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  • Published: 2 April 2019
  • ISBN: 9780143773528
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

The Baker's Companion



Everything you need to know about baking, from the iconic Allyson Gofton.

A truly beautiful baking book, chock full of recipes and the accumulated know-how of Allyson Gofton. This is a book to be kept and treasured. There are more than 100 recipes for cakes, biscuits, pies, tarts, slices and brownies, quick bakes, puddings, pavlovas and meringues, bread and yeast baking, with how-tos and hints and tips throughout.

Want to know why your cakes are always too heavy? Why the bottom burns? Can you just melt the butter to save time when creaming it with sugar? When it all goes wrong, what can you do? What can you bake for a friend who can't eat gluten? Find the answers to all this and more in this book.

  • Published: 2 April 2019
  • ISBN: 9780143773528
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Allyson Gofton

Allyson Gofton has been cooking for New Zealanders for nearly 30 years. She is known for her recipes and columns in magazines, her television appearances, radio slots and many personal appearances in the name of charity. She has also written more than 20 cookbooks, including her best-selling series of books Bake, Cook and Slow, as well as the popular Country Calendar Cookbook with Allyson Gofton and Country Calendar Homestead Baking. Her most recent title was Slow Cooked in 2017 and she has a forthcoming title which contains her vast accumulated knowledge on all things baking, coming in 2019.

Also by Allyson Gofton

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Praise for The Baker's Companion

Butter, sugar, eggs and flour. How hard can it be? Baking - as anyone who has ever attempted to make a cake after work but before falling asleep in front of the late news knows - is fraught. Enter Allyson Gofton, your knightess in a shining apron. Her newest book contains more than 100 recipes for biscuits and pies, brownies and bread and anything, actually, that requires a spatula. Don't have a spatula? This may be the first baking bible ever to condone using a clean hand in emergencies (ditto a glazing brush simply dip your three middle fingers and dab gently). Experts can skip straight to the recipes but if you're still figuring your jaggery from your demerara and your buckwheat from your sorghum, then spend some time on the technical section, which also includes a list of ideas for what to do with baking that hasn't quite worked. Recipes range from my worst nightmare - a Dutch spice cake which must be cooked under the grill layer by layer - to the "pineapple hog", a no cook, chocolate-packed and pineapple-lump-studded slice you could practically make in a late news ad break.

Kim Knight, NZ Weekend Herald

Baking, as culinary queen Allyson Gofton points out, is more akin to chemistry than any other area of cooking. We rarely learn the skills from our grandmas and mums, as we once did. Through this book Allyson is our friendly guiding voice at the kitchen bench. Especially handy the Problem Solver section, with substitutes for missing ingredients and equipment, and 'don't panic' tips for when things go awry. The recipes are what we've come to expect from 'Food in a Minute' favourite Allyson. French Yoghurt Pot Pear Cake, Carrot and Pistachio Nut Cake, Persian Rosewater Cookies. There's really no excuse for not filling those tins.

Maria Hoyle, Dish

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Family self-saucing chocolate pudding

The perfect pudding, à la Allyson Gofton. Lashings of cream or ice-cream to accompany this hearty family favourite will add to this dessert’s enjoyment!