Anna Mintz is a Publicist for Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, and is an editor for The Recipe Club. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives in New York City and loves exploring NYC’s restaurant scene and trying out new recipes in her own kitchen.

It’s that time of the year again: launch presentations! These thrice-yearly meetings give our editors a chance to present their upcoming cookbooks to the rest of the staff. We always have these meetings about a year in advance of the books’ publications, so this week, we were looking at cookbooks for next summer. There’s a little something for everyone on the Summer 2013 list, from sweet (a doughnut book from the pastry chef at Colicchio & Sons) to savory (a seafood book from the Cooking Channel’s Ben Sargent) to sophisticated (a memoir with recipes from Corton chef Paul Liebrandt)!

With so many goodies from our editors’ kitchens, it was hard to know where to start, so we each filled our plates with a taste of everything! I particularly loved the Quick Bacon, Cheddar, and Scallion Biscuits from the upcoming book by by Sunny Anderson, the Peach, Almond, and Cardamom Clafoutis from Clotilde Dusoulier’s book, and the sweet, gooey, crunchy Pecan Squares from the upcoming book from the Casserole Queens.

But perhaps the biggest hit of all was the absolutely adorable Jukebox Cake from Extreme Cakeovers by Rick and Sasha Reichart! This book, from the owners of cakelava in Hawaii, shares how to transform store-bought sheet cakes into edible showstoppers. The book’s editor, Ashley, decorated a plain chocolate cake with icing and all kinds of candy from the grocery store, and the result was extremely impressive — the cake was definitely the most popular item on the table. Best of all, it was our Marketing Director’s birthday, so we were all able to celebrate with the most creative birthday cake we’d ever seen!