Exclusive: Sarah Fennel Says Her New Cookbook 'Sweet Tooth' Will Make You Feel Like You Are Baking With a Friend: 'I Am Trying to Inspire' Others

Sarah Fennel of Broma Bakery always knew she wanted to write a cookbook — but not until she was "confident" enough to release one.

Now that everything has come together — her recipe development, her photography and her marketing ability — she was eager to put pen to paper. "For me, it was really just getting the right email from the right publisher being like, 'Hey, we're interested!' Finally, the light switch went off, and I was like, 'I'm ready to do this,'" the cooking guru exclusively tells Morning Honey about her new cookbook, Sweet Tooth: 100 Desserts to Save Room For, which releases on Tuesday, October 8.

However, "writing a cookbook is a daunting process," she says. "It's a lot of work in a good way. What's cool about cookbooks is that the entire production process is two years long, so you're chipping away at something over a really long period of time. That was so satisfying because coming from social media where you're turning around three videos in a day and posting them all week and doing it all over again, it's just this hamster wheel of creating content. It was refreshing to be able to have this longer term thing that I was really chipping away at and really molding it to be exactly what I wanted it to be. I loved that."

Fennel developed a hundred recipes over the course of a year, which was a lot since she was doing it on top of her normal workload. "Luckily, I went through this process with a team. Sophie works for me, and we were able to tag team on recipe development and that was so nice to have someone who I could talk with about things. What do we think of this? How can we do this differently? I also found the writing process to be a fun muscle to flex. I don't consider myself a writer, but it was fun for me to write things and feel creative in a way I wasn't used to," she notes.

Fennel, whose self-taught baking journey began in her college kitchen with a binder of her mom's recipes printed in 24-point font, started the Broma Bakery website in 2019, and since then, she's garnered many followers. This book, which is the perfect curation of simple and approachable recipes, contains 150 beautifully shot photographs done by Fennel herself and tips and tricks when it comes to baking.

"The cookbook is a majority of brand new recipes and then we went through 24 recipes that already exist on the blog. We were thinking about what we wanted to include in the book that already exists on my website. It was really this mixture of the tried and true classics that everybody loves," she explains. "There's Matilda’s Chocolate Cake, Cosmic Cookies, Lunch Lady Brownies, Single Lady Apple Crisp, Small-Batch Blondies, Chocolate Cupcakes for Two and more. We're so proud of all of them. With the new recipes, we wanted to strike this balance between being accessible so people could incorporate them into their weekday routines and things like that."

"I think sometimes people feel overwhelmed by baking and feel like they need to have five hours to do it, so we really tried to keep a lot of the recipes under an hour and a half or under an hour and just make sure that people could have fun with them," she continues. "We also wanted to create some recipes where people could have fun with the flavors and make an Espresso Martini Cake or Cranberry Pie Bars. Just incorporating fun flavors that could be done in a new way that people could feel like it's still exciting and comforting to them."

Fennel made sure to test out everything so they were the "best they can be and the most foolproof" for her readers. "We went through multiple rounds of testing. We would test internally, like in our own kitchens and we had friends and family testers. It was important for me because I wanted these recipes to be ones that people can open up a page and they don't have to think twice about it. It's been tested in five different ovens!" she shares.

Ultimately, Fennel's message is clear: she doesn't want anyone to be intimidated by the book. "They are all recipes that don't require a ton of equipment, ingredients, bowls, components, all of that. I wanted to keep it accessible. We also tried to make people feel confident in the way that the recipes are written. We put ourselves in the mind of people who might not have tried this type of recipe before. It was important to have these asides in the book to make sure they know things are going well," she shares of encouraging others throughout the tome. "The photography and overall branding of the book is this playful tone. We wanted to feel like you were baking with a friend. I am trying to inspire that confidence in a bunch of different ways."

Fennel is most proud of the Caramel Cookies and Ice Cream. "It's so delicious, and I wanted to put it in this book. It's coffee ice cream with Oreos crushed up, and there's a swirl of caramel through it. I had to create this perfect consistency of caramel so that when it freezes, it's still soft and chewy and you can scoop it, but if it's too soft when it sits and interacts with the ice cream, it melts into the ice cream," she says. "We tested that ice cream with so many different variations of caramel and just getting the exact consistency right. That was hard! I feel very happy with how it turned out. The second one I loved is the Nutella Smith Island Cake. This is a nine layer cake, and it is this soft and fluffy vanilla cake, and in the middle is this Nutella frosting. We had to make it the perfect consistency where it dripped a little bit down the sides, but it wasn't so drippy that it fell all the way to the bottom.

Fennel feels like everything is coming together, and she's so "happy" to release this book for her loyal followers. "It feels special and very heartwarming that so many people get so excited about dessert and feel like baking is this form of therapy or this form of love and caring. To be part of people's lives in that way feels really, really exciting," she gushes.

"I feel pressure to live up to people's expectations, but I think everybody does. When you get to this place where you have this platform and you want to make sure you can deliver on what you're delivering, and I feel like this book does that it. We wanted to make the recipes fit into people's lives and not the other way around, which is why it's structured by occasion. The chapters are not just cookies, cakes, brownie bars. Instead it's Elevated Nostalgia, Dessert for One, Holiday Baking and more, which is more in line with the way people bake. I feel like people will open this book and feel like it was made for them!" she adds.

Fennel, who started this blog when she was a sophomore in college, never imagined her "passion project" would take off. "I never thought it would turn into my business yet or even get to this sort of stage. I feel so grateful and lucky and privileged to be able to continue to do this every day and continue to be able to show up. It's the best thing in the world and being in the food space is the best thing in the world. Food is the best!" she gushes.

"I hope to stay in tune with what's happening and pivoting and adapting as things come up. I would love to start a retail or consumer food brand — that would be so fun. This career has completely changed my life! I had no idea you could do this as a full-time job," she adds.

Fennel, who will be going on a nine city book tour, had such a great experience with the first book, she's already "writing the proposal" for another one.

"I'm really excited about it. Going through the process for the first time you feel like a deer in the headlights, but I'm really excited for book two because I feel like I've been through the process and learned so much," she concludes.

Purchase Sweet Tooth now!