Weeknight Baking: Time-Saving Recipes

Lopez, founder of the baking blog Hummingbird High, delivers a helpful, if somewhat misleading, debut cookbook. While some of the desserts, such as pumpkin spice bread and chocolate chip cookies, can be made on a weeknight, several cakes and pies require several nights of work to pull off (her pumpkin pie recipe is broken down into four days). This multiday process may be convenient for home bakers with busy schedules, but it will disappoint those looking to quickly satisfy their sweet tooth cravings. Still, Lopez provides plenty of helpful tips on topics including ingredient substitutions (“you can use bittersweet and semisweet chocolate interchangeably”) and how to bring ingredients to room temperature quickly (for instance, placing eggs in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes), and offers fun variations on classics, such as peanut butter cup banana bread, cranberry white chocolate oatmeal cookies, and halva blondies (halva is made with tahini or nut butters). Readers on special diets will appreciate a handful of vegan and/or gluten-free desserts, such as vegan chocolate chip almond cookies, Meyer lemon cornmeal torte, and peanut butter pretzel pie. The recipes are on the mark, and this volume of fun and accessible recipes will help beginning bakers work more efficiently, even if over the course of a few weeknights. (Oct.)