Ptak provides an ingredient glossary to match UK ingredient names with US ones. Caster sugar is super-fine granulated white sugar. Semi-skimmed milk is low-fat milk. Strong flour is bread flour. (Most of us may know these things after seasons of The Great British Baking Show.) She uses English measurements with the the US equivalent in parentheses. Add half of the dry flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar and mix well. Then add the coconut milk and vanilla and mix again. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the remaining dry ingredients to the bowl. Mix well to incorporate all of the ingredients, but do not overmix or this will make your cake tough. For the topping, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy but not fluffy. Add the extracts, salt, eggs and egg white, then beat well. Claire Ptak's recipes are generous, intuitive, and beautiful. This is a celebration of life, and the bounty of the earth. You will feel as though an old friend is taking you by the hand and teaching you how to make the perfect fluffy blueberry muffin. Pull up a chair. Claire is the friend everybody needs in their life.--Laila Gohar

Preheat the oven to 150°C fan/170°C/340°F/ gas mark 3½. Grease and line either 1 deep or 3 shallow 20cm (8in) cake tins. Love Is a Pink Cake offers glimpses of Ms. Ptak's personality, as well as of her personal life . . . Rich in color (a pistachio-green plum cake with candied violets) and texture.--Emilia Petrarca "New York Times" This ravishing trove of recipes and baker's lore is a testament to years of practice and endeavour ... a marvellous achievement Jeremy Lee, author of 'Cooking' London's East End meets Northern California in 75 indulgent bakes from the author of The Violet Bakery Cookbook.Claire's desserts are more than just a conclusion to a great meal; they're bites of special memories for me . . . Her cakes have been at the center of some of our most cherished family moments.--Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex "New York Times"

Stir in the chopped almonds, flour and baking powder just to combine. Dollop this over the jam—don’t worry about spreading it evenly as it will melt into place in the oven and spreading it can cause the jam to get mixed in rather than remaining its own layer. Return to the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until golden and set. Allow to cool for 20 minutes. I want to read, cook and devour the gorgeous food of brilliant Claire Ruth Rogers, author of the 'River Cafe Cookbook'Claire Ptak is the coolest girl I know. She makes baking sexy ... in a wolrd of saccharine this is the antidote Fiona Leahy Ptak's love for nature's bounty shines through in this collection for fans of farm-to-table baking.--Jessica S. Levy "Booklist" Amazing recipes and heartfelt stories Christopher Kane, Creative Director and Founder of Christopher Kane There's some cookbooks you enjoy reading and there's some that you read for the delicious recipes. This book is the latter. (Besides, not to sound like an old fart, but the type is tiny.) For royal watchers, Claire Ptak will forever be known as the London-based California ex-pat who made the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding cake : an Amalfi lemon and Sandringham elderflower confection adorned with clusters of peonies. And yet the Violet Cakes founder had established a reputation in food circles for revolutionizing the world of baking with her seasonal approach to ingredients long before 2018. As she prepares to release her latest cookbook , Love Is A Pink Cake , Vogue caught up with Ptak about cutting her teeth at Chez Panisse, falling for British baked goods, and why she takes a West Coast mentality with her wherever she goes.

Not to say this undermines the book. For a hobby baker wanting to sharpen my skills, the challenge is part of the allure. Meanwhile, other recipes offer failsafe reliability. A Big Sur cookie uses up leftover granola; it’s not only a great cookie, but an exciting paradigm: Any recipe using up the dregs of my cupboard is a winner, and the final product will vary greatly by granola. Ptak’s bakewell bars are buttery, nutty, and laced with tart jam. They cut beautifully, look great on a stand, and make a traybake out of the most British possible tart. It was Violet that first opened my eyes to the potential of bakewell, a U.K. bakery case staple that can be stodgy, gummy, or bland. These, on the other hand, are now on my roster, along with those rye brownies. Of course, Berry’s cookbook is good; just to be sure about that tart shell, I remade it for a quiche, and it remained an unassailable tart shell, one I’ll make again. To say that the book suffers in comparison to Ptak’s would be incorrect; they are different, with divergent goals, and as a hobbyist I need a completist tome as much as I enjoy reveling in Ptak’s meadowy sensibilities and artistic sympathy. But as both books are being issued around a great national inflection point, it makes sense to note that, just as they illustrate two very different kinds of baking books, they each also represent how baking can explain two confections of Britain’s national character, the cool multicultural East London and the white upper-middle-class English countryside.It might sound like I’m down on this, but on the contrary: There’s an intellectual honesty in this book. As a sort-of celebrity baker Ptak is webbed across continents and industries; what seems like name-dropping can also be true to the author’s experience. As she writes in the introduction, “Take the experience of your life and let it shape your baking. Bake more often. Bake for those you love. Love is a pink cake.”

London’s East End meets Northern California in 75 indulgent bakes from the author of The Violet Bakery Cookbook . Whether it's for ourselves, to show love for a child, friend or partner, or to celebrate a rite of passage, there is no denying the incredible effect that cakes can have. Claire Ptak has been running her West-London bakery, Violet Cakes, for nearly two decades, using her harvest-led philosophy to create incredibly flavourful and beautiful cakes, puddings and savoury treats.

Because not only is Ptak’s book compelling — her baking is excellent. Violet sells the best birthday cake in London, at least to a Chicagoan born in July with a raspberry buttercream preference; the rye brownies in her last book have become my go-to, along with its flourless chocolate cake. What’s in Pink Cake is more specific, less twist-on-a-staple and more out-there (for a given value of “there”): Find not one but two riffs on traditional British summer pudding, or a standard coffee-walnut with Fernet in both the cake and the frosting. Ptak asserts that "baking is, in its own way, a love story," and her own love shines through. This is a treasure trove.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"