Published in 2009
144 pages
Erin McKenna is the chef and owner of BabyCakes NYC, a bakery with outposts in New York City and West Hollywood, the world’s premiere gluten-free vegan bakery. She received the prestigious Best Cupcake award in 2006 from New York magazine. Erin has been a guest on Martha Stewart Television and Food Network and has been featured in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Modern Bride, VegNews, Harper’s Bazaar, In Style, and O, the Oprah Magazine.
A Chula Vista, California native, McKenna attended St Mary’s College in Moraga and majored in Communications. Growing up, she never thought twice as to where her favorite Entenmanns’s products came from; baking couldn’t have been further off her radar. In fact, only moments prior to picking up the spatula, she was shopping, steaming and returning clothes as a fashion assistant in the world’s fashion Mecca, New York City. She, however, refocused her attention and applied her stylist sensibilities to constructing innovative pastries absent of refined sugar, wheat, dairy, soy, casein, eggs and gluten. With McKenna’s attention to detail, refined tastes and fashionable flare, she created pastries that are pleasing to the eye as well as the most discerning palate.
What is this book about?
Forget everything
you’ve heard about
health-conscious baking.
Simply, BabyCakes is your key to an enlightened, indulgent, sweets-filled future. This is important news not only for parents whose children have allergies, for vegans, and for others who struggle with food sensitivities, but also for all you sugar-loving traditionalists. The recipes in these pages prove that there is a healthy alternative to recklessly made desserts, one that doesn’t sacrifice taste or texture.
Having experimented endlessly with alternative, health-conscious sweeteners, flours, and thickeners, Erin McKenna, the proprietress of beloved bakery BabyCakes NYC, developed these recipes–most are gluten-free, all are without refined sugar–in hopes of combating her own wheat, dairy, and sugar sensitivities. In BabyCakes, she shares detailed information about the ingredients she uses (coconut flour, xanthan gum, and agave nectar, for example) and how to substitute them properly for common ones–all the while guiding you safely through techniques she’s spent years perfecting.
When BabyCakes NYC opened on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 2005, it helped propel the gluten-free and vegan baking movement into a new stratosphere. Suddenly there was a destination for those with wheat allergies and other dietary restrictions–and, soon enough, celebrities and dessert lovers of every kind–to indulge freely in delectable muffins and teacakes, brownies and cookies, pies and cobblers.
Enclosed within these pages are all the “secrets” you’ll need to bring the greatness of BabyCakes NYC into your own home as well as raves and recommendations from devotees such as Natalie Portman, Jason Schwartzman, Mary-Louise Parker, Zooey Deschanel, and Pamela Anderson.
For confectionists of all kinds, delicious alternatives lie Red Velvet Cupcakes, Chocolate Shortbread Scones with Caramelized Bananas, Strawberry Shortcake, and BabyCakes NYC’s celebrated frosting (so delicious it has fans tipping back frosting shots!), to name just a few. Finally, Erin’s blissful desserts are yours for the baking.
