The Bake Sum Cookbook Arrives

Review by Kristina Sepetys

 

Joyce Tang makes pastries that shouldn’t make sense but somehow do.

It was at Berkeley’s Blue Willow Teaspot that I had my first taste of this pastry artisan’s vivid, surprising, Asian-inflected Bake Sum delights. It was a milk bun, a pastry with a history that winds back to China. The colors of Tang’s round, pastel-domed buns, which are riffs on the Mexican concha, signified the types of fillings, from strawberry-matcha cream to mashed red bean or ube pastry cream. Those milk buns were my gateway to Tang’s Okonomiyaki Danish, a savory square of crisp, layered puff pastry piled with shredded green cabbage and mushrooms, blanketed in cheese sauce, streaked with a sweet-salty tomato glaze, and showered with furikake and bonito flakes. The pastries were perfect company for a pot of aged pu-erh or roasted oolong. Honestly, perfect company for just about anything at all.

It’s not at all surprising that Tang’s colorful baked goods exploded in popularity when she started offering them at Bake Sum, a bakery that sits under a green awning on Grand Avenue in Oakland, and more recently expanded with a storefront at the Alameda Marketplace.

Now, Tang has a cookbook, just published with Soleil Ho. Bake Sum: Asian American Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats from the Beloved Bakery is a collection of 75 recipes and drinks, along with the story of Tang’s personal journey. It includes a childhood in the East Bay, a job at Facebook, then culinary school, and finally the pursuit of her baking dream of “a 365-day-a-year tribute to Asian Americana,” as she says in the Introduction.

Pursuing that dream has been helped by one of Tang’s many talents: the art of the mash-up. She brings her formal culinary training to traditional Asian forms like mochi and mooncakes as well as to flavors like yuzu, black sesame, ube, pandan, and hojicha, then recombines it all into something that’s entirely, uniquely her own. Hence the Bibimbap Danish (topped with the side dishes that typically accompany a Korean meal), the Croissubi (a Spam-musubi-croissant and one of the bakery’s signature items), Congee Pot Pies, Black Sesame Snickerdoodles, a Five-Spice Chocolate Cake, and much more.

If you’re excited about trying the recipes, don’t be scared off by what might sound complicated. The cookbook opens with an extensive section demystifying the special equipment and Asian ingredients the confections call for. From there, it offers something for cooks of all levels, beginning with a simple Matcha Strawberry-Ginger Latte layered in green, white, and red made from strawberry-ginger puree, matcha, and milk, to the extraordinary sugar-sparkling purple ube Halo-Halo Croissant, filled with coconut jelly, red beans, and jackfruit and topped with a piping of meringue and a square of leche flan. (No surprise that one has a cult following.)

The handsome peachy pink hardback volume reads as good as it looks. Recipes are grouped from the everyday to the ambitious. Close-up photography captures the detail in each finished pastry, while step-by-step process shots walk readers through the trickier builds. There are helpful notes explaining the harder-to-find Asian ingredients and equipment.

Bake Sum is a cookbook for the ambitious home baker curious about ube, pandan, and black sesame and what pastry dough can be coaxed to do. But it’s also for the cook new to the kitchen, who might start with a Matcha Strawberry-Ginger Latte and never guess they’re being led, recipe by recipe, toward laminating their own crispy, thin-layered pastries. Which is how, some ordinary weekday, you could find yourself pulling a warm, sugary Halo-Halo Croissant from the oven. Imagine that.

Bake Sum: Asian American Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats from the Beloved Bakery
By Joyce Tang with Soleil Ho (Hardie Grant, September 2026)

 

 

Heather Ho’s Almond Cake

Excerpted with permission from Bake Sum: Asian American Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats by Joyce Tang and Soleil Ho published by ‎Hardie Grant North America, September 1, 2026, RRP $35.00. Hardcover. PURCHASE LINK

Makes 12 Small Cakes or 16 Cupcakes

I first learned about Heather Ho while I was taking classes at the San Francisco Cooking School. As an Asian American woman and wannabe pastry chef hoping to enter a field where very few people looked like me, I was captivated by Ho’s story. When she was just thirty-two, she was already an incredibly talented pastry chef and trailblazer who had worked at restaurants like Jean-Georges and San Francisco’s Boulevard. In 2001, she was working at New York City’s Windows on the World, a restaurant located at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. During the September 11 attacks, she, along with seventy-one of her colleagues, tragically perished. Years later, Ho’s recipe for almond cake was gifted to me by chef Nicole Plue, my cooking school instructor. This recipe is a standout for its rich and pound cakey texture and really highlights the beautiful almonds we have available to us in California. I come back to this recipe often, and I get a lot of satisfaction knowing that Heather Ho’s cooking is now a regular staple at my bakery—one that even all our Asian grandmas and grandpas can agree is a winner.

• Cooking spray or softened butter, for the pans
• 1 tablespoon demerara sugar
• 1 tablespoon cacao nibs
• ¾ cup / 170 g almond paste (see Note), at room temperature
• ¾ cup / 170 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup / 200 g granulated sugar
• 5 eggs, at room temperature
• ¾ cup plus 4 teaspoons / 100 g all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of kosher salt
• ½ cup / 35 g sliced almonds
• Powdered sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 325°F / 160°C. Grease a 12-cavity silicone mini loaf mold (Silikomart’s version is great) or 16 cups of two standard muffin tins with cooking spray or butter. Sprinkle a layer of demerara sugar and cacao nibs in the bottom.

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the almond paste on low to medium speed until it softens. If the paste is hard or cold, mix on low. Add the butter and beat together until combined, pausing to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl periodically to make sure there are no butter or almond paste chunks. Gradually mix in the granulated sugar until well incorporated (see Creaming Butter and Sugar for Cookies, page 56). Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Finally, mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt until just combined.

To get the ideal portion size of batter for each cake when using loaf molds or a cupcake tin, use a nonstick sprayed ½-cup / 120 ml measure. Sprinkle the top of the batter with the sliced almonds.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when you gently press the surface, about 25 minutes for both loaves and cupcakes. (Rotate the pan after the first 15 minutes.) If you feel any squishy bubbles, add another 3 to 5 minutes to the bake.

Unmold the cakes by inverting the pan with a sheet pan on top while still warm to avoid sticking. When they cool, dust with the powdered sugar. Store wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 3 days.

NOTE: For the almond paste, I like Mandelin brand.