Review by Booklist Review
Bhogal, who readers may know as a 2018 finalist on The Great British Bake Off, knows her cake and is excited to share her baking experiences with readers. Each cake recipe here, paired with mouthwatering photos, has a basic preparation followed by an alternative, plant-based version that vegans and all those who bake for them will appreciate. Two examples: Victoria sponge loaf with roasted strawberries and mint and sticky Jamaican ginger cake with butterscotch sauce and orange cream. Though cakes are her fave, Bhogal also includes other tasty treats like cinnamon rolls, salted caramel doughnuts, and cherry and almond pie. Bhogal's two-recipes-in-one approach offers much appeal to bakers who enjoy experimenting, riffing, and tweaking recipes until they are just right for them.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this outstanding volume, 2018 Great British Bake Off finalist Bhogal offers 50 baked goods with 50 vegan alternatives. Both playful and rigorous, these recipes, Bhogal promises, are "not something someone is going to forget about as soon as they put their fork down." The traditional recipe for the stunning sticky Jamaican ginger cake with butterscotch sauce and orange cream incorporates eggs, butter, and cream, while the plant-based rendition calls for soy milk and cider vinegar to produce an equally sumptuous showstopper. Similarly decadent are the carrot halwa and chai Chelsea buns with medjool dates, raisins, and dark chocolate, which, like many of these dishes, draw on the author's Indian heritage. Recipes often feature complex constructions, among them the coconut cake with whipped ricotta and mango cream, a spice-accented cardamom and raspberry cake with white chocolate and pistachio, and a multilayer nectarine and blackberry pavlova with basil crème diplomat. Throughout, the author's voice comes through in chatty instructions ("Let's start with the pastry so this baby can get in the fridge to chill") and quaint Britishisms ("I imagine eating it stonkingly hot... on a cold winter's day"). This first-rate collection will please novice and veteran bakers alike. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
After a viral moment on the Great British Bake Off's vegan week in 2018 put Bhogal in the spotlight, she promised herself that she would figure out what went wrong with her on-show bake. Bhogal now packs everything she has since learned into this charming and often cheeky cookbook that offers up 50 plant-based recipes (and their non-plant-based counterparts) for sweet treats. From quintessential British favorites like lemon drizzle cake (reinvented as a lemon and thyme drizzle loaf with lemon custard cream) to American specialties like cinnamon rolls with cream cheese filling (for which Bhogal shares her secret of using a Japanese bread baking technique, yu-dane (known in China as tangzhong), for a softer, more tender crumb), Bhogal breaks everything down into easy-to-follow steps and then serves it all up with a generous measure of saucy wit. Measurements and oven temperatures are given in metric only, but a conversion chart provides the ways and means for American bakers to translate things into terms they understand. VERDICT Following in the footsteps of Great British Bake Off alums Edd Kimber, Nadiya Hussain, and James Morton, Bhogal's first cookbook delivers the stuff from which sweet baking dreams are made.--John Charles
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