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A cafecito (with a Hemingway Special chaser). Photo: Erin Meister

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"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.

Continue reading 'Babycakes' - Cookbook Spotlight

Eating pork buns (cha siu baau) is an excellent way to get a taste of New York's Chinatown. These warm buns -- either steamed or baked -- are full of savory barbecue meats, sometimes with scallions.

Last weekend, a friend and I decided we would eat our way through Chinatown by trying pork buns at various bakeries. And, what started out as a "pork bun journey" turned into an exploration of both savory and sweet buns, ranging from pork to red bean.

Fay Da Bakery, at 83 Mott St., has a variety of buns that you can select yourself with tongs when you enter the shop. While being underwhelmed by their pork buns, we were blown away with their sweet topping red-bean bun. The outside of the red-bean bun is coated in a flaky layer of sugar that balances marvelously with the doughy bun and the creamy red-bean paste.

Head directly to the Golden Fung Wong Bakery, at 41 Mott St., to try some of the best pork buns in Manhattan's Chinatown. Chunks of pork are flavored with a delicious mix of soy and oyster sauce. This bakery also sells an assortment of rice cakes and melon cakes that are worth trying.

I like to have a sweet treat from time to time, especially if it is a homemade cookie or a lavish dessert made from scratch in one of my favorite New York City restaurants. But even if you don't splurge every day on dessert, you might be getting a lot more sugar than you should.

But how much is too much? And is sugar really bad for you as they say?

Historically, sugar consumption is on the rise -- here are some sugar shock stats (PDF). In 1970, each American was eating on average 123 pounds of sugar a year and today that number is up to 152 pounds -- which means three pounds in just one week, a little under one cup a day. Nutritionists say to limit sugar to around 13 teaspoons a day so we are getting almost four times the recommended daily amount from a variety of sources.

A lot of people are wondering if there is a healthy form of sugar: Since most of the sugars trigger the same rise in blood sugar, there is no real difference between them except for how quickly that sugar spike hits the system. This is where eating more complex carbohydrates and beneficial fruits is a great way to slow that blood glucose change and deal with the daily crave for sweets.

As in my last post, I still think it's OK to enjoy other forms of sugar in moderation; we all like our treats from time to time, especially on holidays and special occasions. But if you're looking for low-sugar treats, try my recipes for avocado chocolate milkshake, brown sugar ice cream or rugelach.

After the jump -- chewing the fat on "diet" food.

Continue reading Sugar Shock

I have always been a huge fan of deliciously rich and creamy whoopie pies. So, when I read the recent New York Times article about its current popularity among New Yorkers, I was not too surprised.

The article traces the history of this delectable to pockets of New England, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And, it explains that due to their gaining popularity, supermarkets like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and (specialty deli) Zingerman's sell them. But, my favorite spot for whoopie pies is at One Girl Cookies in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

As food historian Sandra Oliver states, the cake part that sandwiches the cream is not especially sweet and is often dry, because the frosting, the heart of the whoopie, is full of sugar and a gooey consistency. This characterizes One Girl Cookies' luscious whoopie pies. There is an amazing balances between the frosting in the center and the light fluffy dry cookie/cake.

Perhaps, one of the reasons why they're so special is that cream cheese frosting is sandwiched between pumpkin cake (see the photo above).

You can purchase a dozen whoopie pies from One Girl Cookies online for $27. The Times mentions another pastry shop in Brooklyn with whoopie fever called Trois Pommes Patisserie.

A Foodie's Notes on the Vernal Equinox:

We very rarely had snow where I grew up, but as I stood at my grandmother's apron strings, I was taught to respect the turning of the seasons.

Winter was cold enough for the warming comfort food most of us still associate with it -- steaming bowls of soup, pot roast in rich gravy, hot coffee and cake to go with it.

Summer meant barbecue, soft drinks ("pop" to grandma, and we never got it except at cookouts) and pies bubbling with the best of the summer fruit while less perfect specimens were packed into canning jars by an assembly line of women working in the basement of the church.

Autumn was pumpkin, apples and turkey as we got ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving. And spring ... well, spring was getting ready for Easter.

On the weekend of the Equinox, my grandmother changed all of the household linens -- sheets to tea towels -- from winter's cream and evergreen to her favorite shades of sky blue and butter yellow.

That Monday, she set up the glass pots with thermometers that clipped onto the sides, steel baking sheets that unrolled like April thunder and vials of curiously intense flavor extracts that heralded Easter candy-making. Always planning, (Depression-era housekeepers needed no time management coaching), she made candy in the mornings before turning her attention to lunch and the afternoon errands.

Keep reading about why a chiffon cake is an important statement of spring awakening after the jump.

Continue reading Contemplating the Vernal Equinox With Orange Chiffon Cake

So how are your New Year's Resolutions going? Still making it to the gym, cutting down on the carbs, repurposing your Starbucks addiciton to a fix of regular joe from the deli? Good luck with all that. You can never let it be said that one of the world's leading suppliers of premium carbohydrates isn't in your corner.

Saturday was the fifth running of what has become a tradition in Raleigh, North Carolina: the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Challenge, in which the power of a mountain of doughnuts is harvested as motivation and fuel for a four mile race whose midpoint is not a shot of some namby-pamby sports drink but the scarfing of a dozen glazed. Finally, a sport everyone can support, and athletes everyone can identify with: carbo track and field.

Here's how the doughnut triathalon works: registrants gather at the belltower on the North Carolina State campus as early as 6:30 a.m., pre-doughnut-run doughnuts optional but not exactly wise. These finely-tuned thoroughbreds warm up in anticipation of the 9:30 a.m. start time for a run to the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on Peace Street, where will be awaiting one dozen warm glazed doughnuts. These have to be scarfed (coffee optional but allowed), and then the journey repeated to the belltower (barfing optional but presumably allowed). The runner does not have to eat all of their doughnuts but has to weather the resulting humiliation if they don't. They have to complete the entire triathalon in one hour or less.

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