Darina Allen: Violet Bakery Hazelnut Toffee Cake

THE most anticipated baking book of 2015 has just been published, it’s called The Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire Ptak, whom Jamie Oliver described as “my favourite cake-maker in the world”.

It is really significant for a variety of reasons. It’s written by someone who never set out to be a baker, Claire who is Californian went to university to study film making but she was forever darting in and out of the kitchen between classes and films to bake cakes. She even borrowed an oven on an island in Lake Atitlán in Guatemala to make a pie. A year working as an assistant to a Hollywood director still didn’t satisfy nor did a stint in a fancy San Francisco fashion boutique.

Eventually in 2001 she landed a one-day internship at Chez Panisse in California which led to her dream job there and under the direction of pastry chef Alan Tangren, Claire learned how to taste and tweak.