I was given this book for Christmas by a friend who knows how much I like baking. I have to say I would never have bought this book, but I dutifully tried some of the recipes.

The book itself is beautiful, the photos are stunning and the layout is great.

I'll start with the cupcakes as they are first in the book. The recipes all seem to work well, but they do make much more cupcakes than they state. I would say the recipes are correct but when filling your cupcake papers just use your brain and only fill them 2/3 of the way up to allow for rising and just make more cupcakes....mmm yummy cupcakes. The vanilla ones are lovely but my two favourites the red velvet cupcakes and the chocolate cupackes that are made using a devil's food cake recipe. I also liked the spicy ginger cupcakes, but they might not be to everyones taste. There are 15 different cupcake recipes to try and I'm slowly working my way through them. I particularly like the frosting recipes at the beginning of this section as it is much lighter than butter cream icing and goes a lot further.

The next section in the book is the cake section, so far I have made the hummingbird cake, which is like a carrot cake but made with banana and pineapple and is to die for. I then made the carrot cake and that was even better. I then went all adventurous and combined the two and made a carrot and pineapple cake and even that was yummy. I've had a go at their Brooklyn Blackout Cake (a very rich chocolate cake) and that was good, but not as good as the other three. There are a few loaf cake recipes too and my fav is the nutty apple loaf, which never lasts very long in our house.

I haven't tried making many of the other recipes as i haven't had time, but there is a whole section on pies which I can't wait to try.

I have made the blondies which are in the next section, entitled brownies, and they went down a bit too well.

Just to round the book off is a section with muffin recipes and one with cookies, which again all look yummy.

In fact writing this review is making me really hungry. I couldn't recommend this book hghly enough, I love it and if you like making sweet treats give this bad boy a go!