You’re Welcome!: A Baking Celebration with a Southeast Asian Twist (Raymond Tan & Audrey Payne, Murdoch)

Raymond Tan and Audrey Payne’s You’re Welcome!: A Baking Celebration with a Southeast Asian Twist is a joyful, generous cookbook – one to pore over, plan from and build celebrations around. Tan’s journey into baking began with homesickness. After moving from Malaysia to Melbourne for university, he found himself craving the flavours he grew up with. His book is organised around occasions as much as recipes, moving through celebrations including Chinese New Year, Qingming Festival, birthdays, weddings and more, with Tan including suggested menus for each. Matcha lovers are well catered for, with a dedicated section that includes a playful take on tiramisu – the Matcha Limoncello-misu. The layer-cake chapter is a standout, opening with a nostalgic Ribena cake and building to more elaborate creations, including a wedding cake with champagne jelly and white chocolate buttercream. The mooncake section is particularly generous, offering enough variety to inspire a full Mid-Autumn Festival spread, while kueh recipes made with tapioca and rice flour are sure to appeal to those who enjoy Japanese mochi. Elsewhere, inventive crossovers – such as Milo Dinosaur hot cross buns – capture the book’s spirit of experimentation and fun. Recipes span cookies, jellies and puddings, cakes, breads, savoury bites, drinks and condiments, giving the book depth and versatility. Visually, the colour palette and photography styling nod to a retro, almost 1980s Women’s Weekly-cookbook-style aesthetic, while design elements bring in a playful Y2K sensibility. For readers seeking a cookbook that is as much about celebration as it is about baking, You’re Welcome! delivers – inviting you not just to cook, but to gather, share and enjoy.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Jess Lomas is the reviews editor at Books+Publishing. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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