I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is a special episode of Mow Street Radio.

Today, it's an extended cut of my latest interview with Ella Quintner.

For years, she's run dozens of head-to-head tests for the best chocolate chip cookies,

yellow cake, and much more.

Her book is one of my favorite new cookbooks this year.

It's called Obsessed with the Best.

Hello, welcome back to Mel Street.

Hi, Chris. I'm so excited to be back.

Talking to you is like talking to myself 30 years ago.

I mean, it really is.

Well, it's good news, bad news. I was going through obsessed with the best, your hundred methodically perfected recipes. And it sounds the insanity

of it. And I say that in the nicest possible way. It just reminds me of myself. I remember I used

to stop by Julia's in Cambridge when she was alive here.

And I go up and say, you know, I tried zesting lemons this way and I tried zesting lemons

that way and this way so much better.

And she'd look at me like as if I was totally insane and just had another cocktail.

But the good news is I love and I've spent my whole life, you know,

testing cake flour versus bread flour and freezing versus refrigerating and this and that and the other

thing. And so I love it. But I think today, let's go through some of the recipes in the book

and let's agree or disagree and just have some fights.

Okay. Let's have fights.

Because I think that would be fun.

...