Cozy, sweet and hopeful - just want you want out of a baking memoir. A recommended purchase for collections where cookbooks and other foodie titles are popular.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4400512827?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Loved this book so much! I am an avid cookbook collector and I particularly enjoy cookbooks with lots of narrative about the author’s life, influences, and random fun facts. Christina Tosi’s previous cookbooks hit all these narrative points for me.

This book is kind of the reverse, mostly narrative with just a few recipes. I inhaled this book like a batch of warm Cornflake Chocolate-Chip Marshmallow Cookies fresh from the oven. Even the few stories in this book that I had read or heard before revealed new twists and additional details to keep me entranced. And, honestly, I could read stories about Greta (Tosi’s mom) all day long.

Many thanks to Netgalley, the author, and publisher for allowing me to read an ARC. I’d already pre-ordered this book when I was given the opportunity to read an advance copy, and I’m still excited to get my hands on the print version.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of this memoir. Tosi's book is full of positive energy. With tidbits from her experiences growing up and starting her famous bakery she gives us her recipe for joy and making the world a better place. The books makes you smile on every page and leave you wanting to grab a head scarf and a whisk to create something delicious!

I love Milk Bar and the recipes Christina Tosi has shared through her bakery, but was sadly disappointed in this book! I was hoping for a dessert cookbook but it ended up being more of a personal collection of stories with a few recipes sprinkled in. I was surprised to find that none of the recipes were particularly unique — I'm surprised chocolate milkshake made the cut given how simple it was — besides her classic cereal milk one which I am actually excited to try.

Given that it is an unedited copy, I think the final copy will most likely be much better with the addition of photos but I didn't love it in its current state. If you're a fan of Tosi and want to learn more about her family, work-life, and so on, this book is probably worth getting. As someone looking to expand her repertoire of recipes, this was lacking.

Dessert Can Save the World is full of fun stories and simple recipes make for a fun and decorative book to have in your collection!

As a fellow baking enthusiast, I admire Christina Tosi and everything Milk Bar stands for: delighting in the indulgence and fun that is dessert. Her book is part memoir, part quasi-inspirational/self-help guide to creating joy in unlikely and mundane situations. I have read several chefs’ memoirs, and the common thread among them is that the career ups and downs of the most driven chefs are enough to create an engaging book without using the paradigm of “here’s how my advice can make you a better person.” So, while Dessert Can Save the World was ultimately as charmingly random and benignly quirky as the most popular of Milk Bar’s signature desserts, I think it would have worked better as a straight-up memoir. Learning about Christina’s ascent from lowly pastry chef who cut her teeth at Bouley and wd~50 to James Beard-winning superstar was more interesting to me than the constant advice parables.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

I loved this book! I own all of Christina Tosi’s cookbooks and have been a Milk Bar fan for years, but dessert fan my entire life. This book is a complete love letter to dessert that chronicles how Milk Bar came to be and how Tosi built her empire. She shares all of the ways she worked her way up in a male dominated field with kindness, grit, and a colorful headscarf. This was such a joyful read, which was surprisingly refreshing for a memoir. Despite all she has accomplished, Tosi isn't jaded by her success and is ready to be dessert BFFs with anyone she comes across. If only we could all swap our dirty dessert secrets back and forth! Honey Nut Cheerios mixed into vanilla ice cream for me!

Dessert Can Save the World: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes for a Stubbornly Joyful Existence by Christina Tosi is a fun, cute, and quirky read. The hardcover is 240 pages, but I read an eARC that was provided to me from NetGalley. All opinions here are my own.

Christina Tosi redefined what being a boss looks like in an extremely male-dominated industry and I look up to her for that. I've been a fan of hers for a while, especially after she was a judge on Master Chef Jr. I've visited several Milk Bar locations in NYC while I was living there for a month while a partner of mine was recovering from surgery. I stopped by once on my birthday, and bought myself some truffles, and when I mentioned to the clerk I was celebrating he got super excited and demanded I also receive a birthday cookie on the house. It was my loneliest birthday and that gave me a lot of happy to stretch out in a city I wasn't super familiar with.

In the Acknowledgements section, she thanks her writing partner Deb Goldstein, so she definitely had a bit of help in actively writing this book. As I read it, I was wondering how much was actually Tosi and how much was written by a ghost writer. That being said, I did "hear" a lot of this in Tosi's voice, so the two melded quite well as writing partners.

I appreciated that there were quite a few recipes in here! I wish there was an index at the back of the book that noted which pages those recipes were on, for ease of finding them again later. That, and the fact that while I enjoyed the read, a lot of topics or phrases were repeated quite a lot, are the reasons this is getting 4 stars from me (rounded up from a 3.5).

Well, this is really, really upbeat. We could use this, this year! I hate to say it wore on me a bit. There are a few recipes here, and some business type advice, and lots and lots of "if you are just determined and happy enough and bake enough stuff it will all turn out ok." And I really hope that is true! I just kept thinking "But . . . diabetes." lol. Anyway. If you would like an upbeat love letter to dessert with a few recipes, definitely get this book!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is a delightful memoir by Christina Tosi. It chronicles her early life through today, her love of baking and her journey in the restaurant business. What it isn’t is a cookbook. Enjoy the story, and the half dozen recipes, but don’t expect recipes and a little story.

