Final Review, Joy The Baker Cook Book Spotlight...

"A celebration of butter and sugar" is how Joy describes her new book. I couldn't agree more, this book has one hundred recipes full of sticky, gooey, crusty and chewy. This is week four of my journey where I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the book called simply, Joy The Baker before it hit the shelves. My mission was to bake, photograph and tell all about certain recipes chosen by Heather from Girlichef. She's the Charlie in this operation and I'm an angel only in this show there's another twenty angels in the form of other bloggers who also had to make and bake the same recipes.


Our first week was full of amazing brownies smothered with a jacket of chocolate frosting, seriously if that brownie had a heart it must have felt so happy to have been dressed like that...for the record I think it did have a heart. Week one also had some neat little flaxseed crackers jumping for joy when they met up with some goat cheese. The pair hit it off from the start and the last I heard they were running towards the sunset.

Onto week two where chamomile cupcakes with a honey frosting had to be made, such a hard life but I struggled on and....ate a few. My other mission which I chose to accept was to make some whole wheat honey and goat cheese biscuits. These were hearty and heavy and would have kicked a Southern style biscuits butt into next week.

Week three, sweet week three. I was fortunate to score some giant baseball size Meyer lemons from a friend and lo and behold Joy has a recipe for Lavender Lemon Bars. I'm a huge fan of citrus desserts or the odd cocktail so as much as I wanted to throw the lemons towards making some Limoncello I stayed on course and headed for the lemon bar suite.

This book is hard to put down. When your in the middle of baking something, all you want to do is check what's on the next page. As well as the fantastic photographs which accompany every recipe, It's well laid out and pleasing to read. Joy gives some great baking tips at the beginning such as measuring properly, ingredients and substitutions and why some baking myths are in fact true. The recipes are easy to follow and I found that I already had most of the ingredients in my kitchen to begin with. I think everyone should have this book in their house, from the student to Grandma...there's a recipe for everyone. Thanks again to Heather for allowing me to be part of this awesome group.

Go buy the book and celebrate with some butter and sugar!


This post is part of the Joy the Baker Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off sponsored by Hyperion and hosted at girlichef