I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.
I remember hearing about Babycakes bakery for the first time on Cupcake Wars. I was impressed that they were doing gluten free, vegan cupcakes that tasted good. While I’m not vegan, I appreciated the difficultly that came not only with baking gluten free but also vegan. Eggs are a go-to binder for many gluten free bakers – myself included, so not using eggs was rather intriguing.
When this new cookbook was released by Erin McKenna, I was quite interested in trying out some of the recipes. The book starts out with the basics including a great ingredient assistance section. It describes the different types of flours and talks about which flours can be substituted for other flours. For best results, it’s recommended that you don’t make your own substitutions except for the one-to-one substitutions are given.
The cookbook is broken down into the following sections:
- The Waking Hours
- Breads
- Sandwiches
- Pizza and Focaccia
- This is for the Kids
- Foreign Affairs
- Puff Pastry and Beyond
- Snacks
- Dips and Dressings, a Sauce, a Spread, and Butter
- Bread Reborn
- Sweets: the Bonus Round
I really like the baked goods recipes include both measurements and weights for the ingredients. Using weights allows for a more precise baking experience which can be quite important with gluten free baking. I wasn’t a fan of the fact that some recipes called for a specific brand of all purpose flour rather than using individual flours or creating your own all purpose flour.
The recipes themselves were a bit hit or miss. Some were good while others fell flat. The breads were a bit on the dense side which I don’t like. Once the temps drop, I want to try to tweak some of the recipes to see if I can make them turn out more to our liking. Since we’re not vegan, I’ll probably replace the fake butter with real butter to see if that adds a little extra flavor.
It’s a well written cookbook with a good layout and nice pictures. I would have liked to see more pictures of the finished products, but that’s just a personal preference when it comes to cookbooks. I love food pictures as they inspire me to try more of the recipes. Plus, it gives an idea of what the finished product should look like.
We’re high altitude, so I was missing the directions for high altitude baking. This is not something that I would have thought of prior to living at a high altitude as I didn’t realize how much it changes the way things bake. It would be nice to see those recommendations in the cookbook.
