If I haven't said it before, it's Babycakes by Erin McKenna.
One of my two complaints, though, is that it's all too sweet and uses too much sugar. They're not bad on the fat, and they do use coconut oil, but do not specify that in order to bake at 350 and higher the coconut oil has to be REFINED, not virgin.
I think it's the vegan thing. People who don't get enough good, whole animal fat and proteins in their diets crave sweets and starches. There's also this tendency that we all have to jump onto a simple bit of information and lose all sense of context. What Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism." There's a lack of information about smoke points and detailed information about what makes food good and good for a person - people just glom onto a factoid, and discard the system that surrounds it: "blueberries have antioxidents," "spinach is super-good for you and has lots of b vitamins," and "agave is less glycemic than sugar" or "coconut oil will do everything including help you lose weight, help your immunity and organize your closets." If coconut oil is damaged in too high of a heat, (or if your spinach is unaccompanied by a good fat,) it's not doing anything good for anyone!
Our other fantastic allergy-free bake-book, which is also vegan, is the same way with the over-sugaring, but better with the nutrition information, although they've bought into the mainstream myth that low-fat is good. I always cut out at least 1/4 cup of whatever sweetener is used and occasionally remove all the sweetener and replace it with applesauce or raisins or whatever.
1 comment:
This is one of the GF cookbook I don't have. The customers' reviews are not great and the customers' pictures don't tempt me (maybe it's a french thing but I don't like frostings, esp if they have bubblegum colors).
It's hard to find a cookbook that doesn't rely on starches as sugars. As for egg substitute it seems to always be either egg replacers or flax.
I have french GF, egg free and dairy free cookbooks (I'm not vegan but eggs don't agree with me anymore) that have very little starch (about 1 tbps for 1 or 2 cups of flour) and no flax.
As far as sweeteners go, I prefer fruit based liquid sweeteners and usually use 1/8 cup of sweetener per cup of flour.
As you know it's an annoyance to always have to adapt recipes but we gotta do what we gotta do.
I ordered a baking book from England that uses quite a bit of grated/pureed veggies along with almond and/or rice flours (and few eggs) if you're interested: "Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache" by
Harry Eastwood.
I also pre-ordered " Gluten-free Recipes for Conscious Cook: A Seasonal, Vegetarian Cookbook" by
Leslie Cerie (there's a preview on amazon.com) + "Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free Baking Book" by
Karen Morgan (french/european inspired).
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