Book: Let's Bake! Author: Cathryn Dresser
Pages: 224
Received for honest review via Orion Children's Books
Amazon * Book Depository * Goodreads
Rating: ✪✪✪
*Note: Children's Cook Book*
My review:
Let's Bake! by Cathryn Dresser is a wonderfully laid out baking book for adults to bake alongside children.
I loved the "tricky bits" tips at the beginning of the book i.e. rubbing butter into flour, separating eggs etc. This is great for kids to show them, all the essential tips they will need for baking. I also loved Kathryn's "recipe for baking success" it was so cute!
The book is spilt into the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter and gives you yummy recipes to bake each season. There are also some more yummy treats at the back of the book that can be made all year round including Jam and ice cream. I loved the pastel colours used in the book and the little black and white drawings on some of the pages of ingredients that goes with that recipe, it just adds to the appeal of the book and will be attractive to young kids.
The recipes are set out with simple instructions and step to step pictures which was great. I decided to try something from the book and it didn't turn out too well for me!
My attempt at easy to make jam & Queen of heart tarts!
I am not a baker, I don't tend to cook much let alone bake but I thought if I was going to review the book I needed to try something from it. I decided on baking some Queen of heart tarts and also to make my own jam.
The Jam bit was easy enough apart from the fact I couldn't get the blender to work to start of with, then when that was resolved after a call to my mum's partner who is an excellent cook & baker I thought everything was going fine until I burnt the bottom of the saucepan cooking the jam.
The jam did turn out OK in the end which I was happy about apart from a little bitterness.
I then moved onto the Queen of heart tarts needless to say I again had some problems. Rubbing the butter and flour together was OK as I had the tips on how to do it correctly the issue came when the dough was ready to be rolled and cut. I didn't have the right cutter as the one I had was too small so I decided to use the circumstance of a glass which wasn't a good idea. The dough ended up too thick and not the right size. The recipe said 10-12 mins if I had managed to get the dough right. However mine were in for 30 mins and the dough was still raw and my jam was burnt.
So in the end my baking experience wasn't too good, however even though the tarts didn't turn out right I had fun doing it and that is the whole point of baking to have fun either on your own or with others and have disasters as in the end you can always try again.
*Note: My terrible results of baking isn't because of the book it is just the fact I am a terrible baker :) *
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