Review: The Butch Bakery Cookbook
Well, it’s fall now. You can tell by the annual signs – pumpkin recipes are everywhere, football, tailgating and the pre-Christmas cookbooks are out. I found this out first hand last week. I heard the familiar sound of the UPS truck bouncing through my yard. On the porch I found a package from Wiley 
Publications and inside was a review copy of David Arrick’s The Butch Bakery Cookbook.
Now I’ve written more than once about my disdain for shows like Cupcake Wars but that doesn’t mean that I hate cupcakes. Cupcakes are quite tasty. Far from adventurous but tasty. Well, David Arrick is doing his best to make cupcakes sexy.
At his New York laboratory the The Butch Bakery, Arrick is churning out such novel offerings as the Mojito, a rum-soaked lime cake with lime mint buttercream that’s sure to whet your whistle, the B-52 is a Kahlua-soaked Madagascar vanilla cake with Bailey’s Bavarian buttercream and the Rum & Coke is a rum-soaked Madagascar vanilla cake with cola Bavarian cream that’s a real knockout. Apparently the thing that makes Arrick’s baking so butch is booze. I don’t know if it’s butch, per se, but it’s certainly fun.
Arrick’s approach to the cookbook is interesting with themed chapters like “Touchdown” (Chapter 3). The recipes are inspired by Saturday afternoons on the grid iron. The cupcake names fit the theme like the Tailgate – a caramel filled cupcake with a salted caramel buttercream and the Defense, Defense – a red velvet cupcake with Jack Daniels cream cheese frosting. Each chapter name is very manly.
The overall format is very well thought out with a section to make notes every few pages. Each recipe also comes with a helpful tip called “Butch’s Baking Lesson.” Along with the 30+ plus in-depth cupcake recipes there’s a how-to guide to creating the decorative chocolate disks that signify the Butch style. The book was co-written by Janice Kollar and Jason Wyche’s photography is stunning.
If you are serious about your cupcakery you will love this book. And I’m not kidding about the food porn, I foresee Wyche’s pix earning him some serious accolades during the cookbook awards season next spring. The Butch Bakery Cookbook is also available for the Kindle.
I’m giving away a copy of The Butch Bakery Cookbook. Last day to sign-up is 11-11-11. To enter click HERE.
Giveaway: The Butch Bakery Cookbook
The Butch Bakery Cookbook
This is not your mother’s cupcake cookbook.
The Butch Bakery does cupcakes like nobody else. You can forget the pretty sparkles and the flowers on top, forget the pastel cupcakes for Easter or Halloween. These aren’t cupcakes for little kids, but grown-up cupcakes full of contemporary, inventive flavors—like bacon, whiskey, coffee, and cayenne pepper.
The Butch Bakery Cookbook offers cupcakes for the twenty-first century—like a cupcake imbued with two different liqueurs or a devil’s food cake made truly diabolical with a dose of chili powder. These are serious sweets. They’re delightfully different and dangerously delicious.
Last day to sign-up is 11-11-11. To enter simply leave a comment below.
