Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Review : Make, Bake, Love by Lilly Higgins

This book is full of warm happy thoughts and even glancing at the cover brings a smile to my face.

Let me explain, Lilly Higgins is a Ballymaloe-trained chef and a brilliant food blogger - which is where I came upon her fabulous recipes.  She teaches, styles food and is also a star of Fancy Vittles on the tellybox along with her unknown sister, struggling comedian Maeve (sorry Maeve, only joking!).  She's also baking her own little bun in the oven and when she gets a spare moment, runs Supper Clubs feeding hordes of appreciative hungry folk.  I need a little sit down just thinking about all of that.




Lilly's a natural-born baker and her book Make, Bake, Love is not only full of lovely food, it's pretty and vintage in look with dainty patterns and illustrations.  Her recipes are simple. straightforward and very very achievable.  How they look in the photo is how they're going to look when you make them - trust me.   Lilly also gives some great basic essential recipes for Vanilla Essence (as if I'd ever have any spare vodka, rum or brandy...), Coloured Sugar and three different buttercreams that are perfectly sweet without making your teeth ache.

Fig Cake (image courtesy of Amazon)

It's not all about cake and sweet stuff though, there's a chapter on Bread to please the most ardent carb-lover and one on Thrift for the canny recessionistas.  I've been lucky enough to taste some of Lilly's baking first hand and I can assure you that you're in for a treat if you make any of her recipes.

Buy it for yourself, buy it for somebody you love, just buy it.

Make, Bake, Love is published by Gill & MacMillan and is available from all good bookshops and on Amazon

7 comments:

  1. My copy is on its way and I can't wait to have a good nose at it!

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  2. I love my copy of the book. Recipes are great, and easy to make. My favourites so far are the Peanut Butter Cookies, and the White Yeast Bread, which I can't stop making.

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  3. That's it! I'm just going to have to get this now! I was hoping I could wait until Christmas...

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  4. I'm sold. Will buy tonight. Great review thanks

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  5. Definitely a book that will make you smile. Have some half-baked notion of attempting the swan meringue sometime and visions of crumbled sugary chaos all over my kitchen!

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  6. Brilliant book. My sister gave me a copy of it last weekend but haven't had a chance to bake anything from it yet. Have my eye on the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

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  7. I really want a copy of this, it looks so pretty!

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