Organic and Chic: Cakes, Cookies, and Other Sweets That Taste as Good as They Look

by Sarah Magid

Overview

"When I bring one of my sweets into the room—whether at a wedding or an intimate dinner party—the expressions on people's faces turn that celebration into a memory I'll never forget. That's what baking should be."

Many people are coming to recognize the merits of eating organic ingredients, but the idea of "organic baked goods" may bring to mind food that is more boring than beautiful and delicious. But in Organic and Chic, custom cake baker Sarah Magid uses her background in jewelry and shoe design to create vibrantly colored, highly original, delicious organic cakes and other desserts that are perfect for all kinds of celebrations.

Filled with gorgeous photographs, Organic and Chic features recipes for delectable baked goods you'll be excited to re-create and serve to family and friends, from modern floral cakes and cupcakes to rustic farmer's-market sweets made with seasonal fruits:

• Red Velvet Love Cake frosted with Vanilla Whipped Buttercream and garnished with edible flowers
• Vanilla-Bean Butter Cake filled with Sweet Chocolate Ganache and decorated with hand-sculpted butterflies
• Minty Strawberry Shortcakes, celebrating the bounty of the summer
• Goldies, a tasty tribute to America's favorite cream-filled sponge cake

Whether you're preparing some simple Double Ginger Cookies for a block party or bake sale, or experimenting with a rich and luscious dark chocolate birthday cake, you can be confident that you're serving desserts that are gorgeous and flavorful without resorting to fake, chemical-laden ingredients. Magid offers detailed step-by-step decorating instructions and enough inspiration to help even the most novice baker create bold cake-decorating effects, including eye-popping flowers, hand-sculpted leaves, and metallic-painted brushstrokes.

A must for every health-minded baker, this unique cookbook balances exquisite flavors, organic ingredients, and stunning visuals to help you create your own masterpieces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061673580
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/02/2009
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah Magid has a custom cake business based in New York City. She has worked for top fashion companies, including Tommy Hilfiger, J. Crew, Coach, Liz Claiborne, Frye, and Henri Bendel. Her cakes have been featured in magazines such as Domino, InStyle Weddings, Cookie, Brides, The Knot, New York, and Martha Stewart's The Art of Cakes, as well as numerous style and food blogs. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two young children.

Editorial Reviews

Magid attempts to re–invent the way we think about organic baked goods. Instead of dense, bland nut loaves, she offers Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese–Lemon Zest Frosting, Double Ginger Cookies, and Goldies, her organic take on Twinkies. Magid’s style combines vivid colors, delicate details, and a serious dose of whimsy.

Epicurious.com

With this cookbook, Magid upends many conventional recipes, and she offers recipes that promise attractive organic desserts… Her greatest contribution is a handful of cookie and cupcake recipes specifically designed to discourage children’s overconsumption of ubiquitous, industrial, mass-produced sweets.

Booklist

There’s nothing crunchy about these stylish desserts.

New York Times

Organic and Chic is bound to change the way you think about organic baking. [Magid’s] innate sense of style shines through in all her confections, from a super–sophisticated Lotus Cake…to vegan Double Ginger Cookies, and her organic twists on junk food, including irresistible gold–dusted ‘Twinkies’ and silver ‘Ring–a–Dings.’

BookPage

Throughout this otherwise lively new collection of wholesome, sophisticated baked goods, Magid uses the word "organic" like a cudgel-seemingly every ingredient is prefaced with the word. Though the term gets tiresome, Magid presents a measured argument for organic eggs, flours and sugars in her creations (though, puzzlingly, she has no problem with food coloring) as well as sourcing suggestions. In 60 recipes, Magid offers up crowd-pleasers like oatmeal raisin cookies and flourless chocolate almond cake, as well as homemade variations on childhood all-stars like Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies and Hostess Sno-balls. Grown-ups will swoon over her Lovely Lemon Cake with marshmallow frosting, Minty Strawberry Shortcakes and her Chocolate Love Blossom-a multilayer chocolate cake filled with vanilla whipped cream and/or a red currant curd, and covered with a rich ganache. Though the titles may sound ambitious, most recipes are more than manageable; Magid even includes an easy recipe for no-bake honey peanut dough to keep the kids busy.
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Publishers Weekly

Magid (www.sarahmagid.com) has a custom cake business in Brooklyn, NY, and her first book features 60 recipes ranging from showstopping cakes to homey cookies, all made with organic ingredients. Parents looking for "healthy-esque junk food" will be interested in the many kid-friendly recipes; bakers seeking to replicate her fancy cakes will be disappointed to find that the instructions in some recipes don't match the elaborate creations shown in the accompanying photographs.

—Judith Sutton

Library Journal