Cakes

Winter village gingerbread & speculoos cake
Winter village gingerbread & speculoos cake

Winter village gingerbread & speculoos cake, Peggy Porschen: A Year in Cake: Seasonal recipes and dreamy style secrets from the prettiest bakery in the world. Photography by Paul Plews.

Peggy Porschen: A Year in Cake: Seasonal recipes and dreamy style secrets from the prettiest bakery in the world Seasonal baking recipes for special occasions, from the world’s prettiest bakery. With its fairytale pink facade and picture-perfect cupcakes, the Peggy Porschen Parlour has become a destination bakery for sweet-toothed Londoners and tourists from all around the world.

Over half a million people follow Peggy’s creations and seasonal floral displays on Instagram and her customers flock to her London Parlours often dressed in ”Peggy pink” for an exquisite sweet treat.

This book pays tribute to the magic Peggy weaves with her bakes through every season. Going through the year and punctuated by special occasions like Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween and Christmas, the recipes cover cakes, iced cookies and cupcakes and reflect the changing seasons.

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Very Friendly Miniature Ghost Cakes
Very Friendly Miniature Ghost Cakes

Very Friendly Miniature Ghost Cakes, Cute Bakes: Adorable Kawaii-Inspired Cakes & Treats by Juliet Sear. Photography by Jacqui Melville.

Cute Bakes: Adorable Kawaii-Inspired Cakes & Treats by Juliet Sear

Cute Bakes is a baking and decorating book containing over 30 cute Kawaii-inspired cakes, cookies, cupcakes, donuts, cake pops and more.

Each design is super quick, super cute and super easy to make. Try an avocado cookie, a unicorn cake, adorable kitten donuts, bunny rabbit macaroons and more. These seriously sweet treats not only look amazing, they taste delicious.

Juliet shows easy step-by-step instructions on how to ice and decorate your creations to perfection, making them the perfect gift or party treat. From larger cakes to small cookies and cupcakes, there’s something to suit every occasion.

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Yogurt Cake
Yogurt Cake

Yogurt Cake, Macedonia: The Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Balkans by Katerina Nitsou. Photogaphy by Oliver Fitzgerald.

Macedonia: The Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Balkans

Macedonian cuisine is a rich mosaic of influences from the Mediterranean and Middle East, and the neighboring countries in the Balkan Peninsula. It is known for its opulent family meals, and the regional dishes play important symbolic roles in local traditions and family celebrations.

Macedonia: The Cookbook is a love letter to Macedonian culture, and a cuisine deeply rooted in its land and traditions. Through over 100 mouthwatering recipes for mezze dishes, salads, soups, fish, poultry, meat, vegetables, and delicious sweets and preserves, chef and food writer Katerina Nitsou shares the authentic flavors and wisdom brought along with her family, recreated and adapted in her North American kitchen.

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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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