Jacqui Small Soulful Baker: From highly creative fruit tarts and pies to chocolate, desserts and weekend brunch

I own a huge collection of baking and dessert recipe books and I can already tell that this one is going to be referred to a lot.! A really wide variety of beautiful cakes, pastries, breads and desserts. I highly recommend this title if you’re undecided. The first one I shall be making is the Vanilla Panacotta with crispy caramel (conveniently also chosen because our oven is currently broken) and no baking required for this irresistible looking item!!Stunning full colour photos which are really inspirational. I already own another title by this author ‘The Pastry School’ which is fabulous.I shall report back after I’ve tried at least a handful of makes from this super-looking book.

The book refers to the author's struggle to overcome her grief at the gradual loss of her mother to dementia........ by means of baking as a kind of therapy. I can relate to that too.The end result is a positive outcome for all of us and a fitting tribute to her mum.

O livro é ótimo e se você ama confeitaria como eu, não pense duas vezes em adquirí-lo. Além de lindo as receitas são precisas e super deliciosas.

So far we've made two tarts, each with sub recipes. The nectarine and peach tart, and the lemon tart.The peach tart was a beauty to make. Each component - the tart dough, the lemon curd, the creme patisserie were easy to make as written and worked beautifully. The tart dough is fabulous and would make great cookies to boot. The finished product was beautiful and very very tasty - 9/10.The lemon tart was much harder. The meringue flowers never came together, and take two hours to bake. The lemon curd leaked over the side of the tart shell that shrunk a little and overlfowed the pan, the flavor was good, but not quite as good as my favorite bakery (Ladybug Bakery in Calgary). It was just a more finicky recipe and much less forgiving for novices - 7/10. The raw flowers were bitter and should be removed for eating, which is not mentioned.I cannot wait to explore more recipes, and maybe delve into the easier cookies, crumpets, cakes, etc. Each recipe is unique and enticing, and the photography is astonishing. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and everything made so far has worked and been well tested. The lemon tart failure was mine, and my only wish is that there were more warnings of common pitfalls. Overall an excellent cookbook.

Very nice