way to defend, resist, and protest.

PROCEEDS OF THIS BOOK GO TO EMILYS LIST TO SUPPORT WOMEN CANDIDATES

Reviews

"Indeed it is a cookbook, but Kathy Gunst and Katherine AlfordsRage Bakingis also a genius ideathe very text that we, an army of citizen bakers, have been waiting for. Among more than 40 contributors to this feisty and inspiring collection of recipes, essays and interviews are luminaries Ruth Reichl, Ani DiFranco, Dorie Greenspan and Rebecca Traister. There are recipes like Power Muffs and No More Sheet Cake. The recipes, like the women behind them, represent diverse culinary traditions, from cornbread to bulgur flatbread to challah to focaccia. But they all share one ingredient: "I am anger wrapped in hopelessness wrapped in despair wrapped in more anger,"writes Tess Rafferty. 'And when I cant stand it anymore, I cook.' "BookPage
"In this debut cookbook, food writers Gunst and Alford collect solid recipes and passionate essays from women suffering through the #MeToo era. Chapters are traditionally organized but given rousing names (one on breads is Whisk, Fold, Knead, Rise Up) and illustrated with inspiring photos of womens marches from the 1960s to the 2000s. Recipes are functional and clever: Vallery Lomas, who wonThe Great American Baking Showin 2017 only to have the show canceled and not air after a judge was accused of sexual harassment, offers simple lemon bars that dont require precooking the curd for the filling. The authors often artfully integrate their subjects: Alford provides an honest look at womens experiences in restaurant kitchens and suggests a maple-walnut pull-apart bread (what better metaphor for my growing rage as the patriarchy works overtime), and Katherine Gunst of NPRsHere & Nowrecalls her dismay over Maine senator Susan Collinss yes vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and how baking temporarily restor[ed] my belief in the positive transformation of things (she offers LGBTQ-inspired rainbow cookies). Attempts to politicize baked goods, including a tenuous connection between red velvet cake andThe Handmaids Tale, can read like a reach, but they serve as a primal scream. This volume of accessible recipes squarely hits the target."Publishers Weekly
Baking, Politics, and the Power of Women Combine in the New Cookbook Rage Baking. It's a book that speaks about the power women can and are finding inside the kitchen and ultimately celebrates women through food. Rage Baking is much more than a simple cookbook, though. It's a community. There are recipes from renowned bakers likeDorie Greenspan, Carla Hall, and Virginia Willis, as well as from [authors] Gunst and Alford. You'll also find essays, poems, and quotes from a diverse group of women bakers, writers, comedians, and activists. Some of the writing is serious, some surprisingly funny, and some will make you angry. Still, there's a lot of hope to be found in the book.It's a book that, as we dive headfirst into this year's election season, you might want to share with all your friends.Bridget Shirvell, marthastewart.com
Rage Baking Is The Political Cookbook That Has The Food World Buzzing. Some people eat when they are stressed out over the state of the world. Others drink. But bakers, well, theyve got to bake. And now, theyve got their own cookbook already an instant hit.Micheline Maynard, Forbes.com, Editors Pick


Im going to give this book to so many people this year. Baking and politics combine in this upcoming book from Maine resident Kathy Gunst and Katherine Alford, who teamed up on this important and timely book, which will be released in time for Womens History Month. This collection of cookies, pies, cakes and breads includes essays and interviews with leading bakers, activists, writers and entertainers including so many inspiring women like Dorie Greenspan, Ruth Reichl, Carla Hall, Preeti Mistry, Julia Turshen, Pati Jinich, Vallery Lomas, Von Diaz, Genevieve Ko, and writers like Rebecca Traister, Pam Houston and many more.Rachel Forrest, Herald-Mail Media
Both timeless and also a direct response to the war on American women's civil liberties and body autonomy of the late 2010s, Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury and Women's Voices is a manifesto for channeling anger into positive action. This is not a book telling women that if they get back into the kitchen and start baking, their rage will be sedated and all will be well, writes James Beard Award-winning co-author Kathy Gunst (Soup Swap). This is a book about women's voices, women's recipes, women in community with one another.

The community of women Gunst and co-author Katherine Alford (Food Network) got to participate is impressive. Contributors include all-star chefs and restaurant owners, cookbook authors and food writers, Emmy-winning musicians and documentary filmmakers, television hosts and writers. Together, they have produced a distinct combination of more than 50 recipes. From around the world: Arabic baklawa, Baton Rouge lemon bars, Indian thepla, Jewish challah, Swedish visiting cake, bizcocho de ron (Mami's rum cake). For resistance: Impeachment Upside-Down Cake, Drop Dead! Pecan Spice Cookies, Rainbow Cookies, Power Muffs, (Don't Call Me) Honey Cakes. All these are augmented with essays, personal stories, poetry, in-depth interviews and baking tips.

In short, a passion for baking + activism = rage baking. A percentage of book sale proceeds goes to EMILY's List, an organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women. Discover: A collection of more than 50 sweet recipes, personal essays and inspiring interviews to fuel women's fury and passion for activism in the 21st century.BrocheAroe Fabian, Shelf Awareness
"The cover of this timely, political cookbook plays to my personal belief that baking is a release: Punch down that dough with force. The authors, Kathy Gunst, a cookbook writer, and Katherine Alford, a chef and writer, include views and recipes from more than 40 contributors, including Carla Hall, Genevieve Ko, Betty Fussell, Naomi Duguid and Jessica B. Harris. Clever chocolate-vanilla swirl cookies, a lovely Mexican chocolate-almond cake, upside-down cake with fresh pineapple, and chocolate pudding are some highlights, with photos of the sweets alternating with shots of womens marches. To that point the writerCharlotte Druckmansays to take your rage to the streets, not the kitchen. Some of the proceeds are donated to Emilys List, appropriate enough since the organizations name is an acronym: Early Money Is Like Yeast it makes the dough rise."Florence Fabricant, The New York Times

Author Bio

Katherine Alford has a proven track record in food. She ran aNew York Timesfour-star kitchen, has been a Greenmarket Manager, as well as instructor and director of Peter Kumps Cooking School (now Institute of Culinary Education). She spent the last twentyyears at the Food Network, ultimately, as the Senior Vice President of Culinary, where she led the culinary team for TV, digital, and print. She ran the test kitchen that created multiple cookbooks that were IACP finalists,Food & WineBest of the Best, andNew York Timesbestsellers. She oversaw recipe development and had a column inFood NetworkMagazine, the #1 food magazine with a monthly reach of over 1.3 million readers. She grew up in Washington, DC, in a politically active family; her passions are food and politics.

Kathy Gunst is a James Beard Awardwinning journalist and the author of sixteen cookbooks. She is the award-winning Resident Chef for NPRsHere and Now,heard on over 550 public radio stations with over 5 million listeners. She writes for many publications, includingTheWashington Post,EatingWell,Yankee,The New York Times, and others. Gunst teaches food journalism and cooking at schools and universities around the globe.