More Than Sweet Review

More Than Sweet: A New Voice in Pastry

In this week's cookbook review, we turn our attention to More Than Sweet, the debut cookbook from Marie Frank, a — Copenhagen-based pastry chef and one of the most exciting new voices in the Scandinavian food scene.

If you've been following her Substack newsletter of the same name, you already know what to expect: desserts that don't play by the rules. More Than Sweet is not a collection of crowd-pleasing classics. It's an invitation to think differently about flavor — to season your desserts the way a professional pastry chef would, and to approach sweetness as just one element in a much larger, more interesting palette.

Having worked at beloved Copenhagen spots like Det Vide Hus and Østerberg Ice Cream, Marie brings real kitchen experience to the book, and it shows.

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Think Like a Pastry Chef

One of the things that immediately sets More Than Sweet apart is its philosophy. Marie encourages readers to season to taste, a principle that feels obvious in savory cooking but is rarely applied to desserts. Here, it becomes a guiding idea throughout the book.

Rather than treating recipes as rigid formulas, Marie wants you to understand what you're doing and why. Why does a pinch of salt change the way a caramel tastes? What happens when you introduce something acidic or herbaceous into a buttercream? These are the kinds of questions the book invites you to ask, and the answers reveal themselves through the recipes themselves.

This approach gives More Than Sweet a depth that many pastry books lack. It's not just a collection of dishes — it's a way of thinking about flavor that you can apply far beyond the pages of the book.

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Flavor-Forward Recipes

The 80+ recipes in the book cover an impressive range: cookies, cakes, frozen desserts, custards, tarts, and more. But what distinguishes them is the consistent commitment to unexpected flavor combinations that feel both surprising and completely right.

Think desserts where a savory note cuts through the sweetness, or where a familiar recipe is elevated by an ingredient you wouldn't immediately associate with pastry. Marie is not interested in novelty for its own sake, every choice has a purpose, and the results are desserts with real depth and complexity.

One of our favorite features of the book is the visual flavor chart, which makes it easy to take any base recipe and explore bold new combinations. It's a genuinely useful tool, the kind of thing that separates a cookbook you cook from once from one you return to again and again.

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Richly Photographed and Practical

Beyond the recipes themselves, More Than Sweet is a beautiful object. The photography is rich and atmospheric, and does a great job of conveying the spirit of each dish, not just what it looks like, but how it feels. That said, the book never loses sight of its practical purpose. The recipes are approachable, clearly written, and designed for home bakers who want to push themselves without being intimidated.

Whether you're an experienced baker looking for a new creative challenge or someone who simply wants to start making more interesting desserts at home, More Than Sweet meets you where you are and takes you somewhere better.

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Final Thoughts

More Than Sweet is a confident debut that delivers on its promise. Marie Frank has a clear point of view and the technical knowledge to back it up, and the result is a cookbook that genuinely changes the way you think about pastry.

If you've ever felt that desserts could be more interesting, more complex, more layered, more honest about the role that seasoning plays, this book is for you.