By Leigh O’Connor.
Sweet-toothed superstar and bestselling baker, Natalie Paull returns with ‘Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice’, an all-new compilation of colourful, creative recipes to delight home cooks.
Natalie has been baking and loving all things sweet for more than 25 years – she started cooking in professional kitchens at 18 and spent her formative years working with Australian food luminaries such as Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander.
She went on to open the blink-and-you-will-miss-it cult café and bakery Beatrix Bakes in inner-city Melbourne in 2011 to widespread acclaim. Before Beatrix closed its doors in August 2022, fans lined up in the rain in their hundreds to secure a taste of the day’s delicious offerings.
Nat has gone on to cement her reputation for melding traditional methods of baking with her distinct brand of irreverent innovation…also, she eats a lot of cake, every day!
This new cookbook includes legendary bakes that didn’t fit in the hit original ‘Beatrix Bakes’ as well as recipes that were waiting to find their cake stand and methods Nat had ignored but then fell hopelessly in love with such as jam.
Let’s start with her lemon cream tart with a brisee butter crust:
"I bake this when I have good lemons – good lemons to me are misshapen, bumpy-skinned, aroma-before-appearance fruit from the backyard or an organic grocer,” Nat explains. "I like assertive and sour varieties like Eureka or Lisbon.
"I adore Meyer lemons and counter their submissive sourness with less sugar. In my humble opinion, low-rise lemon tarts are more pleasing because the relationship of delicate lemony custard and buttery cradle crust is balanced.”
In the eye-searingly schmexy first season of the TV show ‘True Blood’, a tragedy befalls Sookie Stackhouse, and in her grief, she consumes a slice of pecan pie that Nat has never forgotten seeing.
"The maple custard was spoonably gooey under the pecan raft and I vowed to make the pecan pie I cooked look the same.”
With a super flaky buckwheat crust, her chocolate rum maple pecan pie is sure to be a dessert winner; if you don’t like pecans, walnuts make a great substitute and the rum can also be swapped out for bourbon.
If you ever see Nat at the supermarket, chances are there will be a caramel mud cake in her basket.
"It is my favourite mass-produced treat and resolutely non-guilty pleasure. Alas, so many attempts to recreate it left me disheartened – until I dabbled with chicory, a caffeine-free coffee substitute,” she says.
When mixed with dark sugar, chicory imparts butterscotch-adjacent notes, while the sticky, finger-dipping good dark caramel ganache ties this layer cake recipe together. There is more ganache than you need, don’t waste it – warm and pour over ice cream for an easy sweet treat.
This is the bake book for the resolute sweet tooth who is always questioning if they have enough butter in their fridge and an essential companion for anyone who always leaves room for dessert!
