Love Is a Pink Cake: Irresistible Bakes for Morning, Noon, and Night

A fresh collection of seasonal baking recipes from the gifted proprietor of Violet Bakery in London.

Though she bakes in London, Claire Ptak grew up in California and trained at Chez Panisse, so her desserts, sweet things, and occasional savory items draw on two different worlds. Different enough that she has organized this book into sections called California and England. Broadly speaking, there’s a little more fruit in the California section and slightly more dairy in the England one. But you don’t have to worry about that too much. You can find plenty to catch your eye.

Our eye was caught by:

• Mustafa’s persimmon brown butter cookies
• Pistachio green plum cakes with candied violets
• Late summer peach tarte tatin with peach leaf custard
• Tequila pumpkin pie
• Strawberry and white currant coconut meringue cake
• Fig leaf ice cream
• Raspberries naked in muscat sabayon
• Blue cheese buns

That should be enough to tell you that this is not a book of traditional comfort baking. Ptak will satisfy your sweet tooth and your imagination with fresh ideas rather than familiar ones. She’s not an elaborate decorator and her baked goods usually rely for their appeal on minimalist presentation with the occasional flourish of a cluster of berries or some other bit of color contrast.

Ptak strongly advises that you measure by weight and in metric, but American volume measure is also provided. The relative small trim size of the book (10” x 7”) means that type is somewhat small, though page layout is clean and unfussy.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.