Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
Product Description
As featured on The Martha Stewart Show and The Today Show and in People Magazine! Hip. Cool. Fashion-forward. These aren’t adjectives you’d ordinarily think of applying to baked goods. Think again. Not every baker wants to re-create Grandma’s pound cake or cherry pie. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito certainly didn’t, when they left their advertising careers behind, pooled their life savings, and opened their dream bakery, Baked, in Brooklyn, New York, a few years back. The visions that danced in their heads were of other, brand-new kinds of confections . . . Things like a Malt Ball Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting, which captures the flavor of their favorite Whoppers candies (and ups the ante with a malted milk ball garnish). Things like spicy Chipotle Cheddar Biscuits that really wake up your taste buds at breakfast time. Things like a Sweet and Salty Cake created expressly for adults who are as salt-craving ?as they are sweet-toothed. Whic… More >>
Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
I first saw Baked: New Frontiers in Baking while on vacation. My willpower not to buy any more baking books lasted for exactly one week until I swooped into my local bookstore, drooled, purchased, raced home, and whipped up a killer batch of the Baked Brownie. The balance of chocolate (11 ounces), butter (two sticks), a dash of espresso powder, a mix of granulated and brown sugar, and a hefty dose of eggs (five) give this brownie the ideal texture: the perfect marriage of fudgy and cakey without being runny or dense.
The next recipe I tried was the pumpkin chocolate chip loaf (the recipe makes two loaves). A seemingly straightforward blend of canned pumpkin puree, spices (allspice, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg), and chocolate, the complex flavors of spice and pumpkin were complementary without overwhelming. Although the recipe calls for one cup of vegetable oil, you also dilute it with 2/3-cup tap water, so the bread is pleasantly moist without being greasy or oily (I’ve had that happen all too many times in many quick breads).
Next on my list was the Brewer’s Blondie, a hopped-up blend of of malt powder, malt balls, semisweet chocolate, and walnuts. Bars are one of Baked’s strengths, including a decadent grown-up Rice Krispy bar, the elegant Honeycomb Bar (sweet tart dough topped with dried fruit, honey, and a shot of booze), S’more nut bars, and the Baked bar. There are also more complicated layer cakes (chocolate malt, chocolate/caramel/sea salt, Whiteout, Red Velvet), cookies, and breakfast treats such as scones, granola (yay, finally a low-oil granola full of fruit!), and quick breads. Pies and tarts? Feast on Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie, Tuscaloosa Tollhouse Pie, Peanut Butter Pie with Cookie Crust and Easy Fudge Sauce, and Classic Diner-Style Chocolate Pie.
Baked has been featured on Martha Stewart, Oprah (their Baked Brownie had a centerfold spread in O), and on several high-profile shows, but does Baked live up to its claims of being revolutionary? That’s a more difficult cookie to crumble. Sure, there are gourmet additions such as matcha, chipotle, and fleur de sel, but most of the Baked repertoire is firmly descended from comfort cooking, such as the Root Beer Cake, a modern update on the Southern staple Coca-Cola (or Dr. Pepper) cake, or the red velvet spiced up with Red Hots. Ditto on the divine Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie. It’s still amazing, whether or not it’s smashing any new culinary boundaries.
Even if you never cook a single recipe from Baked, the clever graphics (garden gnomes, plastic deer perched on a mound of fluffy coconut snow), useful sidebars (including variations), and notes make this a great investment. This is my favorite cookbook of 2008, and I hope that it will become yours as well.
Reading Baked, it seemed the authors had a new lens on American classics; as other reviewers have said, they interpret old standbys with higher quality ingredients and updated flavorings. I also liked the light humor expressed in a sparing use of candy to decorate the cakes. Here’s what happened in the oven and on the palate:
1. Coconut Cupcakes (with coconut filling and coconut frosting). We served them to Mom on Mother’s Day, and they were a hit. They require a bit of effort (wouldn’t any cake that has filling?) but were light, fluffy, coconutty, and decadent. 2. S’more Nut Bars (rechristened Smut Bars at the party I brought them to) were rich yet casual. Baked’s chapter on bars makes a convincing argument for whipping up bars and carrying them with you to any/all events. 3. The Whiteout Cake was a knockout. We used high-cacao white chocolate disks (Valrhona) for the frosting. A serious pleasure was decorating it with a few well-placed nonpareils, as recommended by the book’s authors. 4. Today we made Peanut Butter Cookies (with milk chocolate chunks) because we’re having some kids over. They look professional and taste perfect.
