Review: The Ladies Book of Baking (Parragon)

I've had this cook book a couple of months now and I wanted to try out a few recipes before I posted about it. I now feel I'm at a point where I can say to you, yes it is a good book, go out and buy it. When I came home with it in June my twin girls took one look and decided it was a perfect book for them - they are little ladies after all!

The book has a number of sections - afternoon tea, family bakes, beautiful biscuits, perfect pastries and pies and special moments. There are lots of little extras like tips about how to display your bakes, labels you can photocopy and use for gifts and how to make the perfect cup of tea. In total there are 51 recipes including classics like carrot cake, coffee cake and madelines but there are also some really interesting new bakes like Christmas macaroons.

I found the recipe for brownies to be fabulous, these were a massive hit with my family.

The first recipe we tried out was the classic vanilla frosted cupcakes, I can say that the recipe is sound, the cakes come out well. It is clear and easy to follow with a comprehensive ingredients list and numbered method. I like the fact it tells you how many the recipe will serve and both preparation and cook time. This was you can make an educated decision if you have the time to tackle that recipe. Here are my little ladies making a batch each.

They had fun cooking but to be honest this is the best bit for them with any baking -

The Ladies Book of Baking is published by Parragon books and you can find it on Amazon for just £7.69 including postage, that is a great deal.

Review: Clifford James Large Halogen Oven (10 Litre)

I received this Halogen Oven last week and I was at a bit of a loss as to what to cook in it first, so I thought I would start simple and cook some oven chips.  Nice and easy but the kind of thing you can not cook in a microwave. Well, this Halogen oven cooks them quickly, crisply and it browns them too. How fab!  So being impressed with the simple I moved on to cook our Sunday lamb roast in the oven and that too was super, the fat dripped away and the meat cooked evenly all over thanks to the halogen lamp and fan assisted cooking.

At 10 litres the oven is a good size, you can use it for mostly anything - roasting, baking cakes, heating up ready meals, defrosting, steaming fish, grilling sausages, cooking a pizza.  The list is endless and quite unbelievable until you start to try it and realise it really does work!  You do need to make sure you have the worktop space available for it though, that was something I had not considered before!

Features I particularly liked -

• Clear glass bowl so that you can see the food all round and do not have to open the oven and ruin your yorkshires in the process!
• There is a high and low rack, so you can cook both meat and roast potatoes at the same time or even a pizza and oven chips at the same time.
• The fat drains away from the food, making this a healthy cooker.
• The time for cooking most foods is less than using a conventional oven.
• The food stays very moist and juicy when cooked in this oven.
• The bowl has a self cleaning feature.  You put some washing liquid and water in and turn it onto the wash setting.  However if, like me you are a bit of a clean freak the large glass bowl is dishwashable too.
• 3 minute warm up time for the oven, no more frustrating waits for me!

So, all in all I was very happy with this oven and would recommend it to others.  I believe it would be a fantastic buy for someone living alone or in a small space and to have it instead of a massive traditional cooker - it can do all the jobs.

The oven costs £39.99 from Clifford James and that is a saving of £20.00 on the RRP.  You can also buy accessories to go with this cooker, such as a halogen cook book and lid extender to allow extra cooking room. Why don't you head over to the Clifford James site as they have a great short clip showing the oven in use, this will give you a much better idea of it's capability.

This is a review post, I received the oven free of charge to use and review honestly.  The words here are my own and I was not told what to write.  These are my own honest opinions.