Books to Inspire the Best Holiday Meals Ever

This reimagined version of The Joy of Cooking is ready to be a staple in your kitchen. With 300 simple recipes, you'll be able to learn how foods work together and be able to apply those skills to every meal for the rest of your life. Cook Something breaks things down by chapter, guiding you to master an ingredient or technique to make show-stopping meals. Starting with the basics, like how best to soft-boil an egg, to the ambitious, like a chocolate souffle, you'll work your way up to mastery.

Highlighted recipes: Classic Italian Meatballs, Oven-Braised Chicken with Gnocchi, Caramelized Apple Galette, and so many more.

Iconic cookbook author Maida Heatter shares her best-loved, tried-and-true recipes of all time. Happiness is Baking is a gorgeously illustrated new edition of this modern classic, made for everyone from baking newbies to the true pros.

Highlighted recipes: Palm Beach Brownies, East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, Budapest Coffee Cake, and so many more.

Pick up A Woman's Place and learn all about the trailblazing women who changed the world from their kitchens. These 80 hidden figures used the power of heart and food to fight for a better world, from Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, who inspired a march for the independence of India with a few grains of salt, to Hattie Burr, who financed the fight for female suffrage by publishing cookbooks. Women also created some of the most common staples in kitchens across the world: dishwashers, buffalo wings, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and coffee filters. All from the minds of women. Amazing, right?

With more than 300 recipes, including every recipe from every episode of the TV show up to the 2019-2020 season, The Milk Street Cookbook is the perfect kitchen companion. The recipes are for high-quality, low-effort meals without the head-scratchingly long ingredient lists and unheard-of cookware. This book is the ultimate guide for regular home cooks.

Highlighted recipes: No-Sear Lamb or Beef and Chickpea Stew, French Apple Cake, Stir-Fried Chicken with Snap Peas and Basil, Roasted Cauliflower with Miso Glaze, and so many more.

Baking projects begin with a spark of memory, desire, craving, or feeling, and Samantha Seneviratne works to bring that spark to life. Following the charm of The Joy of Cooking, this cookbook focuses on the joy of life and baking. It includes 75 recipes, sorted into chapters focused on one of five themes, and each recipe is paired with a heartwarming essay and photos to remind you that baking is from the heart.

Highlighted recipes: Coffee Crème Bundt Cake, Nectarine Galette with Sour Cherry Jam, Chocolate Cardamom Swirl Babka, and more.

The American midwest is where Bundt cakes and brownies got their start. Immigrant families set down roots in the midwest and their recipes for breads, pies, cookies, and pastries set the culinary tone for the entire region. In Midwest Made, follow more than 125 recipes for a good, home-grown-feeling meal.

Highlighted recipes: Danish Kringle, Rhubarb and Raspberry Swedish Flop, German Lebkuchen, Smoky Cheddar-Crusted Cornish Pasties, and more.