Molly Yeh's Sweet Farm

Have a Little Cookbook Chat

This week’s Cookbook Chat is with the lovely Molly Yeh! Molly and I met in New York in the early 2010s when we were tiny babies that had both just started blogging, and I’ve always felt that we were kindred baking spirits. Since then, Molly moved to a sugar beet farm and her big bright personality and passion for food have catapulted her to incredible success.

Not only is Molly a Juilliard trained musician and New York Times best selling author, you probably recognize her from many seasons of her Food Network show “Girl Meets Farm”. Molly is such a bright light in the food world and I am thrilled to share a fun little Q+A today about her new cookbook Sweet Farm and a recipe for her Craggly Sugar Cookies.

Q + A With Molly Yeh

This is your first sweets focused book. How did you approach it differently than your others? Were there any challenges you weren't expecting?

I felt like I could approach it with more creative abandon because in my first few books I always felt limited with only one chapter of sweets. I'm a total sweets person first--sweets are how I best express myself, share about my heritage, and they're what I most want to contribute to the world, so I always knew I wanted to write a whole sweets book, I just wanted to choose the right time. I loved that I could do multiple recipes devoted to marzipan, tahini, black sesame, rose, all of my favorite ingredients, and really zoom in on the types of textures and forms of sweets that I love. At the same time there certainly was a whole other level of challenges. Baked goods often take so long of course, especially with chilled doughs and yeasted breads, so each version that we needed to test would often add on more time to the process than I was patient for. Having to wait for cookies to cool before I could fully analyze them and make a game plan for the next batch got me anxious. (It wasn't like a salad dressing that could be tested 8 times before lunch.) And sometimes that batch might have only been testing the difference between 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda so... it got to be sort of mind melting lol. Also, I had to get so creative with finding homes for these test batches. For a while I didn't go anywhere without a bakery box of things- my hair dresser, my kids' dance classes, random meetings. It was a good way to make friends!

Is there a recipe in the book that you consider to be your signature bake?

The black sesame babka combines a flavor that is reflective of my Asian heritage with a form that is reflective of my Jewishness in a big rustic beast that is totally fit for a farm-y brunch. The dough uses the all purpose enriched dough from the book, which is a super buttery potato dough that took months to get right. I'm obsessed with the way the potato in the dough adds moisture and a special kind of fluffy softness. And the babka incorporates orange zest and coconut to enhance the black sesame in such a tasty three dimensional way. The dough took so long to get right because I wanted it to cram as much moisture and fat as possible into it without destabilizing the structure, and I also wanted the method to be extremely straightforward and use the fewest steps/dishes possible, so that eliminated using actual mashed potato and a tangzhong, but using potato flour is the perfect shortcut.

What cookbooks/chefs/authors/markets/seasons inspire your work?

You! I still remember a slab pie that you brought to a picnic in Brooklyn like... 12 years ago? It was so good and the crust was perfect. I remember you telling me that it's really hard to overbake a pie crust and that stuck with me. You've always made pie crust seem so enjoyable and it inspired me to stop being afraid of it and learn to love it. I still consider myself a cake person first (note the gigantic chapter on cake) but the fact that there actually is a pie chapter in this book is the result of being inspired by you, Erin McDowell, and my dad to finally embrace pies. I also love pouring over books by Sarah Keiffer, Amy Thielen, Cal Peternel, Hetty McKinnon, Anna Jones, Eden Grinshpan, Dorie Greenspan, Jesse Szewczyk, Kristina Cho, Benjamina Ebuehi, and Rose Carrarini. And church cookbooks from my area. I've loved learning about my new home through Jell-o salads and Velveeta fudge.

We met a long time ago when you were still living in NYC. If you had a weekend in the city to eat whatever you want, where would you go and what would you order?

I love old New York, like Barney Greengrass and Zabar's, and just strolling around the UWS as if I'm in You've Got Mail. I would start the day with a huge plate of salami matzo brei from Barney Greengrass. Then find some good Italian rainbow cookies somewhere. And then probably make my way to anywhere that has good chewy tingly hand pulled noodles, like Xi'an Famous Foods. I'd definitely want to sneak in some Hummus Place hummus and then also get a big greasy slice of pizza. My favorite place for pizza when I was in school was Francesco's on 68th and Columbus. I've also been drooling from afar at Hani's Bakery, Librae Bakery, Radio Bakery, and Elbow Bread. We would have to do a major bakery crawl and eat the Princess Cake croissants at Radio Bakery, those pistachio rice crispy treats from Hani's, and... literally everything else.

