Every fall brings a new wave of cookbooks that make me want to curl up with a cup of tea, a notebook, and a long grocery list. This season’s releases feel especially personal and inspiring, each one connecting food to memory, place, and emotion in its own way. From Helen Goh’s soulful baking reflections to Hetty McKinnon’s gatherings built around salads and music, these books remind us why we cook: for comfort, curiosity, and connection.
Whether you want to explore Indigenous foodways through Sean Sherman’s Turtle Island, travel across Brazil with Ixta Belfrage’s Fusão, or learn from Aran Goyoaga’s poetic approach to gluten-free baking, there is something here for every cook and every mood. These are the best fall cookbooks of 2025, thoughtful and flavorful, and each one deserves a permanent spot on your kitchen counter.
The Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh
Helen’s book brings together her life as a pastry chef, psychologist and longtime collaborator with Yotam Ottolenghi. It offers 100 sweet and savoury baking recipes drawn from her Malaysian-Australian upbringing and pastry background. You’ll find cakes like pineapple pudding, chocolate-ginger-beer cakes, and more playful flavours than you might expect. She connects technique to emotion—showing us that baking isn’t just about mixing flour and butter, but about creating purpose, connection and joy. (Amazon/Bookshop)
Linger by Hetty McKinnon
Hetty’s Linger is a warm invitation—100 inventive salad recipes, simple desserts and lots of storytelling. The book is structured into twelve monthly menus (so one for each month), each paired with a playlist and essays about gathering, plants, hospitality. She writes and photographs the gatherings in real time, which gives it a very immediate, lived-in feel. If you love food that’s about community and ease more than fuss, this is it. Make Hetty’s Whole Roasted Cauliflower with a Mountain of Dill. (Amazon/Bookshop)
Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America by Sean Sherman
Chef Sean’s book is a broad and thoughtful look at Indigenous foodways across the continent known to many Indigenous cultures as “Turtle Island.” It’s organised by region and emphasizes seasonal, native-ingredient cooking: wild rice, bison, foraged plants, fish, and so much more. It challenges how we think about North American cuisine and what counts as heritage cooking, and it’s grounded in place and history as much as flavour. (Amazon/Bookshop)
Fusão by Ixta Belfrage
In Fusão, Ixta brings together her Brazilian heritage with a global cooking sensibility. The book is the result of a deep travel through Brazil (covering thousands of kilometres), exploring regional cuisines, indigenous ingredients, immigrant influences, and how they all fuse. You’ll find dishes that play with tradition—maybe a moqueca reinterpretation or a rice dish that flips the script. It’s adventurous, colorful, and full of flavor-connections you might not expect. (Amazon/Bookshop)
The Art of Gluten‑Free Bread by Aran Goyoaga
Aran’s approach here is both technical and poetic—she provides 100+ recipes for gluten-free breads and pastries (think bagels, croissants, flatbreads). She digs into how to make texture, structure, and flavour happen without gluten and often without dairy. Her background in pastry and photography really shows; the book is elegant and practical, and makes gluten-free look (and taste) like something you’d choose, not something you resign yourself to. (Amazon/Bookshop)
Sabzi by Yasmin Khan
Yasmin’s latest leans into her strengths—storytelling + vegetables + broad flavour worlds. Sabzi offers 80+ accessible, plant-forward recipes that draw on Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cuisines. The title itself (“sabzi” meaning “herbs” in Persian) signals how anchored the book is in green, vibrant flavours. And the chapters cover breakfasts, salads, mezzes, soups, mains, and even desserts—so it’s a full-meal vegetarian/vegan without feeling like one thing. (Amazon/Bookshop)
My Cambodia: A Khmer Cookbook by Nite Yun
Nite’s book is deeply personal and generous—she brings over 100 recipes from her Khmer and Cambodian-American cooking life. The book pairs traditional dishes with the story of her family, her restaurant journey, and her heritage. It’s the kind of cookbook where you’ll learn how to make pork neck bone broth for kuy teav, or how fermented fish and herbs show up in fresh salads—and feel connected to that story while you cook. (Amazon/Bookshop)