Overview

Occasionally I have friends or acquaintances who ask me for pastry book recommendations. I cook for a living, but am also a home baker at heart. Even though I have many far more impressive looking books relating to pastry and baking, a particular one stands out amongst the rest. I turn to it when I want to whip up something comforting and it’s the book I’m confident will yield me a very pleasing result, even if it’s a previously unattempted recipe. It is also the one with batter-stained pages and the odd chocolate smudge – surely the good sign of a well loved book (or a careless cook). The book? Belinda Jeffery’s Mix & Bake.

Full review

If this seems like a surprising choice of cookbook to be so enthusiastic about, believe me, I’m just as astonished as you are about how much I have grown to love it. My first introduction to Belinda Jeffery was through her TV appearances presenting easy recipes for an Australian lifestyle program. I wasn’t a fan then, but somehow Mix & Bake really appealed to me from the moment I thumbed through the pages.

The book contains ten sections, including “chocolate cakes and brownies”, “cakes with lots of nuts” and “pies, tarts and savoury odds and ends”. There are also sections at the front covering ingredients, utensils and various tips. The pages are attractively decorated and there are many bright, enticing photos, though only about two thirds of recipes have a picture of the final product.

Mix & Bake is the perfect weekend baking book. All you need to do on a Saturday morning is flick through the chapters within the book to decide what you fancy eating: muffins, chocolate cakes, brownies (try the double chocolate pecan brownies; you won’t regret it), cakes with fruit (the sticky pineapple, carrot, ginger and macadamia cake? I still have dreams about it), biscuits (her recipe for Anzacs are a personal favourite of mine), quickbreads, slices, tarts or even a whole chapter devoted to scones, including lemonade scones and a prize-winning recipe by Tommy Brinkworth. Or eat with your eyes, and feast on the accompanying attractive photos that have not been overstyled or fussed with.

While this book is clearly aimed at the home baker, it does not pander to the apparent common opinion that recipes need to contain only four ingredients or less in order to appeal to the majority of cookbook buyers. The aforementioned sticky pineapple cake for example, lists 26 ingredients for three separate components.

One might complain that along with the occasional lengthy ingredient list, her recipes can also sometimes verge on the verbose, as though she is trying to cover all bases. Taking into account the audience she is probably writing for, I am willing to overlook it and attribute the verbosity to her chatty, breezy style, which makes this book such a pleasure.