A lot of good recipes and he has the regular measures to make it easier on those of use who don't use grams! ( )

I wasted no time in experimenting with this cookbook!

Paul Hollywood's Bake, My best ever recipes for the classics, arrived today, and the cherry cake above is already out of the oven and cooling down for a sweet something after dinner. It's the easiest cake I've ever made: you bung all the ingredients except the cherries and the almonds into the Kenwood, and when you've blitzed the batter you fold in three quarters of the cherries, and then you press the rest of them and the almonds into the top of the batter.

(The eagle-eyed reader will notice that the pantry held only slivered almonds instead of whole blanched almonds and a mixture of red and green glace cherries, but necessity is the mother of invention as they say.)

As you'd expect from Paul Hollywood, judge of The Great British Baking Show, there is a bit of yada-yada at the beginning, but the main message is that it's easy, you can do it yourself, and people will love you for it .

Next time you go round to someone's house, bake a cake or a loaf of bread and take it with you instead of a bottle of wine or some chocolates. There's nothing like making something yourself. The processes involved, the fact that you can share the experience with your kids and family, it creates those all-important precious, lasting memories. (p.11)

It's true, isn't it? There's just something about baking... I love it when my best friend comes for dinner bearing a tarte tatin. Her husband loves it when I bring a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast when we go on shared holidays. The Offspring loves my apple tart, which just like my mother's version, is packed with fruit and not too sweet. And The Spouse's favourite is my orange and almond cake... but it could be that there are some challengers in this cookbook...

Chapter 1: Cakes

• Chocolate Orange Banana Bread. I have four bananas, they just need to a bit squishier and then I'm trying the recipe.


• Victoria Sandwich: interesting to see that he uses half butter/half margarine. I have some lovely posh jams for the filling... see the photo here


• Sticky Ginger Loaf: golden syrup and black treacle! And cloves!!


• Cherry Cake: I chose this one to do first because we had all the ingredients in the pantry, more or less.


• Chocolate Hazelnut Torte : this one is a definite for a dinner party, it looks impressive but is really easy.


• Carrot cake: I will need to master the art of piping cream to make it look the way it is in the photo, but the actual cake is simple. It uses wholemeal flour so we can pretend that it's healthy.


• Lemon Drizzle Cake... yes, when our lemon tree stops sulking and produces some fruit. (Ok, maybe I did prune it too hard, but still...)


• Chocolate Fudge Cake: three layers of total decadence, see the photo and recipe here


• New York Chocolate Brownie Cheesecake... to die for.


• Fruits of the Forest Cheesecake: the most demanding of the recipes, and I'm not quite sure what he means by frozen 'forest fruits'. Berries??

Plus there are recipes for Blueberry Muffins, Chocolate Brownies, and Blondies.

(You will have noticed that there are four cake recipes with chocolate.)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/25/bake-by-paul-hollywood/ ( )

I suppose that it is best to begin with a confession: my wife and I are huge, long-time fans of The Great British Baking Show and Paul Hollywood is a big reason for that. As the judge that all the contestants fear the most—and are most eager to win the approval of with a coveted “Hollywood Handshake”—he shows himself time and again to be knowledgeable about all things related to baking as well as a master of execution in the culinary arts. So, when it comes to evaluating a cookbook that promises to include Hollywood’s favorite, time-tested recipes for a wide variety of classic bakes, I am more than a little biased before I even begin.

That acknowledged, BAKE is a remarkable collection of outstanding and tantalizing recipes. The thing about the book that is most impressive is the diversity of its coverage. Unlike the bread-centric focus of some of the author’s previous cookbooks—baking bread is his passion, after all—this is a far more balanced selection, including dishes from a broad set of sweet and savory categories that cover just about anything a home baker might want to cook, including Cakes, Cookies and Scones, Breads and Flatbreads, Pizza and Doughnuts, Pastry and Pies, and Desserts. All of the recipes are easy to follow and I really appreciate that the weights and measures were tailored to the U.S. audience. Also, at the head of each category, as well as before each recipe, the author offers lovely personal observations that are both insightful and frequently charming.

For what it is worth, we baked three of the recipes from different categories: Peanut Butter Cookies, White Sandwich Bread, and Yule Log. So, in addition to reading all these great preparations and imagining how wonderful they might be on the plate, we have first-hand experience with how a few of them actually turned out. They were all fun and satisfying to bake and ended up being delicious. However, our bakes were not uniformly successful—without the right pan for the Yule Log we over-cooked the sponge, which ended up being more of a Yule Parfait, but it was still quite tasty. Also, the bread came out great and exactly as described, but was very time-consuming given the required dough-rising and proving. Overall, BAKE is a cookbook that should be an essential resource for any home baker and it is one that we will enjoy using for many years to come. ( )

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I think most fans of the GBBO are familiar with Paul Hollywood. He's the tougher judge, but his recipes always look amazing.

In Bake, the recipes all look great! The pictures (There is a picture for EVERY recipe and even some that have step-by-step pictures accompanying it) are beautiful and really sell the food more. I love that each recipe is very well written and easily instructed, plus it has cups and weights for those who use a scale.

So many different categories here, too. Cakes, cookies, breads, pizza, doughnuts, pastry, pies, and other desserts. I can't wait to make the Chocolate Fudge Cake, the chocolate brownies, Paul's biscotti recipe, and my own pizza dough. ( )