Zoë François, Author at ZoëBakes

17 Chocolate Desserts To Eat All Year

January 22, 2024January 22, 2024 Zoë François 2 Comments

Hot Chocolate Cake | ZoeBakes by Zoë François

Chocolate is romantic, dramatic, purported to have healing properties, and is absolutely delicious. The wonderful flavor is representative of devotion and love. Chocolate can come in so many forms that even those who don’t consider themselves chocolate fanatics almost always find a chocolate treat to love. Below you will find a primer on all things chocolate, so you can learn all the tips and tricks for baking with chocolate. When I set out to write Zoë Bakes Cakes the very first cake I put in its pages was my Devil’s food recipe, which is deep, dark, and full of cocoa. You’ll find cakes, pies, tarts, and many other chocolate desserts in this post.

Below is a chocolate overview, answers to frequently asked questions, and 17 favorite chocolate recipes!

A Bunch of 13 Sweet Banana Desserts

January 17, 2024January 18, 2024 Zoë François Leave a comment

Banana Bread with Swirls of Nutella | ZoeBakes by Zoë François

Banana Cream Pie with chocolate shavings on top

I have to admit I get a little excited when my bananas are overripe. A slightly brown, soft banana with a peel that almost falls off is perfect for baking. The natural sweetness of the banana really shines, and they are easy to mash for a bread or pastry recipe. This list of my favorite banana desserts includes everything from banana pudding to banana cream pie to variations on the banana bread. If you’re stuck on what to try first, I would steer you toward the classic banana bread or the banana pudding, but you can’t go wrong with any of them!

Looking for more fruit dessert recipes? Might I suggest strawberry desserts, blueberry desserts, and pear desserts next? Enjoy!

9 Healthy(ish) Desserts For The New Year and Beyond

January 8, 2024January 8, 2024 Zoë François 3 Comments

A crate of apples, ready to be added to healthy desserts!

Let’s face it, I didn’t start baking to focus on health foods. I love the richness, sweetness and decadence of a balanced dessert recipe. If you are on a search for some better-for-you recipes, these healthy desserts (featuring lots of fruit!) will do the trick.

10 Most Popular Recipes of 2023

December 28, 2023January 10, 2024 Zoë François 2 Comments

No-knead Homemade bread using the Bread in Five Method

Happy New Year! We all say it every year—the days flew by! My 2023 was packed with more amazing experiences, recipes and fun. Season 3 of Zoë Bakes hit the air. My newsletter featuring recipes, Q&As, and so much more continued to grow. And, of course, I got to share all kinds of recipes and fun with family, friends, colleagues and all of you! To wrap up the year, I put together a list of my 10 most popular recipes of 2023. As always, it’s an eclectic and fun list featuring all kinds of flavors and treats. If you’ve tried any of these recipes, would you be so kind as to leave a rating/review? It helps other people find them more easily. Cheers to a new year!

10 Tasty Mini Treats For Gifting and Gatherings

December 13, 2023December 13, 2023 Zoë François Leave a comment

Desserts are my favorite party favors! Tasty minis that friends and family can bring home after a party are a joy to make and even better to gift. Or, you can make a plethora of treats to stuff in stockings on Christmas morning. There are so many ways to use fun little treats, and this list of 10 are some of my favorites in times that call for mini versions of favorite sweets!

Looking for more tasty bite-sized ideas? Check out my cookie guide, including 22 recipes or my fun cupcake recipes!

My Cookbook Recommendations of 2023

December 12, 2023December 12, 2023 Zoë François Leave a comment

Best cookbooks 2023 | A stack of cookbooks from Zoë François's collection.

I started writing cookbooks in 2005 before the publishing world discovered the internet. My co-author and I not only cold-called every newspaper around the country, but we also sent copies of our new book to all the food bloggers (there were only a few dozen at the time) to ask if they’d bake from it. They did and many of them wrote about us. It was a long and exhausting process, but we were confident if people tried our 5-Minute Bread method, they would love baking bread as much as we did. Eventually, it caught on, The New York Times wrote about us, and we’ve sold about 1 million copies of the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day series since then.