Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip

TikTok star Hollis’s appealing follow-up to Baking Yesteryear offers 100 “darn-good” recipes from across the U.S. Hollis affects his trademark gee-whiz enthusiasm for quirky local delicacies like strawberry pretzel salad from Pennsylvania, which fills a crushed-pretzel crust with a mixture of Cool Whip, cream cheese, and strawberry gelatin powder; and Chicago’s “Atomic Cake,” which stacks banana, chocolate, and vanilla sponges. A jokey style permeates the recipe headnotes (Watergate was Nixon’s “saucy bid to undermine the presidential election of 1972”) and sidebars on cultural capitals occasionally feature awkward syntax (in New Orleans, “whispers and tales of a cryptic and occult past writhe just below the perception”). Thankfully, the recipes themselves are more straightforward, even those for complex projects like povitica, a honey and walnut bread from Kansas. Hollis’s culinary road trip unearths some relatively unknown gems, including a historic layer cake from Alabama that features in To Kill a Mockingbird and rolled cocoa-filled pastries sold along Route 65 in the Ozarks. Despite the title, many dishes are not baked at all, like New York’s chilled Waldorf salad gelatin ring, Georgia hush puppies, and California “Mojave Nuggets,” a confection made of coconut and almond. Fans of kitschy culinary nostalgia will happily go along for the ride. (May)