NEW YORK, Dec 8 ― In the world of baking cookbooks, the ones written by pastry chefs are glamorous things, filled with the caramel-spangled drama you would expect to see at the end of a 12-course tasting menu. But however ambitious they are on the page, the recipes often fall short in the kitchen, leaving a frustrated cook amid a trail of fallen soufflés.

Baking books by professional food writers tend to be more modest endeavours. Most don’t attempt to get you to the top of a croquembouche, but appeal to you with simpler techniques, practical advice and interesting flavours — a flaky scone here, a splash of pomegranate molasses there. They are more reliable, if less exciting.

This year’s roster of baking books, however, turns these truths upside down.

Two of the best by restaurant pastry chefs are chatty, informative and easy to navigate, and they yield terrific baked goods with nary a tear. Three more by professional food writers eschew the standard formula of "tried and true with a twist” in favor of riskier, more experimental territory. And then one made our list because, though the recipes are German classics, the excellence of the testing and writing makes it well worth using for years to come.

Of the lot, Dorie Greenspan’s latest, Dorie’s Cookies (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, US$35, RM155), combines the best of all baking-book worlds: cutting-edge photography, thrilling recipes and a reassuring and authoritative writing style. This is a lot to expect in any cookbook, but particularly in one centred around cookies. How cutting-edge and thrilling can a cookie be?

In Greenspan’s hands, extremely.

First, there is the playfully unconventional photography by Davide Luciano. Each picture shows the cookies by themselves on a vividly coloured background, without falling back on any of the usual cookbook tropes — a half-drunk glass of milk or a ray of sunlight hitting a vintage teapot in the background.

In Luciano’s photos, the camera gets up close and personal with the cookies, showing off all their intimate, alluring details: the texture of their crumbs, the sheen of their icing, the melty chocolate chips oozing from the centre. It’s a pretty daring approach for a cookie book, and whether it works for you depends on how attached you are to sunlit teapots.

The recipes themselves split the difference between avant-garde and heirloom. There is an entire chapter on savoury "cocktail cookies,” in which Greenspan folds Triscuit cracker bits into cream cheese dough in one recipe, and combines white miso paste and puffed barley in another.

On the more traditional side, she has her so-called World Peace Cookies — cocoa upon chocolate upon chocolate chip — along with some of the chewiest, most deeply flavoured ginger molasses cookies I’ve ever made. Her buttery Breton shortbread galettes, browned at the edges and filled with jam, are the ideal version of their kind, while the gently floral Moroccan semolina cookies were light and delicate. With her exacting, thoughtful instructions, Greenspan anticipates pitfalls and leads you deftly around them.

Just as wonderfully radical in content, though a bit more traditional in form, is Irvin Lin’s Marbled, Swirled and Layered (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, US$30).

Lin, a graphic designer in San Francisco who writes the food blog Eat the Love, takes risks in nearly every one of the 150 elaborate recipes in his book. He doesn’t just paint the lily; he bejewels and shellacs it, too. You can almost see his mind buzzing as he adds mesquite powder and teff flour to malt chocolate-chip cookies, and roasts white chocolate until it caramelises to make extra-gooey blondies with strawberry-balsamic jam. At times the recipes sound over the top (Rosemary Caramel and Dark Chocolate-Potato Chip Tart, for one), but in the end they were artfully balanced.

It’s an amusing read, too, with Lin’s far-ranging musings, which bounce from how personal one’s preference for the cocoa percentage in chocolate can be to his fashion choices of the 1980s ("Oh, acid washed, how you played me”). Even if you never bake a thing, his book will make you laugh.

In Better Baking: Wholesome Ingredients, Delicious Desserts (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Genevieve Ko, a food writer and recipe developer, also pushes the envelope of the familiar, but does so in the name of healthfulness rather than pure exploration.