Is there a recipe people might pass by that deserves a little extra love?

The big craggly sugar cookies which are the first recipe in Sweet Farm look like the plainest sugar cookies of all time. And if you look at their ingredients list, they are pretty simple. BUT when you use good butter that starts off cold, you get this huge dense buttery hockey puck that dreams are made of. They're like the sugar cookies of your childhood that have grown up to be thick and hunky and... do people still say swole?? They are so good. We have them at Bernie's sometimes and they're usually the last to sell out but they have this small but mighty following of people who actually have given them a chance and realize that they are magical.

Anything else you want us to know about this book?

There's totally a recipe for Velveeta fudge.

BIG CRAGGLY SUGAR COOKIES

These cookies look dumb and boring, and they’re going to be last to get picked for the team. Look at them. They’re just, like, nothing cookies. But stay with me, please. The farmers who eat them every year for harvest in their tractor lunches will be the first to tell you that they’re quite the opposite of nothing cookies. They are your childhood, but thicker, butterier, and better.

I’m not always going to expect you to splurge on the nice European-style grass-fed butter, but it’s going to make a difference here since there are so few other ingredients. You’ll notice the butter flavor. Also, before you make these, forget everything you know about making cookies. Or rather, promise to read these directions carefully and trust them when they say don’t let the butter soften, don’t cream the butter and the sugar to incorporate air, don’t give them enough space on the pan, and don’t be alarmed when the mixture looks all wrong. Do plan some time because even though butter doesn’t need to soften, the dough still needs a rest period before baking in order for the cookies to maintain their outrageous thickness. The resulting cookie for giants is crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, and almost scone-like (perhaps his grandma was a scone).

MAKES 6 GIGANTIC (GIGANTIC) COOKIES

1 cup (226 grams) cold very-good-quality, ideally European-style, unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes

1 ½ cups (300 grams) granulated sugar

2 large cold eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups (390 grams) all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon (13 grams) turbinado or coarse sanding sugar, for sprinkling (totally fine to sub granulated sugar if that’s all you have)

IN a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, combine the butter and granulated sugar and mix on low until just combined and pasty, 1 to 2 minutes. A few butter bits that are still intact are totally okay. You want to avoid beating any unnecessary air into this mixture so the end result is extra dense and delightful. Add the eggs one at a time, continuing to mix on low until they’re just incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally with a rubber spatula, and then mix in the vanilla. The mixture will look curdled and weird; it’s supposed to look this way. Stop the mixer and sprinkle in the flour. Sprinkle the baking powder and salt evenly over the flour and give the dry ingredients a rough little whisk to combine, then turn the mixer on low to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Use the spatula to scrape down the sides as needed to ensure all the ingredients get combined evenly.

LINE a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper. This pan needs to fit in the freezer, so if you can make room for a standard half sheet pan, use that; otherwise go with a smaller sheet pan for now and plan to transfer the cookies to a half sheet pan to bake.

DIVIDE the dough into 6 large (170-gram) balls and flatten them slightly into 3-inch disks. Place them on the sheet pan, spacing them evenly apart, and sprinkle with the turbinado sugar. Freeze for at least 2 hours or up to 3 months. If you plan to bake these within a day, there’s no need to cover the pan, but if you plan to keep the dough frozen for longer, then wrap tightly with plastic wrap.

WHEN ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375°F. If you froze the cookie dough disks on a small sheet pan, transfer them to a parchment-lined half sheet pan, spacing them evenly apart. They’ll seem close, a little too close, but cookies that smooch in the oven have a special charm.

BAKE until the bottoms are golden and the tops are lightly golden; begin checking for doneness at 26 minutes. If you have an instant-read thermometer handy, aim for an internal temperature of around 180°F. Let cool on the pan for 10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack and/or your mouth.

STORE in an airtight container at room temperature. These are best within a few days of baking. After that they’ll be okay for a few more days, but if you think you won’t finish the batch in that time, I’d recommend keeping unbaked disks of dough in the freezer and baking one or two at a time whenever the craving strikes.

OKAY, fine, you can make these smaller. They will be less good. Just scoop 12 slightly rounded ¼ -cup (85-gram) balls, flatten, sprinkle with turbinado sugar and freeze them as instructed above, and bake them all on one sheet for like 22 minutes. Don’t say I didn’t tell u so.

From Sweet Farm! by Molly Yeh. Copyright © 2025 by Molly Rebecca Yeh. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.