As with our previous books, we are grateful to a large swath of people for keeping us sane in the midst of a flurry of tear-stained pages and chocolate-smudged keyboards. We could not have produced this volume without the following decent folks:

A big shout out to Jessie Sheehan—interpreter of our sweet dreams (and recipes) and cookie-of-the-month advocate. Her Good Morning Sunshine Bars are worthy of a book-length thesis themselves.

Thank you to Alison Fargis—super special agent and friend—for the figurative and literal protective hugs.

Kind words all around for the patience and guidance of our editors: Elinor Hutton wins a special place in our hearts for providing lots of hand-holding through crippling bouts of our New York Neurosis—and she can attack a manuscript with stealth ninjalike skills; Natalie Kaire, for keeping us on the straight and narrow though we are neither straight nor narrow; and all of our other friends at STC.

Extra special love to all of our recipe testers and their crafty ways: Nathan Noland, Sheri Codiana, Heidi Gastler, Liz Moore, Diana Vassar, David Mahon, Joann Tamburro, Julie Halpin, Caitlin Kenney, and Rachel Boller (aka Cake Lady).

Nancy Mongiovi, Stephanie Felton, Francesco, Stephen and the boys (including Michelle), and our respective families for following us down the rabbit hole of bananas and chocolate and booze.

Hugs to Bret Hansen, Sven Weidmann, and Tina, just because.

A joyous round of applause to Tina Rupp for another batch of beautiful, good-enough-to-eat photos, Leslie Siegel for propping the hell out of our treats, Liza Jernow for styling them and Alissa Faden for tying all the bits and pieces together.

Special thanks to Amy Geduldig and the New York Public Library for making us appear bookish and intelligent, and to Brian Kennedy for the snazzy author shot.

We wouldn’t have a single book without a bakery and we wouldn’t have a functioning bakery without such an amazing, dedicated staff. Special callouts to Molly, Veronika, Amy, Melissa, Kathleen, Jordan, Alexandra, Pascual, Misael, Emma, and all of our baristas, who always pour coffee and slice cake with a smile.

A special shout-out to our entire team at Williams-Sonoma; we appreciate it very much.

Finally, we always like to thank the people who helped push Baked up a very steep hill: Martha Stewart, Lesli Heffler Flick, Kristine Moberg, Eric Wolitzky, and, as always, Rafi Avarmovitz.

As always, if we forgot anyone, we apologize in advance and we know we owe you a boatload of brownies.

MATT + RENATO