With a helpful coverage of the basic techniques, ingredients and equipment, this book is an essential for any baker, whether you're a beginner, or aspiring to be the next Mary Berry. Recipes throughout are accompanied by stunning photography and the food styling has been done to perfection. But the downside is that not every recipe has an image accompanying it - this is unnerving when you're making something for the first ever time - how do you know if it has turned out how it was supposed to?! The skills section come with some very informative step-by-step photographs though, which is a massive help.
As always, I couldn't possibly review a cookbook without having made something from it, and as a thank you to my colleagues after a work experience placement, I made the better-than-brownies cookies.
Ingredients:
100g dark chocolate (I used milk though because it's what I had to hand)
1 egg
75g light brown sugar
90g plain flour
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Method:
1) Preheat oven to 170. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
2) Melt the chocolate (broken into pieces) and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, stirring until melted.
3) Whilst the chocolate is cooling, whisk the egg and sugar in a bowl until a light colour and an air-filled consistency (about 5 minutes with an electric whisk).
4) Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
5) Fold in the melted chocolate and butter mix with the eggs and sugar mix. Once combined, fold in the flour, a bit at a time.
6) Once combined, Zanotti says that you can roll the sticky dough into walnut sized balls and place on a baking sheet. For ease and to save my hands getting too mucky, I used my tablespoon measure to make scoops. I guess my scoops were bigger than Zanotti's walnut sized balls because I made 9 cookies, not 12.
7) Bake for ten minutes until the surface is cracked. I found it actually took about 13 minutes.
8) Leave to cool for a couple of minutes. I had my cookie cool the next day, but wish I had snuffled a hot one with a scoop of ice cream as Zanotti suggests!
Were these cookies better than brownies? Well, no. But that was a bold claim to start off with. Were they bloody nice cookies? Yes, indeed they were. Chewy, moist, devilishly sweet - can't go wrong really. It was the perfect elevenses with a cup of tea. If I were to make these again, I would most definitely use dark chocolate because the milk was to sweet.
Would I recommend you buy this book? Absolutely. It is informative, has a delicious array of recipes and is easy to follow. Glossy photography (although not enough of it for my taste), beautiful presentation, this would make a perfect gift or pay day treat. And is, basically, everything you could ask for in a baking book.
Paris Pastry Club, Hardie Grant, £20