Following on from her success with Beatrix Bakes comes Natalie Paull’s newest creation, Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice. Her latest cookbook reflects having run one of Melbourne’s most popular cafés and bakeries for over 10 years, and her past tutelage under Australian cooking icons Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander. It gives you the assurance she knows a trick or two to navigating the science in baking and desserts.
Beatrix Bakes provides readers with advice on baking technique, method, and the equipment needed. This leaves you feeling prepared to tackle more complex baking methods like ‘Cannoli with buffalo ricotta filling’.
What is consistent throughout is the flexibility that is often neglected by baking cookbooks. Every recipe has ‘Adapatrix’, which is a section that steers you to different ingredient substitutions. For me, this is what cooking should be about: trying new flavours and testing different approaches that suit you.
You will find a good combination of tarts, cakes, jams, doughs, tray bakes, curds and creams that you can adapt to different recipes. A personal favourite of mine is the dough-bombes with sour cherry jam.
Paull has been known for her ability to take classics and make them into her own – this continues in this book and provides the home cook an opportunity to up their baking game.
Reviewed by Robert Bromhead
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born to bake. After my first butter cake at the age of seven (a tender age, definitely NOT tender cake), baking became my one true love. In my teens, Vogue Entertaining sat beside Smash Hits magazine on my bedside table.
At 18 I got my first commercial kitchen job as an apprentice chef and started absorbing knowledge like a tres leches sponge absorbs the milk. I started in the entree/salad section but just couldn’t deny the fact that my heart was all things sweet and kept moving towards the pastry section.
In 2011, after 20 years of baking in countless restaurants, cafes and my first wholesale cake business, I was 38 years old and thought my dreams of having that dreamy little cake shop were over. Then one day, I found a very small shop on a sunny corner in North Melbourne near my home. I named it Beatrix Bakes.
The name Beatrix has two meanings: in Latin it means ‘voyager’ but the Dutch meaning is ‘she who delivers joy’ and that was exactly what I wanted my cake to do!
One of my favourite ‘bakes’ was my first bakebook, Beatrix Bakes, released in March 2020 just before we were plunged into a pandemic. I adored being able to bake for you or seeing that YOU were baking for YOU! Cake joy multiplied!
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