BabyCakes recipes from New York's most talked about bakery

Forget everything youve heard about health-conscious baking. Simply, BabyCakes is your key to an enlightened, indulgent, sweets-filled future. This is important news not only for parents whose children have allergies, for vegans, and for others who struggle with food sensitivities, but also for all you sugar-loving traditionalists. The recipes in these pages prove that there is a healthy alternative to recklessly made desserts, one that doesn't sacrifice taste or texture.Having experimented endlessly with alternative, health-conscious sweeteners, flours, and thickeners, Erin McKenna, the proprietress of beloved bakery BabyCakes NYC, developed these recipesmost are gluten-free, all are without refined sugarin hopes of combating her own wheat, dairy, and sugar sensitivities. In BabyCakes, she shares detailed information about the ingredients she uses (coconut flour, xanthan gum, and agave nectar, for example) and how to substitute them properly for common onesall the while guiding you safely through techniques shes spent years perfecting. When BabyCakes NYC opened on Manhattans Lower East Side in 2005, it helped propel the gluten-free and vegan baking movement into a new stratosphere. Suddenly there was a destination for those with wheat allergies and other dietary restrictionsand, soon enough, celebrities and dessert lovers of every kindto indulge freely in delectable muffins and teacakes, brownies and cookies, pies and cobblers.Enclosed within these pages are all the secrets youll need to bring the greatness of BabyCakes NYC into your own home as well as raves and recommendations from devotees such as Natalie Portman, Jason Schwartzman, Mary-Louise Parker, Zooey Deschanel, and Pamela Anderson.For confectionists of all kinds, delicious alternatives lie within: Red Velvet Cupcakes, Chocolate Shortbread Scones with Caramelized Bananas, Strawberry Shortcake, and BabyCakes NYCs celebrated frosting (so delicious it has fans tipping back frosting shots!), to name just a few. Finally, Erins blissful desserts are yours for the baking!From the Hardcover edition.