Author: David Arrick, with Janice Kollar
Publisher: Wiley Publishing – 192 pages
Book Review by: Laxmi Chaandi
This is a book about cupcakes but not of the kind you find at kids’ birthday parties. And also not the kind you would find in your typical bakery, which may be in pastel colors and have sparkles, sprinkles, or pretty designs of flowers or clowns on the top.
What you will find here are recipes for delicious baked delights that have the flavors of bacon, rum, espresso and cayenne pepper. Yes, you read that right. These are cupcakes made for men (or women who want manly tastes).
For example, the B-52 (named after the World War II bomber) cupcake is made with Kahlua and Bailey’s Irish Cream, which in turn is made with Irish whiskey. This cupcake is prepared by soaking it in coffee-flavored Kahlua and using the Bailey’s Cream in the frosting.
The other unique cupcakes besides the B-52 with strong flavors in the first chapter named “Working” feature recipes in this unusual book named: Coffee Break, Driller, Jack Hammer, Rush Hour and Wake Up Call.
All the recipes have something different , usually an ingredient or more that set them apart from others. For example, what’s different about the Coffee Break cupcake than most others? It is loaded with Kahlua and a double shot of Espresso butter cream!
The Driller is a cupcake made with the usual. Ingredients such as baking powder, butter, eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla extract, but what makes it different in taste from other cupcakes is that milk chocolate is its frosting (ganache) and it is sprinkled with finely ground bacon., which gives it a little kick.
The Jack Hammer cupcake gets its name I suppose from its look of a broken-up surface after it is topped with nutella and sprinkled with hazel nuts and slivers of milk chocolate, even as the usual basic ingredients are used in this cupcake as most others.
And what makes the Rush Hour cupcake get its name? Well, heated-up stout beer is added to the batter, as pat of its recipe. And it is flavored with ground cinnamon and cloves and topped with ginger butter cream, which gives it its spike. The writer says this cupcake has a zing. With those ingredients, I don’t doubt it.
The author David Arrack founded Butch Bakery in 2009. He was formerly an actor, personal trainer and lawyer. His associate Janice Kollar was the owner of Kollar Cookies in New York for more than 12 years. The Food Network recently named her Classic Four Layer Chocolate Cake as the best cake in the country.
The book has six chapters with about 30 imaginative recipes for what must be delicious cupcakes. I wish I could taste them, but I believe they must taste awesome. And they are named appropriately , like “Home Run” and “Triple Play,” and “No Hitter,” and “Kick-Off” and “Camp Out” and “Sweet Mama” and “Hoo Rah Hoo Rah” and “Coco Loco” and New Yawk Cream Pie” and “Peppermint Patty.”
An unusual book, I must say, at the least. It is a good one to buy and keep for making desserts for a party or just for the family. David Arrack and Janice Kollar have put together an excellent piece of work. Our congratulations to them.
