Made with Love by Kelly Childs and Erinn Weatherbie + Win 1 of 5 copies!

I don’t know any magic tricks and I can’t tell a joke to save my life, but I can make a chocolate chip cookie that will dazzle and delight. It’s the cover star of Made with Love: More than 100 Sweet and Savory Plant-Based Recipes for Every Moment in Life by mother-daughter duo Kelly Childs and Erinn Weatherbie of Kelly’s Bake Shoppe and Love Lettuce Café, and it’s worth the price of the book alone. You want to bake someone happy? Bake these. 

Fresh out of the oven they’re chewy on the outside and soft on the inside, then quite hard when they cool but perfect for dunking. Kelly and Erinn want everyone to be able to eat, drink and enjoy so like every other recipe, the chocolate chip cookies are free of gluten, dairy, eggs and peanuts. A handy one-pager lists everything you’ll need for your plant-based pantry, but be mindful that you may not be able to find everything at one store. My Loblaws had most things (gluten-free all-purpose flour, organic cane sugar, vegan butter, etc.) but I had to go to three different health food stores before I could find sorghum flour and Sucanat. But once you’re well stocked, well a whole new world opens up: one with incredible-looking nanaimo bars, dulce de leche cupcakes and delectable doughnuts anyone can make at home. Some of the ingredients were new to me, yes, but the directions were easy to follow and the preparation straightforward. And if you want to try to adapt your own recipes, a guide to plant-iful ingredient substitutes suggests what to use to replace eggs, butter, lard, milk and cream and how and when.

The book’s savoury section includes recipes for drinks and smoothies; breakfast and brunch; lunch and dinner; soups and salads; and sauces and condiments. The original buddha rice bowl is one of the café’s most popular dishes and once you’ve had it, you’ll know why. Grilling some of the veggies and leaving some raw makes for a variety of flavours and textures, with the grilling also bringing out the natural sweetness in the peppers and sweet potatoes. So good, everybody! Filling too.

I’m not a fan of spicy dishes, but I thought my hubby would enjoy the cauliflower wings with sriracha sauce so I gave these a go. And loved them! They’ve got a sweet and spicy kick that’s neither too much of one or the other and (bonus!) we had all of the ingredients on hand. I’d also like to try the sweet potato and quinoa burgers, the creamy butternut squash soup and the best-ever Caesar salad. (Kelly and Erinn’s creations have won numerous awards, so there’s a good chance it really is the best ever.)

Made with Love is a wonderful new addition to my cookbook collection, one that has me turning more and more to plant-based baking and cooking not only because it’s good for the planet, but because it’s delicious.

Giveaway!

To enter to win one of five copies of Made with Love (thank you Penguin Random House Canada!), tell me which of the recipes mentioned in this post you’d make first.

For additional entries, feel free to tweet the following once per day, just leave the url for your tweet in the comments.

#Win 1 of 5 copies of Made with Love from @penguincanada and @trysmallthings CAN 5/2 http://wp.me/p4xBed-1rL #plantbased #glutenfree

And you’ll gain an extra entry just for following me on Facebook or Instagram. (Just let me know in the comments. Please tell me your FB name or Twitter handle.)

The giveaway is open to Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) 18+ and ends at midnight on May 2, 2016.

Update May 4, 2016: Congratulations to Kelly PC, Lynda C, Erin L, Jeannie L and Julie Anne D!

Penguin Random House Canada sent me a copy of Made with Love in exchange for a review. I love sharing my favourite books with you.