Midwestern Baking Queen, Shauna Sever, Shares a Week of Desserts

Not many recipes stoke the flames of nostalgia for our readers more than the widely beloved treats born out of Midwestern baking culture. And no one’s more familiar with these treats (and their histories) than Midwestern baking expert, Shauna Sever, author of Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland. We asked Shauna for some answers on why that might be. Her hypothesis? “People respond to what’s been forgotten. There’s something beautiful in rediscovering the familiar — and heartland baking is just that. It’s nostalgic. These are the kind of recipes that are burned in our cellular memories.”

Like a lot of our readers, Shauna had forgotten about the recipes that she now knows like the back of her hand. After growing up in Chicago, Shauna moved to California to embark on a broadcast journalism career and started a family of her own. Over a decade later, Shauna moved back ready to reconnect with the recipes that were patiently waiting for her return. And, boy, are we glad she did.

Since the holidays are the perfect time to lean into that nostalgic baking mood, we headed to the heartland to ask Shauna to share the baked goods she’s making on repeat these days. Dust off your old family recipe cards, pre-heat your oven, and fall in love with baking all over again — just like Shauna.

These cookies show up in every Midwestern cookie tin or bakery. They’re a symbol of home for me. The cream cheese dough could not be simpler to make — it’s more like pastry than dough. The filling is based on what you’d find in a Hungarian bakery, made with all kinds of dried fruits. I chose apricot here. I make a quick stovetop jam with the tiniest bit of orange blossom to lift the apricot. Super tiny — do it to your taste.

Get Shauna’s recipe: Apricot and Orange Blossom Kolacky

First of all, donut loaf is really fun to say. It’s like making a giant powdered donut baked in a loaf pan. I almost want to call it a pound cake, but it’s different because it has a slightly more open crumb. After you bake it, carefully turn it out, brush with melted butter, and roll it in a blanket of confectioner’s sugar, using a sheet pan to contain it. I completely underestimated the importance of fresh nutmeg in making things taste donut-y. This might seem like a lot, but it’s just the amount that you need. This is a fun, fun, fun recipe.

Get Shauna’s recipe: Donut Loaf

I don’t want to sound like a cliché food blogger, but these are my husband’s favorite. My kids go nuts for these too. There are so many bar cookie recipes out there, but I thought Why aren’t we putting snickerdoodles in the pan? You get the crispy edges but also the softer middle pieces. The frosting on top gilds the lily — I like to use American buttercream. Take a stick of butter and a cup of confectioner’s sugar and whip the living hell out of it. For those people who think they don’t like buttercream, this is the way to convert them. The Vietnamese cinnamon is the star ingredient here.

Get Shauna’s recipe: Frosted Snickerdoodle Bars

I’m a person who loves a good muffin top. When I developed this recipe, I wanted something that reminded me of the really big tops on the muffins at Big Sur Bakery in California (one of the best places on earth). It gives you this muffin with two kinds of textures. To make the sugary top, I discovered a technique by happy accident. When I take granulated sugar, I wet my fingertip and work it into the granulated sugar to clump it up a bit before dropping it over the top to get that look. The sugar stays really “snowy” on the surface and doesn’t dissolve into the batter — it gives it that crunchiness.

Get Shauna’s recipe: Scone-Top Blueberry Muffins

I make this recipe the OG way, with a yeast-raised dough instead of a cake mix and 10 sticks of butter. When you make it this way, the base is like a coffee cake base that isn’t very sweet at all. The topping has all the sweetness. In St. Louis, you’ll find this in place of coffee cake at morning gatherings. It’s also lovely to have as a casual dessert.

Get Shauna’s recipe: Gooey Butter Cake

Where do most of your recipes come from?
A lot of them are adapted from community cookbooks. I have two rooms filled with books, some of them cost a dime. I can’t let them go! Others are from old newspapers — for a while I was really committed to digging for vintage clippings. But of course, most of them are family recipes. The thing about Midwestern recipes is that you can’t get a recipe without the story of the recipe. Don’t even bother asking for a family recipe if you don’t intend to hear about who made it first.

My grandmother passed away a year before we ended up moving back here from California. It was almost like she planned it all along. The only thing I wanted was her recipe folder. When I opened it up there was a strip of paper inside on a handwritten notepad from an auto mechanic. It had a list of recipe names scribbled on it that she’d written for me. That was a huge part of guiding the recipes in this book.

Your recipes are “refreshed favorites.” Do you ever get any pushback from Midwestern baking traditionalists?
Part of how I deal with it (this is very Midwestern), is deflecting criticism with humor. When I choose to “refresh” a recipe, I want to make it so you want to keep taking more bites. Here’s an example: I included a runza recipe in my book but made mine with this cruciferous mix (to lighten them up a bit). Traditional ones are so delicious, but they’re a lot. I wrote “Nebraskans are going to murder me for putting kale in a runza.” You have to call it out!

How do you handle your kids’ “savage criticism?” (Your words, not mine!)
I blame it on all those shows that make mini critics out of people who have never turned on the stove! I’ve been food blogging for as long as I’ve had kids. When my daughter learned how to talk, she’d be like “Is this for us, or for work?” Then she’ll say something very critical but shrouded in praise. My son is not even 7 but he always says something discerning. They’re like Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. My husband will eat absolutely everything.

You say that “a stocked bakers’ pantry brings [you] unparalleled joy.” Where do you shop?
When I’m developing a recipe, I do all my shopping at the supermarket. Some things I have to get online though, like Maldon Sea Salt Flakes or Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, which are hard to find in the Midwest. I go to the natural food store for spices, though. (I preach about Vietnamese or Saigon Cinnamon. And I love fresh nutmeg.) I also go to Costco. I buy my yeast in bulk there and keep it refrigerated.

How much butter do you go through per week?
A few pounds! I love those Costco four-packs. They save me a ton of time.

Practical question here: What do you do with all of your extra baked goods?
We eat a lot of it, I’m not going to lie. My husband takes things to the office and lots of things are passed off to neighbors! It’s been fun to see the people who taste-tested early treats from the book get to see them looking all pretty in print. I also freeze things because it’s important to know how things will store.

One of the things you love about baking is that there’s always more to learn. What’s something you’ve yet to master?
The whole homemade sourdough thing really started to boom while I was writing this book. But I didn’t get involved. I didn’t have time to incorporate it into my life. That’s what I’m doing this winter — I’m finally going to do the sourdough bread thing. I’m going to steal some of my friends’ sourdough starters and get on it.

How do you balance baking for work and fun?
So this book took almost three years, and most of the baking I did for us was for the book, the book, the book. It became the other child in the house. Now that this book is out in the world, and we’re close to the holiday season, I’m so excited to bake out of it for pleasure. I keep pulling things from it that I want to make; it’s like an evergreen collection. The thing about baking is that it’s restorative. Work and play can sometimes coexist.

That’s such a great point. What do you say to people who think baking is too much work?
I GET IT. I Totally get it. I have two kids and it’s not always possible to bake every day. One of the things I tell myself is that we have to cook but we get to bake. With kids, you have to feed them — it’s in the contract. But baking is always going to be special. Our bodies don’t need it to run, but our souls do.

Thanks so much, Shauna! Follow her on Instagram and find more of her delicious recipes in her cookbook, Midwest Made.

Buy now: Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland, $27