The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

Another cheque arrived today for my birthday (oh I do love unimaginative relatives!), so I got to go to the bookshop again and I bought The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which I have wanted for absolutely ages! Probably not the best book to buy when I really should be dieting but there is method in my madness, as with my resolution to cook a little less simply (i.e. relying on stuff from the freezer and the corner shop half the time), I want to start baking more often, as I’m never going to conquer my sweet tooth, so instead I want to limit the shop bought stuff that is too instant and too eatable straight away and go for home made stuff that is cheaper and often more filling. I also need to bake more for Girl Lacer’s lunch box (who lives on Organix cereal bars at lunch time at the moment) and that will encourage me and steer me away from the overly chocolatey recipes, as that is frowned upon by the school.

Anyway The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook is full of delicious cupcakes, cakes, tray bakes, biscuits and pies,  it’s like a concentrated version of Nigella’s Domestic Goddess and almost as comprehensive. Although How to be a Domestic Goddess is considerably thicker, that can sometimes be off putting, as I have no idea what to cook first, whereas I dare anyone to think of a type of sweet baked good that isn’t in the Hummingbird Bakery book (oh heck I just thought of one, the book doesn’t have any baking with jam type recipes, like jammy dodgers or sponge cakes, but that’s all I can think of). Even if you fancy a recipe that isn’t quite in the book, say Apple and Raspberry pie, you could easily convert the apple pie recipe that is in there by bunging some raspberries in (although to be honest if you’re looking for the apple and raspberry pie recipe, go to Jamie Oliver). Anyway I will forgo my normal ‘recipes I particularly like the look of list’ as that would pretty much be the entire book bar the recipes which are overly nut heavy (I’m not a big fan of nuts in cooking). There are quite a lot of recipes with nuts in but most are just additions to the main ingredients, so can easily be left out. So, I will be using this book a lot. I particularly like that there are quite a few Bundt tin recipes, whilst still working my way through my delicious birthday cake which was in a Bundt tin, I’ve been pleased with how easy it is to cut and control portions, far easier than a normal cake, so I’m very pleased that I’ve now got a recipe book with even more Bundt tin recipes (lemon and poppy seed, blueberry, coffee and spiced pound). The blueberry recipe looks particularly tempting, as I love blueberry muffins but can easily demolish a whole tray, whereas with a bundt cake, I could eek it out once small slice at a time. Oh and they have blueberry pie to, yum!

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