Tom Bergin's Tavern

Soft pretzel at Tom Bergin's Tavern

Today is National Pretzel Day, a holiday that is actually Pennsylvanian -- due to the state's early German and Dutch settlers who popularized the snack. It was declared not once, but twice in a span of twenty years by two Pennsylvanian politicians. So celebrate it for the pretzels, which are pretty great eats if done well. It also beats honoring Richter Scale Day -- a holiday that's a lot more relevant to Angelenos -- which is also today. No offense to seismologists.

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courtesy: Yummi Yogi

What does your collection of cookie cutters say about you? Or, to put this another way, are your cookie cutters shaped like Stormtroopers and X-Wings, or did you leave your yoga class this morning wishing you could bake some cookies that accurately captured your Crescent Lunge pose?

If it's the latter, you're in luck: Yummi Yogi's cookie cutters are shaped like yoga positions (i.e., Crescent Lunge, Tree Pose) and now available online and at select retailers near you.

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Ginger Cakettes

gingerbread cookies

Gingerbread cookies may be a traditionally English snack, but the spice was introduced to the West through Asia. Ruth and Ruby Olvido, who are ethnically Filipino, wanted to capitalize on that fact. The sisters are the founders of Ginger Cakettes, a start-up bakery that opened in January of 2012.

"We were sitting around and realized that ginger comes from China. So we thought of our ethnicity and brainstormed on what other flavors have Asian origins," Ruby, who takes care of the business side of things, says.

The concept is simple: gingerbread men with an Filipino twist. On their current menu: ube, red bean, macapuno (a Philippine variety of coconut that is soft and jelly-like) and green tea pandan.

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Ten Speed Press

Cannabis Cupcakes

With so much talk of late about cupcakes and legalizing marijuana, we should have known a Cannabis Cupcakes cookbook wasn't too far behind. "What better way to take advantage of both [the cupcake and cannabis] trends than with a cookbook that satisfies these guilty pleasures?," the cookbook's press release asks. Well, the publisher has a point.

Other fun nuggets from the press release? "Not only is the high from eating cannabis baked goods more intense and longer-lasting (THC is more potent when dissolved in fat), it's also a healthier and tastier way to get stoned." We're pretty sure those health claims have not been FDA approved, nor have we heard many restaurant critics rave over marijuana-spiked French pastries. Then again, this is a baking book that specializes in all-American "quarter-pounders" in pot cupcake form.

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Abrams Books

Bake It Like You Mean It

Really, April is the ideal time to Bake it Like You Mean it, as we could probably all use a little post-Spring Break malakofftorte à la raymo (chocolate ladyfinger cake, here filled with Kahlua cream) kitchen therapy.

This is the third in a recent series of pastry books from Gesine Bullock-Prado (among her previous titles is the fantastic candy book, Sugar Baby). She again gets brownie points for not referencing her celebrity sister, Sandra Bullock, on the book jacket, press release or elswhere, as so many cookbook authors with pedigreed genes seem to blare through loudspeakers today. Nor does Bullock-Prado need to, as she has more than enough talent of her own. So much, that we will forgive her/the publisher for the self help book-worthy subtitle: Gorgeous Cakes From Inside Out.

Bake It Like you Mean It is filled with the sort of entertaining-worthy cakes and pastries that will have you wishing for a rainy spring weekend. Two words: Creamsicle cheesecake.

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Minh Phan/Beachwood Cafe

Chai-ginger hot cross buns

If, like any good Episcopalian, you feel that you should enjoy hot cross buns but, like many of us, you nonetheless loathe the yeasty rolls with their bitter bits of candied citrus peel, chef Minh Phan of Hollywood's Beachwood Cafe may have a solution for you. She replaces the citrus bits (currants and raisins are also popularly used) with crystalized ginger infused with tawny port and flavors the dough with chai tea and extra cardamon. The essence of the spent tea is combined with confectioners sugar and heavy cream to create the icing. As a festive spring touch, Phan crowns each bun with a tiny edible flower.

