Baking: the next generation

I’m trying to buy less cook books because our kitchen now contains more books than it does food. So instead of window shopping at the Book Depository, I now spend a lot of time at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ as I realized that all the recipes of my favorites TV chefs are on there. I usually buy the book whenever I love one of their shows but now, I just copy paste the recipes to my recipe file. No more clutter and not a penny wasted. How cool is that?

The website naturally isn’t as comprehensive as a book but I never make every recipe in there, so who cares. Consider this the highlights. And Nigella, Sophie, The Hairy Bikers, Delia, Jamie, Raymond, Michel, you name them, the gangs all there.

Now in my ongoing quest for (free) culinary inspiration and cultivation, I also stumbled across some new baking trends that are trying to banish the ever so scrumptious cupcake from its sweet and succulent throne.

Our first contender is the whoopee pie. I can’t help but smile whenever I pronounce it. Just like the cupcake, this trend started in the USA and is slowly but surely conquering the UK. It kinda looks like a macaron and was originally just two chocolate cakes with marshmallow filling. Yum yum.

But if you prefer some folklore, Amish women would apparently bake these back in the day and put them in the farmers' lunchboxes. When farmers would find these treats in their lunch, they would shout "Whoopie!"

What it boils down to, is that the whoopee pie a deliciously soft and sweet cream-filled treat that comes in wide variety of flavors and colors: red velvet, green tea, pumpkin with a tangy cream cheese filling, oatmeal and even maple-bacon buttercream.

Our next contender was created by Angie Dudley, who the baking bloggers among us probably know as Bakerella. She started out with our beloved cupcake and turned it into something original, fun and oh so pretty, the cake pop aka a cute little cake on a stick.

Although the concept is quite simple, her results are truly outstanding ranging from decorated balls to robots, baby chicks and even piglets. They may seem like a lot of work but trust me, it’s a piece of cake and a perfect bite sized portion of ingenuity to brighten up any get-together.