Flying Apron's Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book

I love the Flying Apron Bakery, but since I don't live in Seattle I was thrilled to find this book. It has so many great options for someone on a restricted diet. The best part is that some of the recipes are savory! The apron pocket recipes are wonderful and they are portable. It's also so great to have a vegan cookbook that doesn't have soy in the recipes. What a great cookbook to add to a GF and/or vegan library!

I have been vegan and gluten free for many years now and have literally dreamed of the delectables that this cookbook treasure offers. I can't say that I have a "favorite" because each one is a true gift and incredibly mouthwatering. I have prepared these delicious items for several of my non-vegan friends and family members and they are the first to say that these creations are not to be missed. Not only are they scrumtious, but they are a visual delight to your dining table. This author makes these recipes quite user friendly and you can feel the love and joy that she brings to each offering. I am grateful to this author for creating this healthy and tasty masterpiece.She is our pastry and main dish "Guru"!! Much Gratitude.

This book was almost MADE for me as I am a gluten free vegan for health reasons. I don't have celiac disease but I am slightly gluten intolerant and while it is pretty easy to eat regular food gluten free and vegan, baked goods have been the final frontier for me. Since becoming g-free and vegan, I have stayed away from sweets and baked goods even though I knew that books like The Flying Apron were out there. After trying brown rice flour bread from the store (it's TERRIBLE and is most useful as a perishable paper weight) I was very skeptical of g-free baked goods. But I have amazing friends who know of my odd eating habits and one of them got me this book for Christmas. I couldn't wait to try it out! I made the Thumbprint Apricot cookies and they are SOOOOOO good. I brought them to the office and they were devoured in minutes and people have been coming to my office all morning to tell me how much they liked them. All of her recipes call for using a stand mixer. I don't have one (booo!!!!!!! I want one!) but using a hand mixer worked perfectly fine. When you make any of the dough (almost all of her recipes have the same dough) don't be scared!! It doesn't look like dough because what makes other dough look like dough is gluten. Bonus: no dangers of over mixing!! Don't taste the raw dough like I did because you'll be even more scared. The raw dough tastes awful. But baking is magical and when the dough bakes up all of your fears will go away. Such deliciousness! A tender, chewy, flavorful cookie. Highly recommend this book to any baker - not just g-free vegans. These recipes are delicious and therefore will make anyone happy - even those who love butter, milk, eggs, and all purpose flour!!

I have enjoyed Flying Apron Bakery's cupcakes with my children for years. The cookbook includes all of our favorite recipes, most notably, the cake and frosting recipes used for cupcakes! I will be making these regularly! It is a pleasure to have a cookbook that uses such healthful ingredients. Thank you! So far, I have made the pumpkin pie (with brown rice crust) two times, both times a big hit. If you're not used to Flying Apron pastry, it is quite different from regular wheat-based pie dough. The texture is very crumbly, like a crumbly shortbread, and very grainy compared to conventional pastry. However, it is delicious. I was not enthralled at first taste, but I love it and so do my kids. This last time I made the pie crust, I had extra and made a little apple tart out of it (topped a circle of dough with chopped apple tossed with maple syrup and honey, and then topped that with another circle of dough which I crimped and baked along with the pumpking pie). The apple tart came out great, and I'm definitely going to be making this very easy crust to put together my own impromptu tarts for breakfast or desserts. Tonight I made the dark chocolate cake as cupcakes and the german maple frosting. Tomorrow, I'll be serving these german chocolate cupcakes for my nephew's birthday. Beautiful! One confession: I have a sweet tooth and have added extra sugar to both the pumpkin pie and to cupcakes. If things aren't sweet enough for you, this is an easy change to make to any recipe. I am grateful for a commercial baker like Flying Apron who cares so much about customers that she is willing to publish her recipes. Thanks again!!

I love this book, and I plan on giving it as a gift to anyone interested in GF baking. This weekend I made the Pumpkin Glory Loaf with molasses and the whole house smelled absolutely divine for hours. I plan on making the cranberry apple tart with cornmeal and pine nut crust for Thanksgiving. I'll try to update this review from time to time with successes and failures, but so far this book and I are on a serious winning streak. As context, I've been baking GF for about two years now. I have copies of Bette Hagman's two main baking books: The Gluten-free Gourmet Makes Dessert: More Than 200 Wheat-free Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Pies and Other Sweets and The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread: More Than 200 Wheat-Free Recipes and I adore those books as well. Bette uses a lot of eggs in her recipes. I don't fault her for that. Eggs make excellent binders and bring more protein to the equation. My family is not vegan, but sometimes I do worry about the constant stream of eggs we're pouring into our systems. I had periodically tried to make GF bread without eggs (using egg replacer mostly) and I failed every time. Enter the Flying Apron Baking book and their ever-so-clever use of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and yams as the missing ingredient. Magic! Without cholesterol! I'm ecstatic! (I hope I'm not giving too much away here. You should still buy the book! There's so much more to it than my own little revelation of how to get moisture and a little binder into egg-free breads.) In short, I can't wait to try every single recipe in this book. Seriously. I'll probably substitute a bit here and there, but there's a wealth of tricks and techniques in this little book. For those of you that are skeptical about GF baking or about vegan baking, I wish I could mail you all a baked good or two from the Flying Apron here in Seattle. They would make believers out of you!