"Babycakes: Vegan, Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery"

By Erin McKenna
Photographs by Tara Donne
Clarkson Potter -- 2009
Buy It at Amazon

Note: While testing the vanilla frosting recipe, we accidentally used soy flour instead of the the soy milk powder the recipe called for. The two are easily confused but not interchangeable, as our results demonstrated.

When Erin McKenna opened BabyCakes NYC in 2005, her gluten-free, vegan baked goods became a huge success, giving hope to the gluten-intolerant and converting legions of dairy-worshipping skeptics. Her new cookbook is both a how-to guide and winning, chatty account of McKenna's journey from junk food junkie to gluten-free goddess (she changed her Twinkie-loving ways in 2004, when she was diagnosed with wheat and dairy allergies). Pretty much everything in the baked good pantheon is here -- cupcakes, blueberry corn muffins, scones, cake and cobbler -- ensuring that while the gluten and dairy may be missing, absolutely nothing else is.

Takeaway Tips: McKenna writes in a clear, humorous and reassuring voice that makes you feel like you're baking in the company of, if not an old friend, then an endlessly understanding and forgiving teacher. She provides ingenious advice on making simple, natural food coloring (who knew that a pinch of turmeric made gorgeous yellow icing?), and her incredibly helpful ingredients glossary at the beginning of the book (from agave nectar to xantham gum) removes a lot of the considerable intimidation factor inherent in gluten-free, vegan baking.

See what we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Quality of Pictures: Gorgeous. McKenna, her staff and her food are such photogenic subjects that you'd be forgiven for thinking you cracked open the latest issue of Vogue.

We tested: Healthy Hostess cupcakes and Vanilla Frosting

[See: Note in header] McKenna earned a cult following when she started selling frosting shots at Babycakes, but you'd be hard pressed to understand why based on her recipe. Though we followed her instructions to the letter, the frosting -- comprised of such ingredients as coconut oil, soy flour, agave nectar and soy milk -- was, in a word, nasty. Lumpy, hard and tasting mysteriously of wheatgrass juice, it was all but inedible, and had to be thrown away.

That said, her chocolate Healthy Hostess cupcakes were everything the frosting was not: tender, moist, luscious and so delectable that they made it easy to imagine abandoning butter, sugar and all-purpose flour for good. The best part is that they're so delicious on their own that they don't even really need any frosting, inedible or otherwise.

Worth the Investment: If you are gluten-intolerant and/or vegan, then this is an invaluable addition to your cookbook library. If you're interested in healthy baking, then this is also a useful resource. Bear in mind, however, that the true investment will be found in the cost of the ingredients McKenna's recipes require: the tab for the Healthy Hostess and Vanilla Frosting recipes was a whopping $51. While it's true, as McKenna writes somewhat glibly, that heart attacks are just as pricey as ingredients like coconut oil, that doesn't change the fact that baking the Babycakes way requires a hefty entrance fee.