Cox Cookies & Cake is the book based on the Soho cupcake bakery created by UK based French patissier Eric Lanlard and fashion designer Patrick Cox. If you fancy a touch of the Raymond Revue bar in your kitchen, this is the cookbook for you.
The 75 recipes are predominantly cupcakes with two chapters on cookies, bars and biscuits. Reading is like stepping through a narrow alley off Brewer Street, it’s dark with neon graphics. Glitter balls and leather feature as props.
The soft cover gives the impression of shiny PVC, the graphics are reminiscent of Soft Cell’s Non Stop Erotic Cabaret album. Endpapers show pictures from seedy venues and their shop – it’s up to the reader to discern which is which.
This isn’t a book that takes itself seriously. Presumably it’s the first cookery book ever to feature the word “semen” in lights (page 36, it’s actually a cropped photo of sign saying “basement”). I fear to google the phrase “cock rings” but suspect that the adornment on top of “crown cupcakes” looks like one.
Like Marc Almond’s eyeliner and bangles invading a Top of the Pops episode otherwise filled with Shakin’ Stevens and Buck’s Fizz, Cox Cookies and Cake is an antidote to any notion that baking books need be saccharine.
The styling chapter gets surprisingly involved with sugarcraft; “cheeky” cupcakes present an opportunity to paint a thong on edible paste bottoms; chocolate gets moulded into skulls.
Two cupcakes on the front cover are not featured inside; Andy Warhol Marilyns and bicep curling arms. Presumably the former are printed with edible ink. Having seen a similar technique on Bakerella, I was hoping to see how to make them. The latter look very similar to “man cakes” but this should be spelled out.
Cox Cookies and Cake Lust list:
Cola cupcakes indented with perkily erect cola bottle sweets, luscious cherry topped Black Forest cupcakes; gluten free Provencal orange cupcakes are oozing with appeal. “Summer Flowers” cupcakes are arty and the Nanaimo bars are positively seductive.
Sex bombed out:
The hedgehog cupcakes forsake cuteness for cartoonish headlamp staring fear. They look really weird. Likewise, bunnies devoid of any Playboy reference, splattered eyeballs and holly seem out of place and shoe horned in to tick boxes of Easter, Hallowe’en and Christmas. The cookies lack the glamour attempted elsewhere. Titty cupcakes look like something out of Benny Hill.
Cox Cookies and Cake Verdict:
Definitely different, but some of the kid focused and healthy options don’t sit comfortably with the concept. There are a number of recipes I’d like to try although the presentation of the book is distractingly similar to a Smash Hits Year Book circa 1982. Still, if I ever require a cupcake decorated with someone’s bum I’ll know where to look.
Cox Cookies & Cakes by Eric Lanlard & Patrick Cox is published by Mitchell Beazley, priced 16.99 and available from July 11th 2011. With thanks to Octopus Books for the review copy.
I love your honest reviews Sarah……If I ever need bum-shaped cupcakes – I’ll be sure to ask you! LOL and stay well.
Noooo I seriously have better things to do than make bum cupcakes. Unless they’re for you 😉
Great review. I’ve always had a mixed feeling about the shop as Ive always felt it looked not only seedy but dirty and not in a good way but an un clean way, which is not what you want from a cake shop! It always smacked slightly of bandwagoning with a gay twist which is never a good look. I guess as long as the cakes taste good and sell well it doesn’t really matter how they package them.
Yeah I agree, the seedy dirty concept does not sit well with food in my opinion. Plus I see far more grime than glamour. Re quality of cake, I haven’t been but I know I Heart Cupcakes definitely has.
I’m afraid I really didn’t like this book – found the food photography awful and the whole concept just badly put together – the cakes did nothing for me at all. And I agree re the hedgehog ones – if you made those for kids I think you’d give them nightmares! Perhaps I’d have liked it more if the cakes in the shop actually tasted good,but knowing how awful the stuff they sell is I can’t imagine the recipes are amazing either. Although having said that, I have a copy of their nanaimo bar recipe as I want to make it for a Canadian friend so hoping it works.
To make the Marilyn cakes you need an edible printer/inks. Or you can send your image to people online and they’ll send you sheets to use.
The hedgehogs were the scariest thing I’d seen since the blank faced monkeys in “Dress Your Cupcake”. Kids do like scary stuff though….
I thought the graphics and photography were technically very good in portraying the interior of a sex shop. Much as I am icked out about branding food as something inherently cheap and dirty, I can see too that it’s not meant to be taken seriously.
I’ve tried to review this book without bringing in a rant about sexual politics and the porn industry as I prefer not to sully my blog with such a topic!