Baking Cookbooks from British Bake Off?

October 27, 2018 4:59 PM

My (10 year old) daughter has been binge watching Great British Bake Off over the past few months. While she's always enjoyed cooking, she's had a big uptick in baking interest, of course. She has a few baking cookbooks, but I thought that she would get a kick out of one that was written/compiled/curated by one of the contestants. I know a bunch of former contestants have published cookbooks, but are any of the books actually decent?

Can be any type of baking (bread, desserts, cakes, all of the above)
Can be any level of ability. I am around when daughter bakes, and she is pretty competent in the kitchen, and I don't mind multiple failures or mess. I just want a book with good recipes, and hopefully kind of fun.

(In terms of past contestants, her favorites was Ruby, from season....4? 5? I don't remember)

posted by gaspode to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Best answer: RUBY IS AMAZING. Her baking book is called Crumb. (Ruby Tandoh)

There are Bake-Off tie-in books as well, by the way, some of which have contestant recipes in them.
posted by lokta at 5:11 PM on October 27, 2018 [7 favorites]

Not a contestant, but I have Mary Berry's Baking Bible which has a few recipes which have been technical challenges.

(Just in case you're in the US, note that you'll probably want a kitchen scale if you don't have one, as a lot of the books may only have measurements by weight, and you'll need to convert oven temperatures. You may also want to look up some basic "Ingredient X in the UK is called Y in the US" lists.)
posted by damayanti at 5:56 PM on October 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just saw Nadiya's book in the library and it looked great! Can't say I've tried the recipes but can't imagine it's anything but fab.
posted by stillmoving at 10:12 PM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I assume you want a physical book, but just in case you're not aware or would like to make something specific there's also an official website (or two, I guess, pre- and post-split with the BBC) with all the recipes from the show.
posted by trig at 10:40 PM on October 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ruby's is great; second-hand I have heard people really get on with two of Nadiya's (Nadiya's Kitchen and the more recent 'Family Favourites') specifically in the context of cooking for/with children.
posted by AFII at 12:57 AM on October 28, 2018

Best answer: Nadiya's cookbooks cover general cooking as well as baking. But she has a series of books geared towards children with stories and baking recipes. There's a holiday one called "Nadiya's Bake Me A Festive Story" which the Madster might like.
posted by essexjan at 3:13 AM on October 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've never even watched Bake Off, but Ruby Tandoh's books (especially Flavour, but then I'm not much of a baker) are wonderful. Nadiya's books also rate very highly.
posted by threetwentytwo at 12:23 PM on October 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, all! I picked up Crumb, and one of Nadiya's and they look great!
posted by gaspode at 10:12 AM on November 28, 2018