TikTok's Favorite Vintage Recipe Fanatic Has Written His First Cookbook

There are many retro recipes from decades and centuries ago that still hold up, sound delicious, and inspire curious home cooks to give them a whirl. Of course, there are also plenty that invoke feelings more akin to revulsion and despair. B. Dylan Hollis has bravely sampled them all. He's unearthed and baked recipes from vintage cookbooks as recent as the '80s and as old as the Civil War — and he brings his TikTok audience along for the tentative first bites. Hollis is endlessly enthusiastic and entertaining, whether responding with elation over a delicious treat like Ice Cream Bread, or sheer outrage over the horror that is a 1960s SpaghettiOs Jell-O Ring. 

Happily, it seems that Hollis has found more gems than duds among his vintage books because he just announced on TikTok that his first cookbook will be released in the summer of 2023. The cookbook, "Baking Yesteryear," contains hundreds of antique finds described on Amazon as "the best (and a few of the worst) baking recipes from the 20th century."

Publisher Penguin Random House shared that B. Dylan Hollis, who grew up in Bermuda, never intended to be social media baking star or a cookbook historian — he's actually a jazz musician. But, like the rest of the world, endless days of home isolation during the pandemic gave Hollis time to dive into both TikTok and baking. Specifically, baking from his collection of vintage cookbooks. His love of Big Band-era jazz music helped drive his curiosity about dishes from the past.

Hollis chose to share his retro recipe baking adventures with the world and now has close to 10 million followers on TikTok. The first recipe he shared on TikTok was Great Depression Pork Cake, made with ground pork, molasses, eggs, and dates. Hollis made this strange cake on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" on October 12, 2022 (via YouTube). Clarkson actually liked it, but guests Jay Leno and Ayo Edebiri, not so much.

Great news for home bakers: Pork Cake is included in "Baking Yesteryear" along with many of Hollis' other favorite recipes like Potato Candy, Tomato Soup Cake, and Peppermint Patties. That SpaghettiOs Jell-O Cake is in there, too, for any adventurous bakers who want to create a true conversation centerpiece that may or may not get eaten. Hollis' cookbook is available for preorder and will be released on July 25th, 2023.