Former Born Against drummer Brooks Headley nails punk cookbook ethos

By Jason Schreurs

Oh, man.

Former Born Against drummer Brooks Headley’s new cookbook, Fancy Desserts, is just so fucking awesome. Headley, who has also banged the skins in dearly departed hardcore/punk bands such as Universal Order of Armageddon, (Young) Pioneers, Wrangler Brutes and Skull Kontrol, has also made himself a less transient, but probably way more stressful, career as a high-end pastry chef in the New York area.

Fancy Desserts is Headley’s recounting of how he got into the food industry and found himself creating meals for restaurants that somehow, perhaps inexplicably, embraced the punk style he brought to his pastries and other dishes. The book is like a carnival of weirdo sweets such as Peanut Butter Mascarpone with Bejeweled Bananas (amazing) and Fake Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies with Lots of Salt (don’t ask).

But wrapped around and intertwined with Headley’s snarky recipes (complete with guffaw-inducing photos) are his very poignant thoughts on food; the kind of off-the-cuff observations and real-talk that could probably get him into a lot of hot water with some of the nose-in-the-air chefs he’s worked with over the years, and, in fact, have done so.

Headley is a true punk for life; working for decades in New York’s most lucrative kitchens can’t change that fact. So, spliced in with his recipes and intriguing writings and ponderings on food is Headley’s ode to his life in punk; all-ages show posters, lyric sheets, album covers, and even an archival episode of Born Against’s infamous Tubesteak Gazette, a newsletter from the always in-your-face hardcore band that proclaims that they support, among other things, Integrity, Cops the TV show (“not the real police”) and Tofutti with chocolate flavour.

There are lots of “punk cookbooks,” but there is only one Fancy Desserts. Throw it on your coffee table and revel in the knowing smirks from your punk friends, and try to stifle your grins at the perplexed, dumfounded looks on the faces of pretty much everyone else.

Brooks Headley’s Fancy Desserts is available through W.W. Norton & Company