You would think that after the holiday season--which included baking 50 snowman-shaped sugar cookies for the second grade classes at my son's school (that's 3 batches) and a batch for my own family--I would be all baked out. I admit, it did take me a little while to recover from my Christmas bakeapalooza and now we've got Valentine's Day class parties on the horizon. This past weekend, though, I felt like making bread. Not the sandwich bread I make every week in my bread maker but a nice, sweet quick bread. I pulled out a Christmas gift, Erin McKenna's
Babycakes
to look for inspiration
.
Here's the thing about
Babycakes, which features recipes used in McKenna's hugely popular New York City
bakery: all of the recipes are vegan and
mostly gluten- and (refined) sugar-free. I say 'mostly' because that's what the book's subtitle says. But really, if you have celiac disease or a gluten allergy you will want to read the recipes carefully because some of them do call for spelt flour. Anyway, because the recipes are vegan/gluten-free/sugar-free (and kosher) they call for ingredients like Bob's Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose baking flour, coconut oil, dairy-free milks and agave nectar. Most people don't happen to have these sitting around in their kitchens and they can be hard to come by (though they are becoming more mainstream--I've seen them at Target!). However, once you have McKenna's favored ingredients on hand you can use them for almost any recipe in the book.
Back in October, when I had this book from the library, McKenna's pumpkin spice muffins were my first attempt at baking the Babycakes way and I can't say it was my most successful baking attempt. It had nothing to do with the recipe itself and everything to do with the user: I had gotten it into my head that I wanted pumpkin bread, and nothing else would do. The thing never cooked through, even after leaving it in the oven well over the cook time. This time I knew better and the only modification I made to the recipe for banana chocolate chip bread was to use non-fat cow's milk in place of rice milk. All told, I could have baked it a little longer because the very middle was a little undercooked but the top was nicely browned and the toothpick I inserted came out clean. Maybe I have been eating gluten-free for too long, but I wouldn't have known the bread doesn't contain gluten. My kids ate it up and asked me to put slices in their lunch boxes for their snack today.
1 Comments on Cookbook Review - Babycakes, last added: 1/24/2011
Our family owns many cookbooks, including a few that feature kid-friendly recipes, but Williams-Sonoma's The Kid's Cookbook (recipes and text by Abigail J. Dodge) was the first we owned that features recipes actually designed to be prepared by children. It was a gift from my parents a few Christmases ago and although it is recommended for ages nine and up, my six year old has already prepared several recipes from this book with little to no help.
The book itself is an attractive hardcover with spiral binding, which is always appreciated in a cookbook. The bright colors appeal to young kids and draw them in.The first section contains an introduction with short descriptions of kitchen basics like grating cheese, cracking eggs and cutting fruits and vegetables. It also discusses measurements (a conversion chart is included) and baking basics. The recipes are divided into four sections: breakfast and lunch, snacks, main courses and side dishes, and desserts. "Super easy" recipes (all of the recipes in this book are easy) are marked with an asterisk. Each recipe includes a full-page, full-color photograph of the finished product.
Recipes in this collection range from the aforementioned "super easy" with few ingredients and instructions (corn off the cob, old-fashioned pink lemonade) to a few that all but the most competent young chefs will need assistance with (all-American apple pie, super shrimp stir-fry). There's a good variety of stuff in here, "kid-friendly" being the theme that ties everything together. So you end up with a recipe for chocolate dipped treats right before the recipe for cheese and spice tortilla chips.The main courses include a couple of vegetarian selections and recipes for chicken, shrimp, pork and turkey. Salads, fruits and vegetables are all well-represented. My only criticism is that main courses and side dishes are included in the same chapter, which makes it a little difficult if you're quickly flipping through the section in search of one or the other.
My six year old has made the egg salad sandwiches and the creamy tomato soup with little parental intervention. The instructions include frequent asides like, "Put the lid securely on the blender. Make sure it's on tight! Hold down the lid with your hand..." These things may be second nature to seasoned cooks, but they're important reminders to inexperienced chefs, who may be too overwhelmed by everything else that is going on to remember to put the lid on the blender.
All of the recipes in this book are easy, but they're also surprisingly tasty. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, as it does bear the Williams-Sonoma name. The non-Celiacs in our house were especially impressed by the pizza dough. The creamy tomato soup, which is made with chicken broth and diced tomatoes, is also a winner. The oven-baked carrot fries have become a favorite side dish (I'm making them tonight, in fact) and the recipe for turkey burgers has become my go-to burger and meatloaf recipe.
Many of the recipes in the book are naturally gluten-free; others are not and can be modified to be gluten-free (use corn or rice flour tortillas for the veggie wraps, use rice noodles in the "oodles of noodles" soup). Other recipes, like the one for pancakes, are of little use to gluten-free families. Despite this, it is one of my favorite cookbooks and my kids frequently request recipes from this book when I pull out my cookbooks and recipe box and sit down to make my weekly meal plan. Of course, they also know that when they choose something from this book that they will be involved in its preparation.
YUM! That banana chocolate chip bread looks fabulous!