Hot cross buns are traditionally eaten by Catholics on Good Friday and by Protestants on Easter. In folklore, the magical buns are said to heal rifts, protect against shipwrecks, prevent fire in the home and ensure that all your bread will turn out perfectly if you hang one in the kitchen. (The frosting cross on top is a symbol of the crucifixtion.) And since you can't get them for one ha'penny anymore, maybe consider making your own.

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Ten Speed Press

Modern Art Desserts

San Francisco pastry chef Caitlin Freeman's new baking book, Modern Art Desserts: Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Confections and Frozen Treats based on Iconic Works of Art, is an edible reflection of the museum curator's constant challenge:

Finding the balance between popular exhibitions (and pastries) that will draw a large enough crowd to keep visitor attendance (and book sales) up, versus those without mass appeal but of equal, and at times, greater, value.

Freeman is the pastry chef for Blue Bottle Coffee, which has a satellite outpost at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. At the SFMOMA, she and her baking partners, Leah Rosenberg and Tess Wilson, craft artwork-inspired pastries for several years.

Despite the book's press release, and that Mondrian look-alike cover, this is hardly a book for "hobby bakers," or any baker looking for a literal art history interpretation. From our curatorial perspective, that makes it all the better.

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King Arthur

A vintage flour label

King Arthur Flour has initiated a voluntary recall of flour sold between mid-December and early February, according to an email sent to the company's "Baking Friends." The recall also was announced on the King Arthur website. King Arthur is the third largest seller of flour in the country.

The issue? Little bright blue polyurethane balls (measuring 7 mm to 9 mm, about the size of a pearl on a typical strand) "were dropped into a very limited number of bags during the sifting stage of the milling process." The balls are "food-safe" and have "no jagged edges." Which is fine if you don't mind bright-blue bread and muffins.

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William Morrow

The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook

Because everyone else is on a diet. And The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook, by Seattle bakery owner/restaurateur Tom Douglas and Shelley Lance, was one of the best baking books of 2012. And the idea of baking those "peanut butter sandwich cookies, aka 'the Nora Ephron'" (her favorite) is even more compelling after losing Ephron the same year her pastry tribute was published. As Douglas notes in the recipe introduction, the cookie recipe, which calls for two types of peanut butter, is the "most sought-after cookie recipe in the book." Fittingly, it also has the longest prose introduction in the book, the longest we've seen in almost any cookbook.

If you've been to Seattle, you've probably eaten at one of Douglas' restaurants. He owns eleven, plus Dahlia Bakery. No surprise: he has won the James Beard Foundation's "Outstanding Restaurateur" award. But we're all here for the bakery cookbook. Its pages are filled with breakfast sandwiches and brunch ideas, doughnuts (an entire chapter), and a slew of the bakery's daily rustic offerings. A chapter sampling: breakfast pastries (cornbread bacon muffins, cherry almond scones), cookies (cranberry-apricot oatmeal, ginger-molasses), pies (including the bakery's infamous triple coconut cream), tarts (that cornmeal-almond tart crust is already thumbnailed), cake (carrot cupcakes with brown butter cream cheese frosting), puddings (Èclairs!), ice cream and sorbet (Oregon Pinot Noir raspberry sorbet), jams and jellies (rhubarb jelly).

All recipes we'll be revisiting this year. But first, those Nora Ephron cookies. Get the recipe after the jump.

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via Hasbro

Easy-Bake Oven

Are Hasbro's Easy-Bake Ovens just for girls? Their pink and purple color scheme might suggest so, along with ads and packaging that show only girls playing with the classic toy. Of course, that hasn't stopped generations of pie-curious boys from experimenting with baked goods at a young age.

But now, New Jersey 13-year-old McKenna Pope is petitioning Hasbro to release a gender-neutral version of the Easy-Bake Oven, due to her little brother, 4-year-old Gavyn Boscio, who loves to bake but is turned off by the current Easy-Bake Oven because "only girls play with it."

A petition that Pope filed on Change.org last week has already gained 30,000 signatures, plus the support of several high-profile chefs nationwide (including Bobby Flay). A video released this morning by PR firm Bullfrog and Baum shows several other chefs getting in on the action, including some from Los Angeles. Watch the video below, and watch for cameo appearances by Stella Rossa Pizza chef Jeff Mahin and Joshua Whigham of The Bazaar.

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