Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes

I hesitated to order this book since I am already a bit overwhelmed with my cookbook collection but went ahead anyway and placed the order! Man am I glad I did! I already own Kelli & Peter's first book,follow their blog and am always pleased with their recipes. I knew I would like this book but I already have some good cupcake recipes and my own fantastic buttercream. Do I really need more than that? Yes, I did. This book is not just recipes, but a treasure trove of ideas and technique.The book is inspirational in its photography and inventiveness of its recipes. I love having a book that has so may frosting variations all in one tome. My twins 7th birthday was a few weeks away and would privde ample opportunity to try some of the recipes.My one son requested yellow cupcakes with strawberry frosting. Yum, I said. I chose Kelli's basic yellow cake cupcake and followed the recipe closely; however I DID substitute nonfat greek yogurt for the sour cream. For the frosting I was going to follow Kelli's strawberry frosting recipe to the letter; however I was finding it too thick and sweet so I reduced the powdered sugar by approximately a cup and a quarter and added some heavy cream. I then blended in close to a 1/2 cup of fresh pureed strawberries (the recipe called for 1/4 I believe)and arrived at the taste and consistency I wanted. The frosting was beautiful and delicious! We do not ingest artificial colors or dyes in our household so in the past, I have used allfruit for the berry color and flavors. This was far superior and it is now my favorite flavored frosting! I piped on the frosting with a number 7 attachment on my mechanical pastry bag and they looked just like a bakery cupcake. So beautiful! Now for the cake- absolutely scrumptious. My husband was getting sick of me saying how good it was, so he stopped washing the dishes to get one of his own and experienced for himself exactly what I was talking about! This is now my keeper yellow cake recipe and I am inspired to add other fruit purees to my buttercream frosting. I am thinking kiwi would be great for St. Patricks Day or springtime cupcakes and raspberry for Valentines Day!Now for the next recipe. My other son wanted chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. I used greek yogurt again with great results. Soy yogurt or coconut milk yogurt would probably be a good substitute to make the cake dairy free. While we did not like the chocolate cupcakes nearly as much as the yellow, they were still great. We both felt the cake needed a bit more flavor. Some chooped up dark chocolate or flavored coconut milk yogurt would probably do the trick.I am planning on trying some other recipes soon and will definately be making the yellow cake with raspberry frosting for Valentines day!I highly recommend this book even if you, like me, already have too many cookbooks. Can you really have too many cookbooks? You will NOT be disappointed!

I hesitated buying this book. I already own a bunch of GF cookbooks, including the other book by the Bronski's, and I'm also comfortable converting regular baking recipes to be gluten free. Ultimately it was an impulse buy that turned out to be a very good purchase. Here are my observations:- The book is smaller than I expected. It is probably about 7 inches by 6 inches. Each recipe takes a page or more and every cupcake is photographed.- The photography in this book is stunning. This was a pleasant surprise as the photography in their first cookbook was not great. The pictures in this book make me want to bake every single recipe.- The authors pay great attention to detail in this book. They talk about the different ingredients they call for, the tools they recommend, different types of cake and frosting, how to make filled cupcakes, and how to frost a cupcake beautifully. They include a chapter with charts about how to substitute ingredients if you need to cook vegan, dairy-free, egg-free or refined sugar-free. They also include a chart with metric conversions of various ingredients (including their flour mixture) if you prefer to bake by weight.- There are 50 cupcake recipes in this book. There are also recipes for blondies, gingerbread people, chocolate cookies, mini cannoli shells, snickerdoodles, and pancakes. There are some recipes where the cupcake base is repeated, or altered a smidge with a different flavoring. The recipes are varied and creative enough (mango buttercream, anyone!) that I don't feel at all cheated by this. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to come up with 50 different recipes for cake that didn't piggyback on a basic chocolate or white cake recipe.- I have made the basic chocolate and white cupcakes so far. Both were excellent. I would have no qualms about feeding them to gluten-eating guests. The taste and texture were just right. I halved each recipe with no problem to the finished cupcakes.- I don't see why you couldn't convert some of the recipes to bake into a regular cake. Each recipe makes 24 cupcakes. With this amount of batter you could make a 9x13 sheet cake or two 8 or 9 inch rounds. I haven't tried it, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to...These days I'm pretty picky about adding another GF cookbook to my library, but this was a worthwhile purchase that I expect to get a lot of mileage from.

I have tried quite a few of these recipes, and they have all turned out deliciously. Actually I've gone a bit cupcake crazy over the last week, trying a new recipe everyday. I love the variety of the recipes, and the photographs are beautiful. All of the recipes call for the same gluten-free flour blend (recipe provided), so you only have to keep four or five common types of flour on hand instead of a dozen or more types like some other cookbooks require. I make a big batch of the flour blend and keep it in my fridge or freezer. I will warn you that the recipes all call for quite a bit of butter and sugar, but there are charts on how to substitute agave nectar and non-hydrogenated shortening, as well as tips on how to make the recipes vegan, egg-free, etc. I've also been experimenting with a lot of my own substitutions (non-fat yogurt for sour cream, xylitol and other sweeteners for the sugar/agave nectar, etc.) and have been equally as pleased with the results, so the recipes appear to be very versatile. I find that the frosting recipes can easily be halved - they yield at least twice the amount that I would use on a batch of cupcakes, but of course you can save whatever you don't use for your next batch. And I prefer mini-cupcakes, which I bake for about 14 minutes instead of the time recommended for the larger cupcakes. All in all, I was hesitant to purchase this book since there were no customer reviews yet, but I was excited enough about it to go for it, and I'm not disappointed. There are only two or three recipes that I don't see myself making, so I look forward to working my way through all of the rest!

I'm a huge fan of cupcakes and so is my family. With 3 of 5 of us avoiding wheat, this was a really great find. We've made a number of the recipes for potlucks and family birthdays and no one even knows they are gluten free - not just good gluten free cupcakes, they are awesome cupcakes for everyone

wife madeup

Every recipe I've tried has been great. The Boston cream and the lemon - poppyseed are my favourites. For anyone who is gluten free this book is a real find.

Maybe this one would be worth five stars, but as we have only tried a few of the recipes, I don't feel qualified to rate it any higher. I will say that the recipes we tried turned out really delicious! Will be trying more in the future. A nice one to have in the cookbook collection!