Tineke "Tini" Younger, the former "Next Level Chef" contestant known to more than 14 million social media followers as Chef Tini, is out with her first cookbook on Nov. 3.

"Today We Are Cooking…: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef" packs in more than 100 recipes, including an entire chapter devoted to holiday cooking, according to USA Today.

The book arrives a day after this report, and its title nods to her teaching style: breaking down each step and explaining the reason behind it, rather than assuming readers already know a cooking term.

Younger told the paper her goal is for readers to eventually cook without a video guiding every move, saying, "If this book gets someone to put down the delivery app and think, 'I can make that,' that's what I'm most excited about."

The surprising part is the scale of the leap. Younger's mac and cheese tutorial has racked up more than 100 million TikTok views, and since then she has landed on Forbes' 30 Under 30 and Top Creators lists as well as the 2026 Time 100 Creators list, as USA Today notes.

Her appeal, the paper argues, goes beyond an impressive cheese pull: the trained chef has a knack for making techniques feel doable, whether she is preparing dinner or making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich entirely from scratch, right down to the bread.

"There's a difference between telling someone what to do and helping them understand it," she said. For a creator built on short-form video, a teaching cookbook is a bet that her audience wants depth, not just watchable moments.

Younger's headline advice for first-time hosts is to do less. "You don't have to make ten dishes for it to feel like Thanksgiving," she said, suggesting turkey paired with mac and cheese and collard greens instead of an elaborate spread.

On technique, she told USA Today that patience is the key to her famous mac and cheese: don't rush the sauce with high heat, add liquids gradually rather than all at once, and always shred your own cheese.

She recommends making pies the day before and measuring dry ingredients into labeled bowls or bags ahead of time.

Her dream holiday menu from the book runs from Bourbon-Maple Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp to what she calls the "three M's" — mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and milk bread buns — with pumpkin cheesecake bars for dessert.

She also shares a family story behind her GG's Apple Pie, inspired by a recipe her mother made for Younger's paternal grandmother, who requested the dessert while battling cancer — a dish she says carries meaning beyond dessert for their family.

Her brother's habit of eating nearly an entire batch of pumpkin cheesecake bars prompted her warning that home cooks might want to hide a few for themselves. The lesson from the book, the paper concludes, is that knowing how to make everything from scratch doesn't mean you always have to.