Molly Baz is a BA from BA

Five-ish years ago, the Bon Appetit test kitchen was a very special corner of YouTube. They seemed to have mastered the art of combining authenticity and authority and completely redefined what food content should look like.

Huge credit for this actually goes out to their production staff by the way.

They were putting up huge numbers on YouTube, building a cult following, inspiring meme accounts, and building huge personalities out of the goofy team behind the magazine’s recipes.

Suddenly, in 2020, the whole thing imploded.

BLM, corporate BS, and Adam Rappaport’s fall from grace took the test kitchen staff and flung them to far corners of the internet. Almost every YouTube channel star walked out.

Fortunately, Bon Appetit's success created a handful of fantastic post-BA careers. I’ve included a bunch of other ex-BA chef’s channels at the bottom that I would absolutely recommend following.

But I want you to go buy Molly Baz’s cookbooks.

Here are 3 reasons why:

Reason 1: They are legit great recipes

We have a lot of cookbooks and consistently come back to Molly’s. They tend to be simple, approachable, and delicious. One or two notches elevated above what you might normally cook. Just enough they they seem doable, and you’re proud when you nail it, but they are easy enough to whip up on a weeknight.

If you pick one up, email me, and I’ll reply with my favorite recipe from the book.

Reason 2: They are designed beautifully

Baz seems to have good taste in more ways than one and is married to designer Ben Willett. The book layout seems to match the aesthetic of their home, which is bright, modern, and approachable. Flipping through it makes the designer in me make a lot of unintentional little noises.

Reason 3: She’s celebrating her body like a badass.

Molly and Ben recently welcomed their first child in the world, and from the announcement, Baz has been out and proud of her body. The status quo that women must hide and feel shame for their changing bodies during and after pregnancy is simply unjust.

Her body-positive attitude landed Baz in a massive Times Square ad campaign for breast-feeding brand Swehl.

But then, just as soon as it was up and celebrated, the ad was deemed “too racy” for Time Square and taken down.

Mind you brands like Victoria’s Secret certainly don’t seem to get this same feedback…

But justice prevails. In what is easily my favorite ad of the year so far, supplement brand Seed donated part of their ad buy to put the Swehl ad back up, and wrote one of the best headlines I’ve seen in a long time to do it.

Oh, and Molly ended up the first pregnant woman to be featured on a cereal box. Love it.

Convinced you should buy her books? Here are links:

be good

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Oh, and here are some other post-BA test kitchen youtube channels to check out. I promise they are all great and many of them have recently released cookbooks as well.