Boutique Baking - review by Sarah Trivuncic

Sarah Trivuncic, food writer and author of Bake Me I’m Yours…Sweet Bitesize Bakes on Boutique Baking.

Peggy Porschen’s

new book Boutique Baking is a departure from her previous titles – rather than high end sugarcraft creations and celebrity style wedding cakes, the cakes in her new title are based on those sold in the Peggy Porschen Parlour.

The bakes are as exquisite as ever, Peggy is a baker who sets trends rather than follow them but there is plenty inside Boutique Baking for the less experienced baker to enjoy making without feeling intimidated.

There are tricks to vary things you may be baking already; Peggy’s tribute to the cake pop

is served in an ice cream cone rather than on a stick, her macarons are cleverly feathered with food colouring streaked inside the piping tip. Cupcakes are obviously a huge seller in her parlour, my personal favourites here are the chic banoffee cupcakes with matching dark brown cases and blossoms and the Cosmo cupcakes

based on the cocktail made with Cointreau.

Show stopper chapter has to be “luscious layer cakes” – Peggy presents a series of three layered cakes in an elegant 6 inch size. The piping on the Glorious Victoria Cake

is effortlessly simple – I saw her demonstrate icing this cake at the Squires Sugarcraft Show where the room was packed full 45 minutes before the start time, such is her popularity amongst baking fans.

My standout cakes in the book are the raspberry and rose dome cake

– I predict we’ll be seeing a lot more cakes this shape soon, the white chocolate passion cake decorated with birthday candles and triple berry cheesecakes. The whole thing is topped off with recipes for drinks from the parlour such as pink lemonade (it has to be pink if it’s at Peggy’s)

and hot white chocolate with vanilla. With the recent hot weather I am especially desperate to try her summer berry ice tea.

Some recipes in the book use Peggy’s own jam range as ingredients although you could substitute with others. You could always though, if you’re near London, use it as an excuse to drop by the Parlour and buy some.

Sarah blogs at MaisonCupcake.com

Photos (c) Georgia Glynn Smith

A note for 2012 including details of new offerings from Mark Hix, James Martin, Cath Kidston and the Two Greedy Italians.

With the dazzling array of options available for the creation of illustrated content, and with a market place that is ever more complex, Quadrille is relishing the opportunities that these challenges present, and within this heady maelstrom, we offer one of our most impressive lists, as varied as ever, as innovative as ever, as exquisite as ever, and as saleable as ever!

Starting the year with health books, we have Target your Fat Spots by Max Tomlinson, essential reading for everyone after the holiday excesses; Elizabeth Peyton Jones’s answer to botox, Eat Yourself Young, guaranteed reading for all over 35; and the amazing Instructions for Happiness and Success,

offering you your heart’s desires if you follow it. Each has a new message, a large target audience and is keenly priced to achieve strong sales.

Our new food titles continue this approach. We are following the fabulous success of Two Greedy Italians, which became an instant bestseller in the UK and has gone on to sell in 14 languages, with Two Greedy Italians Eat Italy,

whose focus is on the very distinctive terrains and their products and how to cook them to perfection. We are delighted to welcome James Martin back with his sure-fire bestselling title, Slow.

Mark Hix has completely reinvented the concept of baking, while Anjum Anand addresses the ever-popular subject of vegetarian Indian food.

Our new authors include Sam Stern and his splendid Virgin to Veteran,

Tom Kitchin whose Kitchin Suppers really shows you how to make in your home the speedy delicious dishes he does in his; Nathan Outlaw’s tome on fish is destined to be the book on the subject for years to come,

while Monica Galetti brings a brilliant range of new flavours to everyday cuisine. And Reza has brought a jewel-like quality to his irresistible Indian food. We also have exceptional new books from Alice Hart,

Stevie Parle,

A.A. Gill, Josceline Dimbleby, Peggy Porschen and Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Our craft list goes from strength to strength, too. Cath Kidston’s Sew! with phenomenal sales of over 280,000 copies and translated into 10 languages, has set a new bench mark. The witty Everything Alice

will be followed this year by Everything Oz, a scintillating collection based on the great wizard and his friends. We have a brilliant new collection of Cath Kidston lines for this year, and Erika Knight’s outstanding Crochet Workshop.

We are thrilled to have signed the Vogue on Designers Collection, whose first titles, covering the great designers of the modern age, will be launched this autumn at fabulously affordable prices. And Max Milligan’s lyrical photographic Soul of Scotland is yet another jewel in our collection.

The old adage of being bold in times of adversity was never more evident! We hope you will sell these books with the enthusiasm with which we’ve created them, and we thank you so much for your support of Quadrille.

Alison Cathie
Managing Director