Ana Raquel Morales in her home library. It’s cluttered, but it’s organized,” she says. Also shown: one of her freshly baked cakes. Not shown: her collection of more than 50 Bundt cake pans.Photograph by Kendrick Brinson Ana Raquel Morales attends about 75 author readings a year spanning a spec trum of genres. “But cookbooks are my thing,” she says. Some 7,000 of them fill her Powder Springs home, many clipped with captioned photos of herself and the author. She still has the Wilton cake-decorating book her mother, an avid baker, gave her when she was five. Recipes from her grease-stained collection of American Girl cookbooks, such as spaghetti pie, appear regularly on her family dinner table. And she can’t part with any of the books by Delhi-born celebrity chef Suvir Saran because of an “unforgettable” Indian cooking class she took with him. “I keep most of my cookbooks. I know that’s a problem,” she laughs. At readings, she typically sits in the front row taking notes. She makes scrapbooks of her favorite authors, including former Atlanta Journal-Constitution food editor Anne Byrn. At a signing for Byrn’s 2024 opus, Baking in the American South, Morales showed Byrn her scrapbook filled with photos documenting Morales’s home-cooked versions of Byrn’s recipes. Byrn was speechless. A bilingual licensed dietitian who left her native Puerto Rico for Atlanta nearly 40 years ago, Morales, 63, translates cookbooks, tests recipes, leads cooking demos at Williams-Sonoma and on local TV, and bakes cakes on commission. She’s a doting grandma who enjoys going on long motorcycle rides and traveling abroad with her husband, always with food stops—and more cookbook hauls—along the way. She’s also writing a memoir. That’s on top of working full-time as an administrative assistant for a homeowners association company. Morales has built a life around putting faces to pages ever since she met the Southern food icon (and former Atlanta magazine contributor) Nathalie Dupree at a cooking demo and signing at the Lenox Square Macy’s in 1992. “She was hilarious!” Morales recalls. “When I’m reading a book, I’m always wishing I could have a conversation with the author,” she says. “It’s fascinating to me to be able to meet them, ask them questions, and listen to what they have to say.” Sometimes, unexpected doors open. In 2007, Morales and fellow members of the local Martha Stewart Good Things Group donned matching headbands in the domestic diva’s signature soft jade green for an event with their idol at the Lenox Square Williams-Sonoma. The group was invited to be guests on Martha Stewart’s show in New York City, during which Morales discussed her food-scrapbooking projects. This summer, she frosted a limoncello-spiked cake for Avondale Estates–based author Mary Kay Andrews, who was signing her latest New York Times bestseller, Road Trip, at the Poe Company Bookstore in Milton the next night. Morales decorated the cake to depict the green book jacket; after the signing, she posted a photo on Instagram of her with the cake and a delighted Andrews. “I love that she’s meticulous about chronicling a personal book journey in a world where everything else is becoming digital and disposable,” Andrews says. “Mad respect!” This article appears in our October 2026 issue. The post Ana Raquel Morales is Atlanta’s Queen of Cookbooks appeared first on Atlanta Magazine. ...read more read less