Ko adds rye flour and olive oil to snowball cookies, whips up truly fudgy gluten-free brownies out of canned adzuki beans, and even goes so far as so make her own Cocoa Puff-like cereal. But in addition to creating relatively healthful desserts, she can also be highly sophisticated in her approach, using goat cheese and spelt flour in rugelach, and tinting rainbow cookie bars with subtly shaded matcha powder instead of the usual neon hues.

Of the handful of recipes I tested, my favourite was one of the simplest: thin whole-wheat crackers with pecans and raisins. Although I devoured them with blue cheese, they were almost sweet enough for dessert, especially if wholesomeness was your goal.

There is nothing particularly healthful about Luisa Weiss’s Classic German Baking (Ten Speed Press, US$35), and this is all to the good. German baking is no place for virgin coconut oil and flax seeds.

Instead, Weiss, who grew up in Germany and lives in Berlin, revels in marzipan, dark chocolate and plenty of high-fat European butter. The recipes are not at all experimental, but are instead impeccably tested and annotated classics. There are yeasted, poppy-seed-studded coffee cakes; rustic apple cakes; meringue and cream-filled tortes; and a generous amount of highly spiced Christmas cookies.

Weiss, a former cookbook editor known for her blog, The Wednesday Chef, has a writing style that is warm and nurturing. She holds your hand during the rather intimidating Viennese Sacher torte, reassuring you through the three pages and 12 steps that it will all be wonderful in the end. Mine wasn’t as pretty as the photo (my fault for being impatient with the glaze), but it tasted terrific, which is what matters most.

Yeasted morning buns with strawberry, pistachio paste and rose, a recipe from ‘Golden’ by Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer. ― Pictures by Andrew Scrivani/The New York Times

As for baking books by restaurant chefs, my favourites this year were both inspired by Middle Eastern cuisine.

The Honey & Co cafe in London isn’t known in the United States, but after the publication of its cookbook Golden (Little, Brown, US$39), this should change. Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer offer modern recipes that reflect the perfumed and spiced flavours of their Israeli heritage, mixed with favorites from British teatime and French patisseries. You’ll find excellent apricot and elderflower jam, chickpea flour shortbread and yeasted morning buns filled with strawberry, pistachio paste and a rose-water syrup.

The recipes in Soframiz by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick (Ten Speed Press, US$35), from Sofra Bakery and Cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, cover similar ground, but do so with an American sensibility. Their moist and tender carrot cake, which has a sesame-caramel-cream-cheese frosting flecked with halvah, has spoiled me for every other carrot cake in the universe.

Much quicker to make but no less appealing are the tahini shortbread cookies, coated in sesame seeds for a gentle crunch. The recipe will say they keep for five days. Impossible to stop eating, mine made it through two. Which gives me a perfect reason to make them again.

Pistachio, Rose and Strawberry Buns

Yield: 8 buns

Total time: 1 1/2 hours plus at least 2 hours’ chilling

For the dough:

5 tablespoons/70 grammes unsalted butter, cubed and at room temperature, more for greasing pan

1 1/2 teaspoons/5 grammes active dry yeast

1 large egg

2 1/2 tablespoons/30 grammes granulated sugar

1/3 cup/80 millilitres whole milk, more if needed

2 1/3 cups/300 grammes bread flour

Pinch of kosher salt

For the pistachio cream:

2/3 cup/80 grammes pistachios

6 tablespoons/80 grammes unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon/80 grammes granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

8 teaspoons strawberry jam

For the sugar syrup:

1/2 cups/100 grammes granulated sugar

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon rose water

1. Make the dough: Place butter, yeast, egg, sugar and milk in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, or a large bowl if working by hand. Mixing on low speed or stirring with a wooden spoon, add flour and salt. If mixture looks dry, drizzle in another tablespoon or so of milk. Beat for 2 to 3 minutes in mixer, or 5 to 6 minutes by hand, until you get a soft but not sticky dough. Don’t worry if you still have some whole flecks of butter running through the dough; they will make your final bun quite light. Cover bowl in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours and up to 12.

