I no longer take on neighborhood bullies or if I do, I brandish a whisk.

Since 1997, Marcy has been the editor, host and master baker behind www.betterbaking.com and has seen it grow from a few pages into one of the largest independent baking sites online, boasting 20,000 regular subscribers and a million visitors a month. Featuring original recipes, baking tips, book reviews, ingredient profiles and lifestyle articles, the site has been praised everywhere from Martha Stewart’s Sirius radio station (where Marcy often is a guest on the air waves as their baking expert) to the pages of The New York Times.

Marcy is the author of three bestselling cookbooks, A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking, The Best of BetterBaking.com and A Passion for Baking. Included in their pages are hundreds of the recipes that she has honed to perfection, including her famous Lawsuit Muffins, Chocolate Eruption Cheesecake, Famous Carrot Cake and the best Tango Cookies in the world. Still a regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines, Marcy lives in Montreal.

What was your first cookbook?

Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls (I recently found a copy on Ebay and bought it). From it, I learned how to make Eggs in in a (Toast) Frame, with cut out hearts where you plopped the egg in. A great mother’s day brunch item.

THEN I quickly graduated to the Time-Life Foods of the World Series. In the background, my mother had a huge, white book, The Look and Cook Book with ‘gourmet’ recipes. I still have that too but never cooked from it.

I also first baked on those kids’ baking sets. The batteries always burned out or whatnot and one day I figured, much like the Israelites exodus-ing Egypt, I could ‘bake the cakes in the sun’.

Seemed a good idea – it was summer after all and hot. However, the neighborhood boys upended the outdoor bakery. I took one to task (I was a small but feisty girl) …but it didn’t restore my overturned little layer cake, baking in the backyard. The ‘boy’ is now a eye surgeon with 3 grown kids and I have graduated to a Garland oven.

I no longer take on neighborhood bullies  or if I do, I brandish a whisk.

What cookbook would you say had the greatest impression on you?

Probably one of James Beard’s books – simply because he could make a boiled egg sound good and noble – both the preparation of it (he was reverent about simple, good, techniques) AND the enjoyment of that boiled egg or a boiled potato with fresh black pepper. Beard made simple things sound like a feast. (We also share the same birthday: May 5th )

OTHER than that – I was inspired by how food was described in books of fiction – like Gone With the Wind or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Even more than cookbooks, I think food in fiction was interesting to me.

Could you talk about any recent cookbooks you’ve found particularly interesting or inspiring?

I love Richard Bertinet’s bread books (with companion DVD’s which are like Bread/Jane Austen PBS specials – that’s how good the production is/music etc.). I am impressed with Baking Artisan Pastries and Breads by Ciril Hitz because of the European flair in the recipes – it’s a step above and beyond a ton of baking books. I also love Dan Lepard, the UK baker (and great photographer).

It’s not new but it’s wonderful – the Balthazar Cookbook – it’s packed with gusto, food savvy, and panache. Plus of course, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes by my friend and fellow baker – Rose Levy Beranbaum – no one makes cakes a celebration more than Rose does.

If our readers were going to cook one recipe from your most recent cookbook, something that represented it, or you, at the time you wrote it, what would you suggest?

Has to be three recipes

I think that would be my Tango Cookies, aka Alphahores in The New Best of BetterBaking.com. It is a totally sumptuous cookie for one thing – tweaked to perfection: coconut almond shortbread, stuffed with fresh dulce de leche. I worked for eons making the best alphahores possible and it represents for me, a pinnacle in my baking in tandem with my continued passion for tango – where I learned about dulce de leche and alphahores. I love when I can combine my passions in one thing – in this case, a recipe.

Two: my Matzoh Buttercrunch from the 10th Anniversary edition of A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking because…I was a younger mother in those days, harried and trying to write my first cookbook and take care of my (then, small) three sons. The Matzoh Buttercrunch was born out of creativity and expediency (what can I make that is great for passover, for kids, easy, and delicious…that will make my and anyone else’s passover life easier?). I had no idea the recipe would travel so far and be made so often. I’ve heard that Bloomingdales once made and sold it and tons of bakeries all over the world – all based on my original recipe. But I can still remember standing in my kitchen thinking what can I create that is….?

Three: Lawsuit Muffins (both versions 1 and 2) Because…it represents the start of my professional baking career – the drama, ups/downs – finding out I could create things (at that time, I worked in a bakery/new age restaurant) and draw undue attention just on the basis of a super recipe (or in this case, formula). It was like theatre performance, alchemy, and a food/people love affair all in one. I also learned about heartbreak and culinary espionage …in that recipes cannot be trade-marked but one’s reputation is worth a mint.

Lawsuit Muffins also taught me about resilience, i.e. you have to ‘Phoenix’ yourself a few times in one lifetime. It is still my go-to recipe for muffins and hundreds of dozens of these muffins later – in my own kitchen, classes I’ve taught and for bakeries -I am still proud of that recipe. It was really, the recipe that launched my career.

What’s next for you?

I am currently working on The Baker’s Four Seasons, a new cookbook for Harper Studio, a cooking book (not baking – all cooking!), and a memoir that focuses on my life and days in baking and tango. I am at this point, broadening out from just cookbooks to writing books that have been ‘wait listed’ a long time.