Dartmouth’s Maria Lawton Releases Children’s Cookbook Focused on Portuguese Baking

Dartmouth resident, cook, author, and PBS host Maria Lawton has published a new children's cookbook titled Baking with Love: Maria and her Avó's Sweet Recipes for Little Chefs. The 32-page spiral-bound guide, published in November, introduces Portuguese home baking to kids.

The cookbook includes 10 kid-friendly Portuguese desserts with age-appropriate tasks, safety tips, and guidance on measuring, mixing, and baking that develop children's cooking skills while nurturing their creativity. 

Illustrated by Ukrainian artist Larisa Huridova, Lawton's cookbook features items such as arroz doce, biscoitos, fatias douradas, and bolo de formigas. Throughout the book, Lawton shares personal memories tied to particular recipes, including a chocolate-twisted bolo de formigas, known as “ant cake.” 

The self-published work is available through Lawton's website and Amazon.

“I have these amazing memories of baking with my grandmother, and I want everyone else to have them,” she said in a statement shared with The Herald News. “I want everyone else to create those memories in their own home and within their own family. We need to do that, so it continues after we're gone. That's so important for our Portuguese culture.”

To that end, Lawton included pages at the back designed for families to record their own recipes and stories. The intent was to reinforce cultural and family identity while helping traditions such as cooking and baking be passed down to future generations.

Lawton told The Herald News that she is planning future projects, including a third adult cookbook and another children's book, while filming of a third season of Maria's Portuguese Table is on hold due to the restructuring of PBS due to the loss of federal funding.