This Cookbook Delivers Nothing Less Than Total Baking Confidence

The book: What To Bake & How To Bake It by Jane Hornby

The angle: A beautiful, visual, step-by-step guide to baking anything you want.

Recipes for right now: Iced Gingerbread Cookies, Rocky Road, Classic Crusty Bread, Cherry-Almond Streusel Slice, Fudgy Cheesecake Brownies, Easy Baked Doughnuts, Coconut Layer Cake, Cranberry Stollen, Chocolate Profiteroles

Who would enjoy this book? Visual learners, new bakers, and cake-lovers.

• Who wrote it: Jane Hornby

• Who published it: Phaidon

• Number of recipes: 50

• Other highlights: I wish I’d had this cookbook eight years ago when I first started baking (and first experienced the disappointment of my baking failures). Jane Hornby walks you through everything! There’s what the ingredients look like when prepped and what they look like when just mixed, then what they look like in the pan and after baking. It’s all here in beautiful, visual detail. The accompanying text provides enough instruction to get the job done but not so much that you feel overwhelmed with gritty details — it finds a happy middle.

The recipes themselves are fairly basic, for the most part, but they teach the fundamental skills and base recipes that can be used for inventive, creative spins once you gain some experience. (More experienced bakers will love the artistic recipe presentation and the photography, but will probably find fewer new techniques or recipes.)

Find the book at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon: What To Bake & How To Bake It by Jane Hornby

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.