Favourite Recipe Books

A few favourite recipe books (all available on Amazon)  that I go back to time and time again are:

Nigella Lawson - How To Be  A Domestic Goddess (great for all kinds of cakes, biscuits & general baking.   Her very simple but effective Madeira cake in particular is a favourite of my In-Laws and the quadruple chocolate cake always goes down well in my house, but the favourite recipe of her's must be the Snickerdoodles which my niece calls 'little pieces of cakey-loveliness').

Lorraine Pascale - Baking Made Easy (My husband bought me her book for Valentines Day after I had watched her show recently on tv and loved her recipes.  Her, "I Cant Believe You Made It" cake is lovely and I now use her chocolate cake recipe as the base for all my covered cakes if I want a chocolate sponge.  She does very good bread recipes as well which are simple to follow).

Tarek Malouf - Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (THE most delicious cupcakes!  Fail-proof recipes everytime.  The classic Red Velvet are lovely, just a hint of chocolate and that deep red sponge...yum!! The white chocolate & macadamia nut biscuits are a particular favourite of my Other Half)

Angie Dudley - Cake Pops (Bakerella) (My friend Joanne rang me one day and suggested that I have a go at making these.  The book is American and uses Candy Melts to coat the cake which comes in a variety of different colours.  At first I found it difficult to get hold of the candy melt but Hobbycraft have now started stocking it.  It just gives a wider choice of colour rather than using melted white chocolate and then adding food colouring to it.  Good for Kids parties).

Frances McNaughton - Sugar Fairies (A great little stocking filler present from my Other Half at Christmas last year.  These lovely fairies are very simple to make and the book gives step by step instructions along with pictures of how to construct the fairies which is just a bit of sugarpaste and candy sticks (which used to be the candy cigarettes before even sweets went PC!)  I based my christening baby fairy asleep on a cloud from one of these fairies).

Australian Women's Weekly - Kids Birthday Cakes (This booked is great for birthday cakes.  It uses frosting as the covering for most of the cakes but you could convert to using sugarpaste instead, it just gives some great visual ideas that you can adapt into your own design).

Debbie Brown - 50 Easy Party Cakes, Gorgeous & Gruesome Cakes for Children, Enchanted Cakes for Children (Thomas' Dinosaur cake came from the Gorgeous & Gruesome cake book  and I am planning to do some Ugly Bug cakes for another birthday in April.  The Enchanted Cakes book was bought for me by Lauren & Ben whose birthday cakes I have done in the past, they saw it and thought of me!  Lauren had already gone through the book and picked her favourite for her birthday this year....might need a little practice though as these designs really are something else!)