At least one reviewer has gasped about the amount of butter in these recipes. In their cakes, the authors call for shortening along with butter: perhaps this combination makes their cakes so fluffy and perfectly textured. Meanwhile, the frosting recipes have truly helped me turn a corner in my baking. The frostings for the cakes mentioned above require cooking, yet they are not difficult, and there’s no thermometer needed. They emerge gorgeous, light, and inexplicably perfect. While dazzling your guests, it can be a little frightening to know these stunners contain so much butter. (The coconut cupcake frosting called for three sticks of butter; I was skeptical, so made a 2/3 recipe and had some left over.) My husband and I have concluded that we shall make Baked’s cakes when we have enough guests to serve everyone a generous amount and finish it all up! You simply don’t want to be stuck with a Whiteout Cake in your household of two, planning to enjoy it for the rest of the week.
For impact, style, fun, and taste, this is my baking book for now. I see no reason to go elsewhere for a while.
I’m suspicious when most of the other reviews for a book are from first-time reviewers and read like marketing copy from an inexperienced publicist.
Having said that, this title is generally an interesting read but, frankly, it doesn’t cover nearly as much new ground as you might be led to believe by the marketing hype.
The concept/conceit of naming your book “New Frontiers in Baking” puts the burden of impressive creativity on the authors and I’m not sure they delivered. Yes, the baked goods are nice to look at, but the book has a self-congratulatory tone I didn’t care for.
The overall book design is pleasant, and the typography is especially well conceived. One thing that’s noteworthy about the design is that the recipes are easy to read from the counter top (you would think that’s a no-brainer, yet many designers fail to grasp how people actually use cookbooks…but that’s another discussion). The photos are very pretty, but I’m dismayed to see more of the same cliched Martha-Stewart-short-depth-of-field style, whose look is getting tired. And no, this is not–as one reviewer put it–a “coffee table” quality book. That’s just more hyperbole.
The recipes? A little gimmicky, and mostly overwrought. The concepts are mildly inventive, but they simply don’t represent “new frontiers” in baking. Many of the authors’ “new ideas” come in the form of extra steps that might make the finished product look good in a retail environment but, in the end, just add work, complexity, and expense for the home baker. It’s gilding the lily.
On the whole this is a nice book but it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack of recent baking titles. Compared to newly released classics like “The Modern Baker” by Nick Malgieri and “The Art and Soul of Baking” by Cindy Mushet, this title seems superficial and unsubstantial.
To give “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking” five stars just serves to further render meaningless the rating system.
So far, I have made 4 items from this book and all have been top notch. Instructions are extremely clear and easy and this book would work well for those who are very experienced and also for those who are just begining working with pastry/baking. I am an ex-pastry chef and now just bake for fun. I have many favorite books, this is on its way to joining that list! Absolutely Delicious.
I was extremely satisfied by Baked. Although I have more than 300 cookbooks (many of them for desserts), the Baked cookbook is a welcome addition to my bookshelf.
The authors have a fun conversational tone throughout the book and offer a brief commentary on each recipe. Each recipe also has a note about possible substitutions, kitchen tools, and/or prep tips. The illustrations, particularly the deer, are whimsical and add an element of fun. Of the 75 recipes (not counting frostings separately), 35 include a full page, color photo of the finished project. I liked that there was no food stylist for the book – it means the genuine finished baked goods are pictured (no food styling tricks were used to make them look way better than whatever the average home cook could produce).
Chapters include A Field Guide to Baking; Breakfast (maple walnut scones, pumpkin chocolate chip loaf, easy homemade granola); Cakes & Cupcakes (red hot velvet cake, grasshopper cake, milk chocolate malt ball cake, root beer bundt cake); Pies & Tarts (butterscotch pudding tarts, Tuscaloosa Tollhouse pie); Brownies & Bars (the Baked brownie – one of Oprah’s favorite things, honeycomb bars, peanut butter crispy bars); Cookies (black forest chocolate cookies, hazelnut cinnamon chip biscotti); Chocolates, Candies & Confections (vanilla marshmallows, vanilla bean caramel apples, mocha fundgesicles, malted milk chocolate sauce); and Drinks (Baked brown cow, chocolate stout milkshake, green tea smoothie). The recipes in parenthesis are some (but not all) of the offerings in each chapter.
There are new, inventive recipes that look very appealing. I particularly can’t wait to try the Sweet and Salty Cake (chocolate with salted caramel icing), the Almond Green Tea cupcakes, S’More Nut Bars, Millionaire’s Shortbread (with caramel filling and a chocolate glaze), and the pumpkin whoopie pies. I will make a point to seek out the Baked bakery the next time I am in New York.
This book would make an excellent gift for a new or experienced baker (especially if accompanied by a pie plate, jar of vanilla beans or other baking supply).