Cook This: 3 recipes for living your 'guest life' from What Can I Bring?, including peach and ginger upside-down cake
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To say Casey Elsass is no stranger to writing cookbooks would be an understatement. What Can I Bring? (Union Square & Co., 2025) is technically his 20th title — his first solo effort after co-authoring and ghost-writing 19 others. Not one to rest on his laurels, Elsass has four more cookbooks coming out this fall and next spring, with other projects on the horizon. As much as he enjoys writing for and with others, though, the experience of going it alone was freeing.
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'It was really nice to be able to write as myself for the first time. That felt incredible. It was great to work on my own timeline. It was great to bring all of those experiences from the 19 times at bat when my name was on the cover and the pressure was really on,' says Elsass, laughing.
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Elsass filled What Can I Bring? with 75 recipes for living 'your guest life': dips, drinks, salads, brunch, breads, not one but two dessert chapters (one on 'MVPs' cookies, bars, pie and ice cream, and the other on cakes), and homemade edible gifts.
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He came up with the idea of focusing on winning dishes to take to parties during the pandemic. 'I really took advantage of getting together and being in community, and I didn't realize that until it wasn't an option anymore, and I missed it so much.'
Elsass kept the project on the back burner, secretly filling a Google Doc with ideas. Writing his own cookbook wasn't always a dream, but it became one. After quietly working on it in small ways, he told his boyfriend, artist Pacifico Silano, about the concept one night at dinner. Elsass called his agent in the morning, and they sold the proposal within a month.
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In 2019, after selling his hot sauce, maple syrup and honey company, Bushwick Kitchen, Elsass started writing cookbooks in earnest. (His very first foray was a 2016 Short Stack edition on maple syrup.) It took time to figure out the pacing of projects to build a sustainable career, but Elsass has carved out a space in the food world that brings him joy.
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'I feel very lucky that I wake up excited for my work every day,' says Elsass. 'Almost everybody I work with has always dreamed of having a cookbook, and then I get to be with them in a very intimate way as that dream becomes a reality for them, and that is such a special gift.'
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Working with so many people, understanding their palates and points of view, has shaped Elsass's cooking. 'They've influenced me in a thousand tiny little ways. Their fingerprints are all over this book in little decisions here and there.'
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Take chef Jeremy Salamon's Hungarian and Jewish cookbook Second Generation (HarperCollins Publishers, 2024), which Elsass worked on. Since desserts are so central to Hungarian cuisine, Salamon felt they warranted two chapters. When Elsass was putting together the proposal for What Can I Bring?, he knew he would do the same because 'Just bring dessert' is such a common host refrain.
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