2. Make the pistachio cream: Put pistachios in a food processor and blitz until they resemble bread crumbs, then add butter, sugar, egg and flour and pulse until they are well combined to form a paste. Set aside. Cream can be made up to 2 days ahead and stored in refrigerator.

3. Lightly butter 8 cups of a muffin tin. Remove dough from refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a 16- by 8-inch rectangle. Work with as little flour as possible so as not to dry out dough. Use a sharp knife or pizza slicer to cut eight 4- by 4-inch squares. Lift each square into a cup in the muffin tin and push all the way down. Allow excess dough to hang over sides. Divide pistachio cream among cups, then top each with a teaspoon of strawberry jam. Fold corners over lightly to cover filling, but don’t push them down. Set aside in a warm place and let them rise for 40 minutes to 1 hour; the buns’ folds should rise considerably.

4. Place a clean, empty baking sheet in the center of the oven, and heat it to 400 degrees. When buns are done rising, place muffin tin on baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Turn sheet front to back, reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes.

5. While the buns bake, make the syrup: In a small pot, bring 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon water, the sugar and the honey to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in rose water.

6. Remove buns from oven and brush generously with syrup; you don’t have to use it all. Let cool slightly in the tin before removing and serving.

Viennese Sacher torte, a recipe in ‘Classic German Baking’ by Luisa Weiss.

Sacher Torte

Yield: 8 servings

Total time: 2 1/2 hours, plus cooling

For the cake:

8 1/2 tablespoons/120 grammes unsalted butter (1 stick plus 1/2 tablespoon), more for greasing pan

1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons/80 grammes cake flour, more for flouring pan

1 cup/120 grammes bittersweet chocolate (minimum 50 per cent cacao)

6 large eggs, yolks and whites separated

3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon/100 grammes confectioners’ sugar

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon/80 grammes granulated sugar

1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon/40 grammes cornstarch

For the filling:

1 cup/300 grammes apricot jam

2 tablespoons dark rum

For the glaze:

1 cup/200 grammes granulated

sugar

1 1/4 cups/150 grammes bittersweet chocolate (minimum 50 per cent cacao), chopped

1. Place a baking sheet in the oven and heat it to 350 degrees. Line bottom of a 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper. Butter and lightly flour sides of the pan.

2. Make the cake: Place chocolate and butter in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water and melt, stirring, until smooth. Set aside.

3. Place egg yolks in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Place whites in a separate, clean bowl.

4. Add confectioners’ sugar to yolks and whip together until fluffy, creamy and pale, about 5 minutes. With the mixer on, slowly drizzle in the melted chocolate and butter, and beat until fluffy and incorporated.

5. Add salt to the bowl of egg whites and start beating them with a whisk or electric mixer. When whites show soft peaks, slowly add granulated sugar as you continue to beat. Do this until sugar has dissolved and egg whites are stiff and glossy.

6. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and cornstarch.

7. Fold a third of the flour mixture into egg yolk mixture. Fold a third of the egg whites into egg yolk mixture. Repeat two more times, alternating flour mixture and then egg whites, until no white streaks remain.

8. Gently scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Place on baking sheet in oven and wedge the handle of a wooden spoon in the oven door. Bake for 10 minutes and then remove spoon. Lower heat to 275 degrees, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes longer, or until a tester inserted into the cake’s centre comes out clean.

9. Place cake pan on a rack for 10 minutes to cool, then invert cake, remove pan and peel off parchment paper. Let cake cool completely upside down. Once cooled, slice it in half horizontally into two layers. Place rack over a piece of parchment paper and move top half of cake to a large plate.

10. Make the filling: Place jam and rum in a small pan, bring to a boil and continue to boil for a minute or two. Push apricot mixture through a sieve to get a smooth consistency. Let cool, then spread half of the mixture evenly on the bottom cake layer. Place second layer on top of the jam and press down slightly. Spread remaining jam over top and sides of cake. Let cool completely.

