Midwest Made by Shauna Sever

This is the year long cookbook for the Food 52 Baking Club, a group that cooks from a different cookbook each month, but has a bonus book to cook from throughout the year, a cookbook to get to know well.  I joined the group late in the year last year, got the year long book out of the library, but was largely uninspired by it, and ended up cooking nothing.  Not so this year.
The cookbook seems to be a love it or hate it experience.  One club member offered to mail hers to someone who wanted it, she wanted it our of her house and never see it again.  Then another is five recipes short of cooking everything in the book.
The recipes are overall very easy to follow, cover baked goods that come from the Midwest, so a strong German, Polish, and Scandinavian influence pervades.  The English Muffing bread does have the texture of an English Muffin, my mom declared that the Best Banana Bread was the best she had had, and the fancy show stopped of a Cassata Cake was easy to put together and looked just like the picture.  If you want to learn how to make a few solid desserts, from cookies to bars to pies to cakes and some savory things thrown in, this is a great place to start.