Too many books never spoil the bake

I like books, anyone that knows me knows that I like to read. My kindle is full of books, mainly crime thrillers, and I have been known to get slightly obsessed by what I am reading and lose days in a book. I enjoy getting to know characters and their lives, which given the genre I enjoy generally includes their grisly deaths as well. As long as the dreams don’t come back I am fine with this.

My love of books extends to the kitchen and my love of baking (and lets be realistic here, food in general). While I can hide books from The Husband on my kindle, its a bit harder to do this with my recipe books. While The Husband owns a few recipe books it’s really all about my baking books and they just kinda overtake the shelves, the kitchen and probably our cute flat in E17.

Time for a bit of FAQ about this small collection I have.

How many do I own?
Just a few *cough cough* – 24. I am not entirely sure how this has happened, I am going to say magic or elves. When discussing this with The Husband he assumed this was all the recipes books but nope, this is only baking related books. I may be in a wee bit of trouble.

What do I love about them?
There is nothing better than flicking through the books and seeing what one day, when I am better at this baking lark, I could make. It’s not just looking at the pictures honest! The cakes look perfect and gives you that wee bit of hope that by following the instructions to the letter (something I struggle with) will result in that perfect cake at home for you to share with your friends (or eat in one sitting and deny any knowledge of baking said cake).

So, I must have favourite recipes from all of them right?
Nope. I am a creature of habit that doesn’t like trying new things. I probably use about 3 recipes from the books and just bake the same cake (lemon layer cake) repeatedly, for every occasion, whether other people like it or not! Who doesn’t like a nice lemon layer cake?

So, you’ve already seen a picture of my books, well the majority of them anyway. I had my birthday after I took this picture so there have been a couple of additions since, much to The Husbands horror.

What’s next? 

I could continue along the same baking path of using just 2 or 3 of the books and not expand my little bit of knowledge or set myself a challenge. With the help of my better half (don’t tell him I said that), I am going to be actually breaking the spine on some of those books and stretching my baking skills to the limit.

The Challenge!

Let The Husband pick a different recipe from each of the books which I then have to bake and blog about. His tastes tend to sway towards the savoury end of things while I like things a bit sweeter so this means that I will bake things that are out of my comfort zone.

First up

Karet – from The Sweet Little Book of Cupcakes. Read all about this next time (which will hopefully not be in a millions years).

Till next time, buy the cake / make the cake – but make sure you eat it all.