The Butch Bakery Cookbook

by David Arrick, Janice Kollar

This is not your mother's cupcake cookbook The Butch Bakery does cupcakes like nobody else. You can forget the pretty sparkles and the flowers on top, forget the pastel cupcakes for Easter or Halloween. These aren't cupcakes for little kids, but grown-up cupcakes full of contemporary, inventive flavors—like bacon, whiskey, coffee, and cayenne pepper.The Butch Bakery Cookbook offers cupcakes for the twenty-first century—like a cupcake imbued with two different liqueurs or a devil's food cake made truly diabolical with a dose of chili powder. These are serious sweets. They're delightfully different and dangerously delicious.Author David Arrick has received tremendous media coverage since opening Butch BakeryPerfect for dessert or cupcake lovers who are tired of the same old vanilla or chocolate cake with icing on topFor anyone who wants a dessert that breaks the mold and challenges the taste buds with modern flavors and inspired ingredients, The Butch Bakery Cookbook delivers the goods—seriously.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can get past the weird sexism - i.e. men don't like women's cupcakes or bakeries so here's some manly cupcakes named after sports with simple instructions even a man can follow - then this is a truly 5 star cupcake cookbook. The cupcakes in this are delicious. I didn't make a bad one. I have a hard time picking a favorite. I think mine would be either the Rush Hour, which is a gingerbread cupcake with a ginger buttercream frosting, or the Peppermint Patty, a chocolate mint cupcake with a peppermint patty baked inside topped with peppermint fudge frosting. My husband's favorite was the Wake Up Call, a coffee infused chocolate cupcake with coffee buttercream, followed by a close second Defense Defense, which was a red velvet cupcake topped with a Jack Daniel's buttercream. I sent so many cupcakes to his office over the last few months, and his coworkers voted the New Yawk Cream Pie, like a Boston Cream Pie in cupcake form, as their favorite. While most of the cupcakes use easy to find ingredients to make both cake and frosting from scratch, the final section of the cookbook has a few recipes which involve doctored mixes and shelf frostings. All are great with the minor exception of the red velvet. The one mentioned above, from scratch, is fantastic. The quick fix version in the back - similar recipe but starting with a mix, was subpar compared to the scratch version. Not bad but not as good.
I made all the cupcakes as written with one minor exception. As these are "manly" cupcakes, the recipes call for using XL baking tins with specialty cupcake cups. I don't have those pans, and didn't want to buy them just for this. However, in the front of the cookbook, there are explicit instructions for adjusting the recipes to use standard size pans and cups. I used those instructions to make them using tools on hand. Worked great. Most all the recipes have some type or alcohol in them, and I made as written. Each recipe, however, has instructions for making virgin versions, which I didn't try.
This is the perfect cookbook for a novice. Since " even a man can make these" *eye roll*, the instructions are incredibly detailed, the tips section (called Boot Camp) in the front of the cookbook is well done, and it uses basic baking techniques and tools to outstanding results. My goal is to eventually make every cupcake in this cookbook (with the exception of the raisin one as I hate raisins), but need to take a break as we've been eating way too many cupcakes. I feel some guilt at supporting such a sexist endeavor, but these cupcakes are delicious.

[Jacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Arrick, owner of New York City's Butch Bakery, knows that trendy cupcakes, with their pink frosting and sparkly toppings, are unfairly skewed toward a female demographic. In The Butch Bakery Cookbook, Arrick shares his recipes for guy-friendly cupcakes boasting bold flavors like chile powder, sugar-glazed bacon and a range of alcoholic beverages that would make a bartender proud.

The from-scratch B-52 (a yellow cupcake soaked in Kahlua and frosted with Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream) and the New Yawk Cream Pie (a chocolate-frosted yellow cupcake with a creamy pudding center that gets its start from a cake mix and canned frosting) both received rave reviews in testing. Husbands, boyfriends and one handyman who lucked into participating raved about the results, or at least gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up with one hand while shoving cupcakes into their mouths with the other.

Embrace gender equality. Nab a copy of The Butch Bakery Cookbook for the baker in your life!

***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness Readers Edition. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made the Salted Caramel cupcakes and liked them. Will be trying more recipes in the future.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

a different take on cupcakes. not too sweet and interesting ingredients.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The color palette of the page design in The Butch Bakery Cookbook is all '70s retro - as is the overarching assumption of the author that men are incapable of truly appreciating a foodstuff in any shade of pink. (Um, rare meat?) To me, the whole thing seems vaguely insulting, from the aforementioned supposition to the book's tendency to repeat the same instructions ad infinitum, as if implying men don't (can't?) listen. Were the recipes excellent I might be a little more forgiving, but the Bakery offers only 31 cupcake variations, most of them remarkably similar, and seems almost Paula Deen-ish in its slavish devotion to buttercream. Perhaps I simply have more faith in the male of the species, or less tolerance for those trying to cash in on the cupcake craze, but this reads like an overfrosted gimmick.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOM.

[Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much! All the cupcakes look so tasty!