Warren Brown’s Cakelove is not your average cake baking book. He doesn’t decorate standard cakes with intricately carved fondant or instruct you to dump a bottle of pink sprinkles on top to make a birthday cake for a princess. Most of these recipes call for uncommon ingredients and a dash of patience and skill. Warren Brown pursues an all-natural lifestyle as much as possible, so he uses the least processed and most natural ingredients in all of his cakes.
I haven’t tried all of the recipes in this book, but I liked his “crunchy feet” concept so much that I bought my own set of brioche pans. With the brioche pans set out on a standard cookie sheet, you can make dozens of tiny cakes at the same time, each with hardened ridges or crunchy feet. Since they are more dense and cake-like than cupcakes, there’s no need to frost them! So far, the biggest crowd-pleasers have been the Sassy cake, made with cayenne pepper, mango, and citrus, and the Gingerly cake with ginger, honey, and molasses. Don’t forget to look at his collection of fillings and frostings in the back of the book; the coconut buttercream recipe alone is worth checking this one out!