Asian Baking for World Food Day 2023

World Food Day will be on October 16th, so in honor of that, I want to share a cookbook I was sent to review. The Modern Asian Baking at Home by Kat Lieu includes recipes from different cultures in Asia. The author was inspired through her journey to learn to bake and her creation of a Facebook group called Subtle Asian Baking (SAB) to learn through others' experiences. That FB group still exists and has over 150,000 members today. I was sent a free copy of the hardcover version of this book via the Amazon Vine program in exchange for a review on that website; this article is a bonus and thus no other other form of compensation was received for sharing my opinions with you all today.

In seven chapters, there are a total of 63 recipes which seems low given the price of the book. The reason may be that every recipe includes a photo of the finished item; photos do drive up the price of books. I'm torn because I love to see photos, but I want more recipes. Here on The Chocolate Cult we care about the chocolate recipes. There are a eight chocolate or cocoa inclusive recipes though you will need to look at both recipe names and ingredients; some recipes are listed twice in the index. The result is a fairly high rate of chocolate in this cookbook, about 12% of the recipes use some form of chocolate.

Of these, not all are baked items: Velvety Nama Chocolates, Silky Black Sesame Panna Cotta, and Vietnamese Egg Daigona Coffee. For a cookbook claiming to be about baking, this was surprising. It is not simple one or two recipes either which require no baking. For a cookbook entitled "Baking" I was shocked at how many of the recipes do not require an oven of any type; not even microwave "baking" which I will never consider true baking, by the way.

The baked recipes in this cookbook include: Monstrous Matcha Miso Cookies, Gooey Fudgy Miso Brownies, Soft Crumb Ube White Chocolate Scones, Spicy Gochujang Flourless Chocolate Cake, and Hidden Surprise Jade Madeleines. These all looked delicious.

Most of the recipes require ingredient that you may need to go to a speciality grocery store or at least to the international area of most mainstream American groceries. That could be a problem with you have a limited budget or you and your family are not particularly adventurous eaters. Likewise, you will need some moderate experience in the kitchen, but Lieu has done a good job of laying out standard western techniques so you won't a steep hill to climb.

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