11. Make the glaze: Place sugar and 1/2 cup water in a small pan and bring to a boil. Let boil over high heat for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in chopped chocolate until melted. Place pan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil; immediately remove from heat and let stand, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 8 minutes. Mixture will be smooth, glossy and pourable and will coat the back of a spoon.

12. Slowly pour warm chocolate glaze evenly all over cake, letting excess drip down sides. Avoid using a spatula to spread glaze: It will stay glossiest if not touched. Reserve a little glaze in the pan to pour over any uncoated patches on the sides so that entire cake is coated. Gently wedge two spatulas under cake to transfer it to a serving plate. Let glaze set completely before cutting and serving.

Moroccan semolina and almond cookies, a recipe from ‘Dorie’s Cookies’ by Dorie Greenspan.

Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies

Yield: About 3 dozen cookies

Total time: 45 minutes

1 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons/294 grammes semolina flour

2 cups/200 grammes almond flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

3/4 cup/150 grammes granulated sugar

1 lemon

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/4 cup/60 millilitres flavourless oil, such as canola

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon orange blossom water (optional)

Confectioners’ sugar, for dredging

1. Position racks to divide the oven into thirds, and heat it to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a bowl, whisk together semolina, almond flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Put sugar in bowl of a stand mixer fit with a paddle attachment, or in a large bowl in which you can use a hand mixer. Finely grate lemon zest over sugar, then rub them together with your fingertips until sugar is moist and fragrant. Add eggs and beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. With mixer running, pour oil down side of the bowl and beat for another 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla and orange blossom water, if using. Turn off mixer, add half the dry ingredients and mix them in on low speed, then add the rest, mixing only until dry ingredients disappear into the dough, which will be thick.

4. Sift some confectioners’ sugar into a small bowl. For each cookie, spoon out a level tablespoon of dough, roll it between your palms to form a ball and dredge in sugar. Place balls 2 inches apart on the lined baking sheets, then use your thumb to push down the center of each cookie, pressing firmly enough to make an indentation and to cause the edges to crack.

5. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes, rotating pans top to bottom and front to back after 8 minutes, or until cookies are ever so lightly coloured: They will be golden on the bottom, puffed, dramatically cracked and just firm to the touch. Carefully lift the cookies off sheets and onto racks. Cookies will keep for about 4 days in a covered container at room temperature.

Golden Raisin and Pecan Thins

Yield: About 8 dozen crackers

Total time: 1 hour plus freezing

Butter for pans

1/2 cup/71 grammes unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup/67 grammes whole-wheat pastry flour

1/3 cup/69 grammes granulated sugar

1 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon or crushed fennel seeds

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 cup/245 grammes buttermilk

1 cup/109 grammes pecans

3/4 cup/125 grammes golden raisins

1. Place a baking sheet on center rack of oven and heat to 350 degrees. Butter three 5 3/4- by 2 1/4-inch or four 4 1/4- by 2 1/2-inch mini loaf pans. Line the bottoms with parchment paper and butter the paper.

2. In a large bowl, whisk both flours, sugar, tarragon or fennel seeds, baking soda and salt Add buttermilk and stir until smooth. Fold in pecans and raisins until evenly distributed. Divide among prepared pans, filling 1/4-inch from the top (batter will rise slightly in the oven), and smooth tops.

3. Place pans on baking sheet and bake until loaves are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Slide a thin-bladed knife around the pan edges. Carefully invert the loaves onto a wire rack, and discard the parchment. Cool completely, right side up on the rack.

4. Freeze loaves on a pan until very firm, at least 1 hour or up to 5 days.

5. Heat oven to 300 degrees. Line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.

6. Working with one frozen loaf at a time, cut 1/8-inch-thick slices with a sharp serrated bread knife. Arrange slices on prepared pan, spacing them 1/4-inch apart. Bake one pan at a time until crackers are browned and crisp, about 20 minutes. Use a metal spatula to transfer crackers to wire racks and let cool completely.

