The Fabulous Baker Boy: Great American Baking Show Winner’s New Cookbook Is A Northern Michigan Love Letter

Everyone can bake, especially if they have as many great ingredients right out the front door as northern Michiganders do.

So says Martin Sorge, a past winner of The Great American Baking Show, a newly-minted cookbook author, and – crucially – a part-time Leelanau County resident.

Though he was born in Indiana and currently spends most of his time in Chicago, Sorge credits northern Michigan with supplying much of the inspiration for his new cookbook, Great Bakes: Modern Classic Recipes from the Midwest, which published on August 4.

“The cherry is basically the theme of the book,” Sorge laughs. “It made it on the cover; it's the first photo; it's the last photo. It weaved its way through the book.”

Sorge has been falling in love with northern Michigan for years. It all started the summer after his freshman year of college, when he got a job building sets for the theatre department at Interlochen Arts Camp.

“At that point, I had never been all the way up to this part of Michigan,” Sorge recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, it's amazingly beautiful up here.’ And funnily enough, I had never liked cherry pie, but when I had it up there, I was like, ‘Oh, so this is what all the fuss is about.’”

Notably, Sorge was not, at that point, a baker. While he describes his parents as “foodies in the least pretentious way” – obsessed with fresh produce, and bent on “eating what the locals eat” when on vacation – Sorge says he would usually make a mess of things while baking.

“I liked to improvise when I cooked, so I thought, ‘I can do that when I bake, too!’” Sorge tells The Ticker. “But then I would add some random ingredient, or I would cut the amount of sugar in half, and the cookies would come out tasting like dog treats.”

Sorge’s lightbulb moment was simple: “One day I thought, ‘What if I actually followed the recipe and measured all the ingredients?’” he says. “And guess what? If you measure the ingredients and you follow the recipe, you can bake!”

Things “snowballed” from there.

“If I get excited about something, I go deep into it, and so from then on, I tried to bake every type of bread or pastry or cake or cookie imaginable,” he says.

That passion for baking intertwined naturally with Sorge’s ongoing love affair with northern Michigan. Though his days of summer jobs at Interlochen were in the rearview, Sorge had forged lasting friendships with locals, which routinely brought him back to the region. Sometimes, he even felt inclined to make the trek for the culinary bounty alone: the restaurants, the wine, and especially the local produce.

“I always told people it is my favorite corner of America, even when I didn't live up there,” Sorge says.

Some of the people to hear all about Sorge’s love for northern Michigan? The team behind The Great American Baking Show, a spin-off of the ultra-popular overseas reality series, The Great British Bake Off. The show, which tests bakers on their technical skills, creativity, and versatility, had been an inspiration for Sorge during his baking journey. In 2023, he was selected to be a contestant, and jetted off to the United Kingdom – where the show is filmed – with hopes of wowing judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith with his midwestern American approach to baking. Wherever possible, he insisted on sourcing ingredients from Michigan.

“I brought some whole grain flours with me from the Midwest, and I brought some cherry concentrate from King Orchards in Central Lake, which is just the most magical ingredient for getting cherry-flavored frosting without using anything artificial,” Sorge says.

For one recipe, Sorge even asked producers if they could help him get his hands on Montmorency cherries.

“I learned that you can’t get those there,” he says. “They did buy some other frozen tart cherries for me to use, but they were not as good as Michigan cherries. I had to resign myself to the fact that, when I made my little cherry and whole grain rye hand pies, they weren’t going to taste as good as the ones I made at home.”

Apparently, they tasted good enough, though, because Sorge was ultimately crowned Great American Baking Show victor. The win gave him the following and profile necessary to sell a book proposal for Great Bakes, his first cookbook.

Now living part-time in Suttons Bay, Sorge turned the book into a love letter to northern Michigan. Many of the recipes emphasize cherries – from cherry pie, to cherry rye chocolate chip cookies, to Sorge’s take on cherry pop tarts.

Readers can find other northern Michigan easter eggs in the book, too. Chef and writer Abra Berens, a Farm Club veteran now opening a teaching kitchen in Traverse City, penned the forward. Bottles of wine from Mawby and Left Foot Charley are visible in the backgrounds of some of the recipe photos. And speaking of pictures, Sorge made sure to time one of the cookbook photoshoots for summer, “to make sure I could pick up some beautiful Michigan produce to use in the baking.”

With all the northern Michigan spirit in Great Bakes, Sorge hopes the book will not only find its way into the hands of local readers, but also inspire them.

“I think everybody can be a baker, and if you're up in northern Michigan, you're already so lucky to have beautiful ingredients,” Sorge concludes. “When I lived in Washington, D.C., there were summers where I couldn’t get up there, which meant I couldn’t get the ingredients I wanted. And even now, as I’m doing this book tour, I keep thinking, ‘But I’m missing peach season!’”

Sorge’s book tour will wind its way through northern Michigan this week, including bookstore events at Leland’s The Find North today (Monday) from noon-2pm and at Petoskey’s McLean & Eakin on Tuesday, from 1-3pm. He’ll also be featured in pair of Traverse City’ Food & Wine Festival events this Thursday and Friday.

Photo credit: Kevin Miyazaki