Beatrix Bakes Another Slice
Hardie Grant Australia, 2024, RRP $59.99. Photography: Rochelle Eagle
By Natalie Paull
If you love baking books with a warm tone, some ripper recipes to really stretch your skills, and razor-sharp instructions for optimum success, you’ll love this adorable new book from cult-followed Melbourne baker Natalie Paull. Every day before it sadly shuttered in 2022, her cute cafe Beatrix Bakes attracted the cake-erati, salivating for innovative takes on Aussie, Euro and American classics. You might know Paull’s first book, Beatrix Bakes, published to acclaim in 2020. Like this one, it takes more of a technical, precision-led approach than do many other baking books – you’ll absolutely need digital scales for example, and ideally ones that measure in 1g increments. But honestly, that’s proper baking for you. We prefer books that give gram weights alongside cup/tbsp/tsp conversions and nowhere is this more critical than with baking. “Baking”, as Paull explains, “is part science – you are literally creating new structures from flour and eggs – so accuracy is vital. And a gram is always a gram no matter where you are in the world.” (Because a cup is absolutely not a cup, globally-speaking. American cups are different to ours; did you know? And Aussie tablespoons are 20ml while everyone else’s are 15ml.) We love her introductory pages about how she bakes and what she bakes with; even if you’re seasoned, there’s plenty to learn.
The recipes themselves are all pretty long, and that’s because the instructions are exhaustive. They include personal tips, tricks and watchpoints, which isn’t always info that’s covered off in recipe methods; Paull’s more talk you through processes rather than bark them at you. As a result you kind of get to know her. She’s never been to France, for example. Her home oven is far from accurate (but she shares her work-around, so don’t fret). She’s not really into Christmas. Her fave commercial cake is caramel mud. She’s a ‘lazy laminator’. Her voice is always there and we dig her little asides. “Pump a little Donna Summer through the speakers. This is solid chocolate gold” she says of her Mocha Glim Glams. Elsewhere she quotes Nora Ephron and Joni Mitchell. Her pecan pie was inspired by Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood. We like her common sense too – “If you don’t have time to make yoghurt rough puff pastry, buy a top-shelf frozen puff pastry. “ Her goods are fancy-ish but, while she’s pretty uncompromising on ingredient quality, she doesn’t come off as elitist. Chapters are arranged around themes of cookies, doughs, tart-type things, cakes and ‘day- off baking projects’, which is kind of a repository for things that don’t seem to easily fit anywhere else – honey-oat pretzels, pistachio and lemon iced buns, and chocolate-prune babka, for example.
We’d be hard pressed to pick the most enticing recipes from this book, which is a good sign. Everything sounds and looks so yum; Chicory Caramel Mascarpone Layer Cake, Yuzu Soufflé Cheesecake and Nicole Rucker’s Life-Affirming Lime Pie in particular speak to us and the Milk Chocolate and Earl Grey Diges-tea-ves are maybe the first things we’ll have a go at making. It’s a pity not every recipe is photographed, especially as the food styling (by our friend Kirsten Jenkins, one of Australia’s best) is effortlessly gorgeous. We get that this comes down to budgeting as all those pretty food pictures are hella expensive to produce but even so. When high-stakes baking recipes are in play, you really need to see what you’re aiming for, we reckon. That’s our only quibble really; overall we think this is a cracking book. If you’re looking for some serious new baking inspo, you won’t do better.
