EXCLUSIVE: Why we won’t be getting a Jennifer Garner cookbook anytime soon

Jennifer Garner is a bookish home cook — and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Do you ever go back through and look through your old cookbooks? I do for inspiration,” Garner tells TODAY.com over Zoom from her home office in Los Angeles, California, adding that she just revisited Ina Garten’s “Barefoot in Paris.”

“I try to go through an Ina cookbook that I haven’t looked through in a while pretty regularly, because I guarantee something will jump out for dinner,” she says.

“‘The Foster’s Market Cookbook’ is the one I was using last night, and I just want to say that those are very Ina Garten — they’re very no nonsense,” she adds.

Garner’s “Pretend Cooking Show,” the casual social media cook-along, where she makes everything from creamed corn with her mom (Studio 1A favorite Pat Garner) to a smoothie in costume as Marvel’s Elektra, is being viewed by more people than ever, what with her nearly 26 million followers on her Instagram and Facebook pages combined.

“It’s an homage to Ina Garten is really what it is,” Garner says of the show. In the very first episode in 2017, she kisses a copy of “Barefoot Contessa at Home.” Now she’s excited for Garten’s memoir to come out.

“I talked to her through writing it,” Garner says. “It sounds like it was a very intense process for her.”

While Garner is enjoying the yield from all the seeds she’s planted over time, she is certainly weeding out a few ideas, too.

“People ask me if I want a cookbook. I don’t want to make a cookbook. I love cookbooks too much,” Garner says. “I don’t cook without one, so I don’t come up with recipes. I mean, there’s some things that I’ve messed with enough, I get that’s my own recipe now, but that’s fine. We don’t need that.”

Another career path she has no plans on going down: hosting her own (real) cooking show.

“They ask if I want to make the pretend cooking show into a real show, but it’s not. It’s a pretend cooking show,” she says, even though she says she feels lucky to be able to do something “silly” that makes people happy.

One device that has made plenty of appearances on Garner’s casual culinary show is her KitchenAid mixer, something she’d always wanted growing up. When she was in her 20s she finally got one — and she still uses it to this day.

“In my little apartment, I had, like, three feet of counter space, and a foot and a half was my KitchenAid stand mixer,” Garner say while promoting her partnership with KitchenAid. “Forget the toaster, forget everything else. I wanted that out there. I love it so much and it is in near-constant use at my house. We made cookies this weekend. We made brownies. I made bagels for someone’s birthday.”

Earlier this year, KitchenAid announced its new Espresso Collection, a line of semi- and fully automatic espresso machines. Garner, who has been a KitchenAid ambassador since 2022, says she uses it often.

On Friday, Sept. 27, KitchenAid is hosting a pop-up experience in Dumbo, Brooklyn called KitchenAid Caffeine Confessions. The event promises visitors the opportunity to “spill the beans” (in a literal confessional booth) on the drinks they’ve been judged for ordering at coffee shop. They’ll also be able to enjoy beverages made with KitchenAid’s new Espresso Collection.

The event will be held at Butler Cafe on 40 Water Street and is open to the public from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Garner says fans can also look forward to a special “Pretend Cooking Show” episode on National Coffee Day (Sept. 29).

“Frankly, I start the day with black coffee, and I don’t need anything in it,” Garner says. “As the day goes on, if I have more coffee, which I do, then my orders get a little more fruity.”

She lists progressively dessert-like drinks: a Gibraltar with almond milk, a decaf latte, a pumpkin spice drink — though she makes her own spice blend, of course, “because it’s not sugary and it’s not too sweet.”

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