There’s something about the first cool days of fall that makes me want to fire up the oven and bake a batch of cookies. As I’ve felt off my game since moving to the land of metric, I decided to take a French Pastry class over the weekend, in hopes that it would a) get me more comfortable with cooking in celsius and grams and b) motivate me to start using our London kitchen. Pictured above are the fruit tartlets I made (the class covered tartelets, financiers and choux puffs: a perfect mix). To keep the momentum going, I’m lucky to have two new baking books to refer to:
bertinet pastry
excerpt from “pastry”
Bertinet Pastry: Richard Bertinet’s book will serve not only as the “missing manual” for my weekend class but as a full-range pastry master class I can tackle at my leisure. From sausage rolls to savory tarts to chouqettes to tartes Normandes (pictured on the cover): it’s all here. The author’s acclaimed Bertinet Kitchen in Bath (west of London) offers a full range of classes for those ready to venture beyond the “101” level, and there’s a Bertinet Bakery, too, in case all you want to do is tame your sweet tooth. While Bertinet Pastry was first published in the UK in 2012; the fall 2013 edition, from Chronicle Books, was revised to reflect US weights and measures.
butter baked goods
excerpt from “butter”
Butter Baked Goods: is there anything more tempting than a pastry shop, awash in frosting and pretty pastels? Not for me, and I’m a crazy fangirl for Vancouver’s Butter Baked Goods. It’s rare that I can leave Dean & Deluca without a package of their perfectly packaged, delicious marshmallows, and a stop at Butter was a must when my family visited Vancouver. As such, I’ve been eagerly anticipating owner Rosie Daykin’s just-published book: the recipes cover the range of Butter’s nostalgic menu, including muffins, cakes, cookies, and yes, the marshmallow recipe. The book is beautifully photographed, and serves not only as a lovely souvenir of my visit, but as a way to bring a little “Butter” to the UK.
image credits: tarts photo by jane potrykus; bertinet from chroniclebooks; butter baked goods from butterbakedgoods.com excerpts from both books photographed by jane potrykus
** advance copies of the books were provided at my request. no promise of editorial coverage was given.