Cakes

Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese and Butter Icing

Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese and Butter Icing

Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese and Butter Icing, Sea & Shore: Recipes and Stories from a cook and her kitchen in Cornwall by Emily Scott. Photography by Kim Lightbody.

Sea & Shore: Recipes and Stories from a cook and her kitchen in Cornwall

Close your eyes and think of a place where the sky meets the sea; where the weather changes from moment to moment; and where the coastline is beautifully rugged and where surf breaks on endless sandy shores. This is Cornwall. In Sea & Shore, Emily Scott brings together the magic of this beautiful part of the world, with over 80 simple and seasonal recipes for the home cook.

Sea & Shore is more than just a cookbook; it shares the connection between food, a sense of place, and storytelling. With stunning photography, it translates experience and memories into ingredients that come together as simple, rustic dishes that anyone can easily recreate at home.

 

Sea & Shore: Recipes and Stories from a cook and her kitchen in Cornwall is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca. (more…)

Coffee, Date & Pecan Cake

Coffee, Date & Pecan Cake

Coffee, Date & Pecan Cake, How to be Sugar-Free and Keep Your Friends by Megan Davies. Photography by Kim Lightbody.

How to be Sugar-Free and Keep Your Friends

You’re being healthy, eating in a more considered manner and, most importantly, you’ve never felt better. So why is it still so tricky to navigate life as a sugar-free diner? From going out for dinner to staying in with friends, it can be a challenge to cook, eat and socialize in a world of refined sugar eaters.

How to be Sugar-Free and Keep Your Friends helps you to go about your life without compromises, excuses or apologies. Instead, you’ll be armed with over 50 fresh, exciting and globally-inspired recipes, free from any refined sugar, and discover a whole new world of natural sweeteners.

Happily cook for yourself, your friends and your family (without hearing any complaints!), and dip into tips, tricks and hacks to learn how to be a better, more easygoing sugar-avoider.

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Blood orange upside-down cake

Blood orange upside-down cake

Blood orange upside-down cake, Finding Fire: Cooking at its most elemental by Lennox Hastie. Photography by Nikki To.

Finding Fire: Cooking at its most elemental 

Finding Fire is a book about cooking with fire. Now with a new cover, it tells the story of how the UK-trained chef Lennox Hastie learnt the language of fire and the art of harnessing it. The book presents more than 80 recipes that celebrate the instinctive, focused cooking of ingredients at their simple best using one of the oldest, most fundamental cooking tools.

In Finding Fire, Lennox explains the techniques behind creating a quality fire, and encourages readers to see wood as an essential seasoning that can be varied according to how it interacts with different ingredients. Recipes are divided by food type: seafood, vegetables, meat (including his acclaimed steak), fruit, dairy, wheat and bases.

Alongside his recipes, Lennox tells of his journey from Michelin-star restaurants in the UK, France and Spain to Victor Arguinzoniz’s Asador Etxebarri in the Basque mountains and, ultimately, to Australia to open his own restaurant, Firedoor. The result, is an uncompromising historical, cultural and culinary account of what it means to cook with fire.

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Chocolate Mousse and Meringue Cake

Chocolate Mousse and Meringue Cake

Chocolate Mousse and Meringue Cake, The Ultimate Book of Chocolate: Make your chocolate dreams become a reality by Melanie Dupuis. Photography by Pierre Javelle.

The Ultimate Book of Chocolate: Make your chocolate dreams become a reality

In The Ultimate Book of Chocolate trained pastry chef Melanie Dupuis will teach you how to make your chocolate dreams become a reality. Learn how to temper, mould and decorate like a pro with the complete guide to everything chocolate.

Starting with the basics, Melanie will take you through all the different varieties of chocolate you will be working as all the other basic ingredients required. She then explains in detail, accompanied with step-by-step pictures, all the various techniques in the book, from tempering to making ganache, chocolate mousse, creme anglaise, biscuit bases, meringue and more. The main recipes include every chocolate dessert you could ever imagine, plus more, from caramel bonbons and millionaire’s shortbread to Easter eggs, truffles, macarons, cakes, Swiss rolls, eclairs and more: this truly is a chocoaholic’s dream book!

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Danish Dream Cake

Danish Dream Cake

Danish Dream Cake, Scandikitchen: The Essence of Hygge by Brontë Aurell. Photographs by Peter Cassidy.

Scandikitchen: The Essence of Hygge by Brontë Aurell

Hygge is in the zeitgeist, but what is it, how do we bring hygge into our lives and why are we so captivated with this Danish word?

According to Brontë, it is really not complicated and doesn’t involve spending vast amounts of money on candles or blankets… in its purest form it is simply about appreciating life.

Explained in 12 entertaining chapters interspersed with recipes, you will learn first about the origins of the word hygge and then how to embrace it.

Essays include: Hygge and Happiness; Hygge and Baking; Hygge and Time; Hygge and Stress; Hygge and Soul; Hygge and Nature; and Hygge and Your Home. Hygge is a completely psychological and emotional state of being.

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Victoria Sponge

Victoria Sponge

Victoria Sponge, excerpted from The French Laundry, Per Se by Thomas Keller (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2020. Photographs by Deborah Jones.

The French Laundry, Per Se by Thomas Keller Bound by a common philosophy, linked by live video, staffed by a cadre of inventive and skilled chefs, the kitchens of Thomas Keller’s celebrated restaurants—The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se, in New York City—are in a relationship unique in the world of fine dining.

