French at Heart – Cookbook Giveaway
June 10, 2025 by JennyEnter our worldwide giveaway to win one of two copies of French at Heart: Recipes That Bring France Home by Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini.

From the founders of the Cook’s Atelier, a cooking school in Burgundy, France, and authors of The Cook’s Atelier: Recipes, Techniques, and Stories from Our French Cooking School, comes a second cookbook.
When mother and daughter duo Kendall Smith Franchini and Marjorie Taylor moved to Beaune in Burgundy, France, to open their now-incredibly popular cooking school the Cook’s Atelier, they learned that choosing to appreciate tiny moments more mindfully, like they saw the French do, really opened their hearts. To them, being French at heart doesn’t mean you have to speak French or live in France; it means slowing down enough to enjoy the little details of every day. Whether that’s preparing a meal for your family and taking the time to enjoy it together around the table or taking an extra moment to set the table with fresh flowers, curating your own joy is worth your time, and this cookbook offers plenty of ideas for ways you can adopt this particularly French habit in your own life.
French at Heart shows how to create simple, joyous family meals around your own table, in whatever place you call home. These are classic recipes that will make you fall in love with France. These are simple recipes that the authors often cook for their family after a long day, and reflect their take on familiar French favorites. The pair offer ways to adapt, improve, or simplify classic recipes, plus there is plenty of additional advice on how to serve a memorable cheese or charcuterie board, how to curate a French-inspired pantry, start your own kitchen garden, or get the most out of your local farmers’ market.
Creating meaningful moments around meals and sharing them turns out to be quite contagious – and exactly why people love coming to visit the authors at their cooking school. Cooking is about more than just the food, and while this title has more than 100 go-to recipes, it is a cookbook for anyone who wants to discover those little details that make our time around the table even more special.
We have linked four online recipes for you to try now:
And, the publisher was kind enough to share the two recipes below with us:
Clafoutis
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Serves 6

Clafoutis is a time-honored French dessert, made with a crêpe-like batter that gets poured over fresh fruit and then baked into a scoopable custard that can be served hot, when the clafoutis is beautifully puffed, or at room temperature. For many French people, it’s a throwback, just the sort of thing their grandmothers might have made when they were young. Traditionally, it’s made with cherries, with the pits left in, which prevents cherry juice from staining the batter. Other fruit can be used in place of the cherries; summer berries, apricots, or even sautéed pears and apples all work well.
- 1 tablespoon (14 g) unsalted European- style butter
- 3⁄4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 1 pound (455 g) sweet cherries, such as Rainier, Summit, Stark, Lafayette, or Burlat, rinsed, stems removed (pits left in for traditional method, or removed if you prefer), or other berries or summer fruits
- 5 large eggs
- 1⁄2 cup (65 g) all-purpose flour
- Pinch fleur de sel
- 1 cup (240 ml) whole milk
- 1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream
- Seeds from 1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon
- vanilla extract (store-bought or homemade, see Homemade Vanilla, Recipe Below)
- 1 teaspoon Kirsch
- Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Use the butter to grease the inside of a 10- or 11-inch (25- or 28-cm) cast iron skillet or gratin dish (or similar baking dish).
In a large bowl, using your fingertips, rub the sugar and lemon zest together until the sugar is evenly pale yellow. Add the cherries and use a spatula to gently turn them in the sugar mixture to coat. Transfer the cherries to the bottom of the prepared pan, leaving any sugar that doesn’t cling to them behind in the bowl.
To the bowl with the remaining sugar, add the eggs and whisk to combine until pale and fluffy and a shade lighter in color. Add the flour and salt and whisk to combine. Add the milk, heavy cream, vanilla seeds, and Kirsch and whisk until smooth. Pour the batter over the cherries.
Bake until puffed and brown and a paring knife inserted in the center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes.
Serve hot or at room temperature, dusted with powdered sugar, if using.
Homemade vanilla [beans and extract]
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Makes 2 cups (500ml) extract, plus 20 ready-to-use vanilla beans
- About 20 Madagascar vanilla beans
- 2 1⁄2 cups (600 ml) high-quality vodka, or more as needed
Find a sealable glass jar that’s tall and narrow. Something with a roughly 3-cup (or 750-ml) capacity that’s tall enough to fit long (about 7-inch / 17-cm) vanilla beans is perfect. (You could use a jar of any size that fits the vanilla beans, of course, but a larger one will require more vodka, and the extract will be less flavorful.) Slide the vanilla beans into the jar and top with enough vodka to cover completely. Cover and set aside at room temperature for at least 2 weeks to infuse. The beans keep at room temperature indefinitely, and the extract will become stronger over time. As you use the beans, you can simply replace them with more fresh beans and top off the vodka as necessary. Over time, your extract will become darker and even more powerful.
Credit line: Credit line: From French at Heart: Recipes That Bring France Home © 2025 by Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini. Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books. All rights reserved. photography © Anson Smart.


Special thanks to the publisher for providing two copies of this title in our promotion open to Members worldwide. Entry options include answering the following question in the comments section of this blog post.
Which recipe in the index would you like to try first?
Please note that you must be logged into the Rafflecopter contest before posting or your entry won’t be counted. For more information on this process, please see our step-by-step help post. Once you log in and enter your member name you will be directed to the next entry option – the blog comment. After that, there are additional options that you can complete for more entries. Be sure to check your spam filters to receive our email notifications. Prizes can take up to 6 weeks to arrive from the publishers. If you are not already a Member, you can join at no cost. The contest ends at midnight on July 25th, 2025.
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