One Bake, Two Ways: Fifty Bakes with an All-Plant Option Every Time

In this outstanding volume, 2018 Great British Bake Off finalist Bhogal offers 50 baked goods with 50 vegan alternatives. Both playful and rigorous, these recipes, Bhogal promises, are “not something someone is going to forget about as soon as they put their fork down.” The traditional recipe for the stunning sticky Jamaican ginger cake with butterscotch sauce and orange cream incorporates eggs, butter, and cream, while the plant-based rendition calls for soy milk and cider vinegar to produce an equally sumptuous showstopper. Similarly decadent are the carrot halwa and chai Chelsea buns with medjool dates, raisins, and dark chocolate, which, like many of these dishes, draw on the author’s Indian heritage. Recipes often feature complex constructions, among them the coconut cake with whipped ricotta and mango cream, a spice-accented cardamom and raspberry cake with white chocolate and pistachio, and a multilayer nectarine and blackberry pavlova with basil crème diplomat. Throughout, the author’s voice comes through in chatty instructions (“Let’s start with the pastry so this baby can get in the fridge to chill”) and quaint Britishisms (“I imagine eating it stonkingly hot... on a cold winter’s day”). This first-rate collection will please novice and veteran bakers alike. (June)