This marriage follows a recipe made in heaven.
Celebrated dessert cookbook author Rose Levy Beranbaum married Woody Wolston, her co-author on “The Cookie Bible” — and has her late husband to thank for the matchmaking.
“Shortly before he died, he told Woody and me separately that he should move in and
take care of me,” Beranbaum, 78, told The Post of her lost love, Elliott Beranbaum. “He had seen how seamlessly we worked together.”
Wolston, 68, actually had already been living in their Hope, NJ home for three months before Elliott’s passing, sleeping on an air mattress in their basement test kitchen to help around the house in case of emergencies.
After Elliott died in 2019, Woody continued to help Beranbaum create recipes for their new cookbook, out Oct. 18 — and as the cookies heated up in the oven, so did their chemistry.
The couple has collaborated on five of Beranbaum’s 13 titles, whose fans include famous home bakers like Jennifer Garner.
Wolston, a Minneapolis native, wrote to Beranbaum out of the blue in 2003 to inquire about the frosting recipe in her most famous work, “The Cake Bible,” which is now in its 60th printing.
The former retail sales exec began baking after his first wife, who had just given birth to his daughter, asked him to take it on. “She said, ‘For your birthday, go pick out a cake book.’ And I went to Barnes and Noble and I picked Rose’s,” he recalled.
The duo exchanged emails for months and finally met in 2004 when Beranbaum traveled to his city to visit General Mills to film videos on cookies.
“We clicked the first day we met, but totally ignored it because we were both married,” she said.
Wolston joined her at a local coffee shop and brought his wife (whom he ended up divorcing in 2010), along with two cakes he had made using Beranbaum’s recipes.
“He had done such an exquisite job that I said, ‘I’m working on a new book and I don’t really like having other people test for me because I can’t trust them,'” Beranbaum said.
She explained that although she was a tough cookie, she was interested in having him work with her.
“She made a point about that — ‘I’ve never worked with anybody, because you’ll see why,'” Wolston added, laughing. “She’s very particular.”
In 2005, he came to New York for a week trial. “And he had no money, but he did it anyway. He just wanted so badly to be part of my world, I guess,” she said.
As they baked in tandem, it was immediately apparent that the pair had the ingredients for success and would pan out as business partners.
“I saw right away how he always knew just where to put his hands, twice the size of mine, but he was so skilled,” she continued. “He had such a delicate touch.”
Three years after his divorce, Wolston relocated to a townhouse 20 minutes away from the Beranbaums in the Delaware Water Gap.
He frequently spent time with the couple, even attending holiday dinners as their plus one, “like Thanksgiving at Rose’s aunt’s,” Wolston said. “We’d go out to dinner and it’d be the three of us.”
Elliott, head of outpatient radiology at NYU Medical Center for over 50 years, succumbed to complications from Lewy body dementia and heart failure. A month prior to his passing, he suggested the cohabitation.
“Elliott was very aware he was declining, so he wasn’t going to wait where he couldn’t say it,” Wolston explained.
The lovebirds — who received matching aprons that say “Partners in Crème” as a wedding gift — tied the knot in June 2021, right before the new book was sent to the printer.
“Actually we decided to get married because I thought, ‘This is our last chance for me to make that addition'” to the acknowledgements, she said.
Beranbaum, a Far Rockaway native who grew up on the Upper West Side, shocked her editor with news of the nuptials. “I wrote to her … ‘Instead of saying the acknowledgment about Woody, my partner, I would like to add, ‘and now my husband.’
“I got an email back from her saying, ‘Wow!’”
