Sweet farm! Cookies, cakes, salads (!), and other delights from my kitchen on a sugar beet farm

"Recipes for sweets pour out of me like any bucket of sprinkles that gets handed to my children: swiftly and with great joy," writes Food Network star Yeh (Home Is Where the Eggs Are) in this joyful collection. Yeh's fun, personality-filled confections represent a unique culinary melding of her Jewish/Chinese heritage with her husband's Midwestern farmland roots. For cookies, there are red bean newtons featuring Chinese sweet bean paste and hamantaschen-inspired jumbo thumbprints. A section on "Dessert for Breakfast" features a buttery potato dough perfect for "Chocolate-y Swirly Buns" and puffy potato doughnuts. Peanut butter fudge pie gets a makeover with tahini while the "Sorta Weird Seven-Layer Bars" encompass matzo meal, bagel chips, and chocolate. The chapter on sweet salads is perhaps the most unusual, featuring a "Candy Bar Salad" assembled from chopped candy bars, cream, pudding, and apple slices, and another of roasted rhubarb, strawberries, and pretzel streusel with yogurt and sumac. Yeh proves a fearless, out-of-the-box baker with a breezy voice. Home cooks who are looking to get creative should check this out. (Mar.)

From farm girl to Food Network celebrity, Yeh (Home Is Where the Eggs Are) inhabits the same culinary space as other down-home favorites such as Julia Turshen. She's everyone's dream cook next door, the kind of person who'd share a recipe, a few of her chickens' eggs, an easy tip, or a family-friendly dessert. As a beet farmer, she's rooted in sweetness, and her latest cookbook confirms that her smile isn't saccharine--it's pure sugar, and she dishes up everything from classics to her signature "desserts for breakfast" and some decidedly non-veggie-centered salads. Standouts are her rose shortbread delight and the "overachiever" versions of her cookie-and-candy-bar salads. Plus, by sharing pictures of her lived-in pantry, Yeh shows readers that magic happens even in messiness if folks measure out their favorite staples and mix things up, as in her one-bowl any-butter bars. VERDICT From sweet starts to the day and simple takes on classics to creative showstoppers, these recipes will appeal to home bakers looking for a variety of sweet treats that they can make without expensive ingredients if they remain attentive to process, ingredient measurements, and bake times.--Emily Bowles