Four Stars

Best for:
Fans of the original recipe Great British Bake-Off (I’m in the UK so I get to say that!); people looking for some fun recipes.

In a nutshell:
Original Great British Bake-Off Judge Mary Berry shares a bunch of recipes.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
Christmas gift!

Review:
I found the early seasons of GBBO, where Mel and Sue would interject historical interludes and interviews explaining the different items the contestants were baking, to be a huge help in understanding food culture in the UK when we moved here.

I appreciate the beginning of this book, where she has a lot of conversions (especially for temperature, because I still can’t convert C to Gas Mark to F) as well as some tips for additional baking supplies. I used to bake a lot but we gave away all of my baking stuff (except the measuring cups) when we moved, and I’m slowly re-building my tools.

The recipes aren’t too complex, and so many of them look utterly delicious. I went out and got some self-rising flour as many of her recipes include this (as opposed to plain flour). I was able to skip over all the ones with raisins / other dried fruit because nope. Instead, I went through and marked with a post-it every recipe I want to try, and there are SO MANY. Easily 70% of the content.

Today I made her banana loaf recipe, because I’ve got some very ripe bananas and I have a family recipe for banana bread that I’ve made every couple of months for the past year. It’s the one my mom made, so having something to compare the Mary Berry recipe to seemed appropriate. I’ve shared a photo – that dark color is from my horrible oven (I loath gas ovens – I miss my fan assisted one SO MUCH). The loaf itself took a bit longer to bake (again, my oven I’m sure) and is definitely much more moist than my mother’s recipe. My partner said it also tasted a bit more savory, but I think it has more sugar than my mom’s recipe. But it does have one fewer banana, so maybe that’s it. It was an easy recipe though and I could see myself making it again, especially if I only have two ripe bananas available.

The only reason this is a four-star read is because there isn’t a photo for every recipe. For me, that’s a requirement for a 5-star recipe book rating. I want to know exactly what the end result should be, and I need photos for that.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it.