Tahini shortbread cookies, a recipe from ‘Soframiz’ by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick.

Tahini Shortbread Cookies

Yield: 2 dozen cookies

Total time: 40 minutes, plus at least 4 hours’ chilling

1/2 cup/75 grammes sesame seeds

10 tablespoons/142 grammes (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup/94 grammes confectioners’ sugar

1 cup/224 grammes tahini (stir well before measuring)

1 3/4 cups/219 grammes all-purpose flour, more for work surface

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. Toast sesame seeds: Put them in a nonstick pan over medium-low heat and stir every 30 seconds until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Pour onto a large plate to cool.

2. Combine butter, confectioners’ sugar and tahini in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until smooth, 4 to 5 minutes. Scrape bowl. Add flour and salt, and mix on low speed until dough is smooth.

3. Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface. Divide it in half and knead until smooth. Roll each piece of dough into a log about 1 inch in diameter.

4. Roll each log in sesame seeds, coating logs completely. They may be difficult to maneuver, but they patch up easily. Wrap them tightly in parchment paper, twisting at each end. Refrigerate until firm, at least 4 hours or up to overnight.

5. Heat oven to 300 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

6. Slice logs into 1/4-inch-thick coins and place on prepared baking sheets 2 inches apart. Bake until firm around edges and not coloured, 14 to 16 minutes. Cool completely on baking sheet. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Blondies with a strawberry-balsamic jam swirl, a recipe from Irvin Lin’s ‘Marbled, Swirled and Layered’.

Blondies With a Strawberry-Balsamic Swirl

Yield: 24 blondies

Total time: 1 1/2 hours

For the batter:

1 2/3 cups/285 grammes white chocolate, in 1/4-inch chunks

3/4 cup/170 grammes (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, more for pan

3/4 cup/150 grammes granulated sugar

3/4 cup/165 grammes packed dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

3 large eggs

1/2 cup/120 millilitres extra-virgin olive oil

2 1/4 cups/315 grammes all-purpose flour

For the swirl:

1 cup/160 grammes cubed strawberries (1/2-inch chunks)

1 tablespoon/12 grammes granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1. Roast white chocolate: Heat oven to 300 degrees. Spread white chocolate on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and stir with a spatula until browned chocolate at edges is evenly mixed with uncooked chocolate in center. Once stirred, chocolate should be the colour of dark peanut butter. If it isn’t, continue to bake in 5-minute increments to darken. Watch closely: White chocolate can easily burn. Let cool.

2. Make blondie batter: Lightly coat a 9x13-inch metal baking pan with butter. Line it with parchment paper so there is a 2-inch overhang on the pan’s long sides. Place a clean, empty baking sheet in the oven, and increase the temperature to 350 degrees.

3. Place butter and both sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat together on medium speed until light and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla and salt and beat to incorporate. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition to incorporate completely and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add oil and beat. Scrape roasted white chocolate into bowl (it may have hardened and gotten a little grainy: This is OK.) and mix it in. Add flour and mix on low speed until absorbed. Scrape batter into the prepared pan.

4. Make strawberry-balsamic swirl: Place strawberries and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon and smashing the berries, until they release their juices and fall apart, 10 to 12 minutes. Separately, stir cornstarch and a tablespoon of water and drizzle it onto strawberries, continuing to stir for a minute or two until mixture has thickened into jam. Continue cooking for 2 more minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Stir in balsamic vinegar. Drop generous tablespoons of strawberry mixture over batter and use a butter knife to swirl them together, but don’t overmix.

5. Place pan on baking sheet in oven. Bake until blondies are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 35 minutes. They will firm up as they cool, so pull them out 2 or 3 minutes before your desired consistency. Place pan on a wire rack and, once room temperature, remove blondies from pan by pulling on parchment paper. Transfer to a cutting board, cut into squares, and serve. ― The New York Times