I sat down and read Dessert Can Save the World in a night. I have always admired and looked up to the brilliance that is Christina Tosi. And having her show up every day in the beginning of the pandemic for a bunch of strangers, seeing her have a baby and grow her empire exponentially, I often though, how does she do it. I appreciate this is a recent memoir in the sense it was written so recently and we got to see how her upbringing, her past etc is what fueled her. Her advice is simple yet so profound. I think Mama Greta needs to write her own book as she is a gem of a woman. This book is wonderful read and perfect any Milkbar hardbody.

I am absolutely in love with this book AND its author! I had heard of Christina Tosi through her baking books, so when I saw that she was coming out with a book with personal stories and life lessons, I was sold! Even though I knew this book would be adorable--and I can't wait to try some of the recipes she includes--I was really impressed with the words of wisdom that she gives her readers. They're super simple, but also impactful. My favorite lesson she imparts is that the joy behind a cookie (or cake or pie, etc,.) can change the world. The joy that is so lacking today in people's lives can be had again, and kindness can be the start to that. Making other people feel special; it's a simple task, but one that has the biggest ripple effect. I have tried to do better about this the last few years, and I can assure you, it has done wonders for me. More importantly, it's the right thing to do, and I love that Tosi uses baking to get this message across. I also went to pastry school, and she is so spot-on with why people get into pastry arts in the first place. I loved the anecdotes with her mother (who sounds so awesome!), and reading about those acts of service is very inspiring.

My absolute favorite part of the book, however, is her chapter on guilty desserts. That's the moment I fell in love with both Tosi AND this book: when I found out about the little dessert idiosyncrasies she has, because I have them too! It made her seem so relatable, and I love that she puts this in her book, because it really proves to people that she isn't some pastry snob--she's just like us!

What it all boils down to is this: I love this book and the wisdom Tosi imparts to her readers. I love the personal anecdotes, family stories, and fun recipes. If you're looking for a bright, positive, colorful book to read this spring, this is your book!

This was an interesting look at Tosi’s value/mission regarding her choices with running her bakery business and the ways in which she has bucked the traditional male dominated energy of professional kitchens. There are a few recipes sprinkled in, but it’s mostly a manifesto on the emotional, social and cultural importance of dessert in any form.

ARC from the publisher via NetGalley, but the opinions are my own.

The book was well written, but came off more like a self-help book than I was expecting it to. I expected more of a memoir touching on how Tosi built her empire. I liked the sprinkling of recipes throughout, and found myself entertained the whole way through.

Perfect book for these often hard times. I loved Tosi's philosophy of just bake the cake and her grandmother's advice to "go sew" when you're angry. A much needed mood boost! Loved that recipes were included.

As someone who bakes to relieve stress and receives yummy noises from taste testers like applause, this book was right up my alley! I’ll admit that I thought it was going to be more of a cookbook but it’s a happy memoir with lots of fun and funny stories from the author’s childhood and culinary career. Not to worry, there are a few yummy recipes included! This book is a ray of sunshine in this crazy time in history, I highly recommend it, it’s guaranteed to make you smile.

Thank you Netgalley, Rodale Inc and Christina Tosi for this eARC in exchange for my honest review. Publication date is set for March 8, 2022

I am a fan of Tosi's Milk Bar bakeries, and I completely agree with her that Dessert can save the world. Besides that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading her baking memoir. Her attitude about how to treat people--both employees and customers--makes me like her even more than I already did. I read it on my kindle, but I'll need to buy a paper copy so I have the recipes easily at hand.

Milk Bar founder/CEO Christina Tosi through the lens of a chef brings into focus the fact that dessert is beyond just having cake, pie, your favorite topping, etc. She shares how her path provided life lessons that helped her to navigate relationships whether with family, friends, or coworkers to transform into the chef, businesswoman, wife, mother and all the roles that she plays today.

She writes about simply bringing joy by saying yes when you can and understanding how to navigate a world where giving joy is not always the focus or the priority. The recipes are fewer than expected but provide context to her stories. This is an opportunity to read about how she lived through the challenges she has faced and still remained true to self.

Christina's book is a food-memory resurrecting tale from a delightfully optimistic, hard-working, and inspiring voice. It took me back in time to savoring frozen Hostess treats from my grandma's freezer, making gooey cheese and butter sandwiches slight melted in the microwave, and spitting (yes, spitting) melted ice cream back into my bowl to create a creamy "soft-serve". Christina never makes you feel ashamed about your "dirty dessert secrets"; in fact, she encourages you to embrace them. The book is light, fun, and the included recipes are simple and stress-free.

This book is about dessert. But it's also about the dessert of life. I enjoyed the stories and the memoir-like experience, along with great tips and interesting ideas. For instance, 10 things to celebrate. It's an enjoyable book and very unique in its style, along with fun recipes.