Recipe Book Reviews

This was my first recipe book for allergy-free baking. It's from the US so some of the ingredients were difficult to come by. This book introduced me to gluten-free flour blends, coconut oil and the use of flaxseed as an egg replacer. The flour blend in this book uses a combination of chickpea flour, potato starch and tapioca starch. I was able to buy these online from Goodness Direct.

I visted this vegan bakery whilst on a trip to New York, so I bought the recipe book hoping to be able to replicate the magic at home. Unfortunately I never quite got to grips with the frosting, which involves the use of dried soy milk powder. I could never get it thick enough. However the cakes came out well, in particular the impressively named "chocolate fat-pants cake". Note that this book makes heavy use of apple puree. This results in a wonderfully moist texture but it's not so good if you are following the low-FODMAP diet.

I highly recommend this book to anyone trying dairy and egg-free baking for the first time. The recipes are so simple! It is incredibly easy to make a basic sponge (cake or cupcakes) with a great texture and rise. This is now my go-to option when I need to make a cake. I use Doves Farm gluten-free self-raising flour blend with the recipes and the cakes always come out fantastic.

I have included this book although I have only recently started attempting to make bread. Honestly I haven't had much success so far. I have had real problems getting the bread to rise, so the results have been very dense. I haven't given up hope and there are lots of different recipes to try. This book also introduced me to yet more types of flour, including teff flour, quinoa flour and buckwheat flour. My kitchen cupboards are now bursting at the seams with different types of flour!