200 CAKES & BAKES

It is a great cook book which simple and basic to understand. The photos are simple and overall, the book is good

Best gift for baking lovers

Amazing worthy

Of all the Hamlyn 200 series of recipe books, I thought this was the most impressive. It is packed full of tempting goodies, most of which you feel would be fun to try out. There are recipes for every occasion so that there are small individual cakes, large cutting cakes, and cake and bakes which will serve very well as desserts. A particularly nice aspect of this book is that for nearly every recipe there is a variation at the end of the page so that if one of these becomes a firm favourite, there is a suggestion for doing it a little differently. Experienced cooks would have the confidence to come up with their own variations, but for the less experienced these suggestions are invaluable. As is usual with this series there is a short introduction which in this case deals with the practicalities of baking, basic equipment, preparing cake tins and basic know how. The recipes are divided into seven sections - Little Cakes, Cookies, Traybakes, Centrepiece Cakes, Cut and Come Again Cakes, Pastries and No Bake Cakes. The format is that the recipe is on one page and a tempting picture of the finished product is on the facing page. I think my only minor criticism would be that the recipes do not come with a degree of difficulty indicated. Hence one could surmise that cornflake crunchies are probably fairly simple and something which you might do with a child, whilst chocolate and chestnut roulade may be rather more demanding and have more chance of success for the experience pastry chef. However, it would have been useful if the indicated degree of difficulty had been included. Overall an impressive and practical little volume which is likely to find a permanent home in the small collection of recipe books which are used over and over again as opposed to being consigned to the library shelf.

It has a varied cake recipes looking forward to when I can start to bake well worth the money i wasn't going to buy it but changed my mind so glad I did

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Yum, yum, yum, yum! What more can be said!!! From the first page to the last, this book is full of lovely yummy recipes for different cakes. Small cakes, tray bakes, Centre piece cakes, teatime loaves, cookies, meringue gateaux and plenty more. Every one as Yummy as the other!! Found out this also has recipes for Hot Cross Buns (needed one for Easter and found one on the internet as all my cook books were void of bun recipes) All are easy to follow with clear instructions to follow and a full page colour picture of every cake in the book and also some have alternative sugestions like adding coffee or Chocolate or fruits etc. Lovely little book with a stay flat binding and wipe clean cover, although I usually put mine in a book stand but after using it a few times it does loosen at the binding. Mine was stiff at first. These are a great series of books and would recommend them to any cook, amateur or professional. Oh and finally, if like me you have one or two of the 101 Good Food recipe books, they are different. I have the Cakes and Bakes from both series and they have very different recipes in them. Well worth it and at a great price too!

The pictures that accompany the recipes in this book really do make your mouth water. I've only tried a couple out so far but they have turned out nicely and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. None of the recipes seem to call for unusual ingredients which is always a bonus. The techniques used are familiar to the home baker and there is nothing overly complicated or off putting so there is no reason why you couldn't easily recreate the pictures. One word of warning a lot of the "loaf" recipes are for a 1lb loaf tin and I'm not a fan of scaling recipes up, especially if I've never made it before. So, the majority of what I want to make from this book is on the backburner whilst I wait for my loaf tins to be delivered. Great book for both experience and novice bakers.

Lovely little book and I do mean ‘little’!! But for the amount of recipes, the colour photos provided for each recipe, how can you complain? Plan on buying more to give to my daughter, when she moves into her first home with her fiancé. She does love to bake and I am confident that she’ll be very happy with the Hamlyn series. Why pay more for over complicated recipes, with barely any pictures? It’s nice to know what each recipe is SUPPOSED to look like. Highly recommend