Ideas bounce back and forth in a dance of creativity, knowledge, innovation, and excellence. It’s a relationship that’s the very embodiment of collaboration, and of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. And all of it is captured in The French Laundry, Per Se, with meticulously detailed recipes for 70 beloved dishes, including Smoked Sturgeon Rillettes on an Everything Bagel, “The Whole Bird,” Tomato Consommé, Celery Root Pastrami, Steak and Potatoes, Peaches ’n’ Cream and Victoria Sponge Cake.

Just reading these recipes is a master class in the state of the art of cooking today. We learn to use a dehydrator to intensify the flavour and texture of fruits and vegetables. To make the crunchiest coating with a cornstarch–egg white paste and potato flakes. To limit waste in the kitchen by fermenting vegetable trimmings for sauces with an unexpected depth of flavour. And that essential Keller trait, to take a classic and reinvent it: like the French onion soup, with a mushroom essence stock and garnish of braised beef cheeks and Comté mousse, or a classic crème brûlée reimagined as rich, creamy ice cream with a crispy sugar tuile to mimic the caramelized coating.

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Flourless Almond & Orange Cake

Flourless Almond & Orange Cake

Flourless Almond & Orange Cake, Rustica: Delicious Recipes for Village-style Mediterranean food by Theo A. Michaels. Photography by Mowie Kay.

Rustica: Delicious Recipes for Village-style Mediterranean food by Theo A. Michaels

The Mediterranean diet has long been famed for the proven lifetime benefits of eating simply prepared, seasonal foods. There are pockets of people in the Mediterranean countries (and further afield) who are living longer than most; these communities are most often found in rural villages where they grow their own produce and keep livestock.

Chef Theo Michaels explores this concept of “eating like a villager” and this new collection of recipes was born from conversations he has had with his family about life in Cyprus 60 years ago when growing produce and keeping a few animals was the norm.

He celebrates a way of eating based on these principles through his delicious yet simple food. It’s a modern, mindful, and relaxed way to eat well with no need to adhere to a prescribed diet—no strict regimes, just sensible portion sizes, no processed foods, and a few treats—simple, frugal and honest. In practice, it means cooking with what is in season, enjoying a good intake of vegetables, fruit, grains and legumes; eating fish and seafood in moderation and reducing meat consumption.

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Pineapple and ginger upside-down cake

Pineapple and ginger upside-down cake

Pineapple and ginger upside-down cake, excerpted from Always Add Lemon: Recipes You Want to Cook–Food You Want to Eat by Danielle Alvarez © 2020 Reproduced by permission of Hardie Grant Books. All rights reserved. Photography by Benito Martin.

Always Add Lemon: Recipes You Want to Cook—Food You Want to Eat by Danielle Alvarez © 2020

Nourishing recipes and inspiring kitchen projects destined for the aspirational home cook’s repertoire.

Always Add Lemon is the highly anticipated first book from American-born Danielle Alvarez—one of the most exciting young chefs cooking in Australia today. Taking the lessons, skills and tastes acquired working alongside some of the best chefs in America, Danielle translates formidable kitchen smarts into an inspiring collection of recipes and projects for nourishing, vegetable-forward, seasonal food.

With more than 100 recipes across six chapters (salads; fruits and vegetables; pasta, grains, and legumes; seafood; poultry and meat; and dessert) paired with creative projects for the more adventurous (pastry from scratch, bread, dairy, meat and pickles), Always Add Lemon will inspire anyone with a smidgen of kitchen ambition and a free afternoon.

Always Add Lemon: Recipes You Want to Cook – Food You Want to Eat is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca. 


Pineapple and ginger upside-down cake

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Classic cheesecake with homemade strawberry sauce

Classic cheesecake with homemade strawberry sauce

Back to the Fure Dessert: McFly Cheesecake – Classic cheesecake with homemade strawberry sauce, reprinted with permission from GASTRONOGEEK © 2020 by Thibaud Villanova and Maxime LĂ©onard, Running Press.

Presenting pop culture delicacies for both casual and devoted fans, this cookbook includes forty-two recipes to conjure up unbelievable three-course menus influenced by fifteen fandoms from science fiction, fantasy, manga, horror, and comics. Become a gourmet geek with this mouthwatering menu:

-A delicate “Impossible Soufflé” from Doctor Who
-“Sanji’s Special Pork Steaks” from One Piece
-The aptly named “Transylvanian Beef” from Dracula with roast beef, onions, and saffron potatoes
-A hearty “Vegetables of Yesteryear Pie” from The Lord of the Rings
-Specialty sweets and desserts: “Martha Kent’s Apricot and Almond Tart,” “McFly Cheesecake,” or the “Eye of Sauron Sabayon”, and more!

From comfort food to culinary classics, pop culture chef Thibaud Villanova’s imaginative recipes are sure to amaze and delight everyone gathered around the table.

 

Gastronogeek: 42 Recipes from Your Favorite Imaginary Worlds is available at Amazon.com and Indigo.ca.

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Genoise Cake with Raspberry and Cream

Genoise Cake with Raspberry and Cream

Genoise Cake with Raspberry and Cream from Illustrated Step-by-Step Baking by Caroline Bretherton.

What’s the difference between beating and folding? What should “soft peaks” look like? How do you line a pastry crust? When it comes to baking, knowing what an instruction means can be the difference between a showstopper and a soggy bottom. That’s where Illustrated Step-by-Step Baking comes in.

Each of the 80 classic recipes in this essential collection is fully illustrated, with photographs of every stage of the baking process. See what other baking books only tell you: how to knead the dough, rub together butter and flour, and create a pastry lattice to top a pie or tart. Then try your hand at more than 250 variations on those classics, or use them as inspiration to build on what you’ve learned and experiment with your own baking creations.

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