This interview is brought to you by the SAVEUR Cookbook Club, our passionate community of food-loving readers from around the globe, celebrating our favorite authors and recipes. Join us as we cook through a new book every month, and share your food pics and vids on social media with the hashtags #SAVEURCookbookClub and #EatTheWorld.
To longtime readers of SAVEUR, Ben Mims needs no introduction. He started his career at the magazine in the early 2000s, where he first developed a fascination with cookies, the most underestimated treats in the confectionary canon. Though his subsequent work at Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, and the Los Angeles Times covered many different topics, he never lost his love for cookie culture and the rich history that each and every cookie contains. So, when he was approached to write a book about cookies from around the world, his response was, “Wow, I’ve been thinking about this for years.” That passion drove the research that informed Crumbs: Cookies and Sweets From Around the World, a collection of 300 globally sourced recipes for the world’s most beloved crumbly and cakey bite-size treats. As he worked, Mims learned about cookies as a form of culinary diplomacy and the crucial techniques that allow him to bake with precision, patience, and above all joy.
Photos, from left: Courtesy Phaidon; C. Taylor Miller
How did you narrow down your choices from 850 recipes to 300 recipes (which is still a lot)?
In my research, I saw that
