Baking with Mary Berry: Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and Pastries from the British Queen of Baking

I was excited to try out the recipes in this book, and spent a fair while looking over all the lovely treats to try to decide what to make. I settled on making shortbread. I consider myself usually fairly proficient at following recipes, but this one did not turn out at all as expected. My husband enjoyed the finished shortbread, but I am from England and know what shortbread is supposed to taste like. This recipe did not produce the expected results. Curious as to how the recipe could have come out so unlike the expected results, I looked up similar recipes online and discovered that the recipe included in this book was quite different to many traditional recipes available online for shortbread. Even the UK version of this very same recipe was different! This American-ized version called for far too much butter, too long cooking time, and overly simplified ingredients. I hoped it was just this recipe, but I researched into several other recipes and found the same problem. Did not bother to try cooking anything else. Very huge disappointment and I am quite saddened that Mary Berry was willing to allow her name to be associated with this book.

What a disappointment! After watching Mary Berry and the Great British Bake Off, I ordered Baking with Mary Berry in the expectation that not only would I get good recipes but also tips on technique. Unfortunately, this book does not deliver. Not at all! Aside from the five pages of “Techniques”, which include basic recipes for choux and crème patisserie, it includes how to test a cake, put a pie crust in a plate, and shape some pastries. The recipes are quite ordinary: gingerbread, tarte tatin, shortbread—nothing any other good recipe book doesn't already have. But the clincher is every recipe calls for self rising flour. Self-rising flour is more expensive and for people who don't know how to measure baking powder and/or soda. If somewhere in the book it had the equivalent in order to do it yourself, it would be great but I couldn't find it. Clearly, this book is for beginners, not someone who knows their way around the kitchen. My advice: save your money and get something worthwhile. This is not it!

I have the Kindle version of this book and find the formatting is great. I love this show, and I really like this book. The pictures are great, and the recipes are much easier than I thought they'd be. The pictures are full color and step by step. There's lots of tips too, like tips for making and working with pastry, and meringue. I have enjoyed learning how to make little shapes, like pinwheels. The recipes are in standard US measurements, and are by cup size, so they are very accessible. The ingredients and cookware needed, or things like baking papers- they are all easy to find locally for me, and I live in a small city with little food culture outside a lot of fast food restaurants. I love the recipe for White chocolate and strawberry muffins & lemon meringue pie. There's a lot of these recipes that I've not tried, but only for lack of time. About all of them look good, and are pretty easy for about anyone. Intermediate will certainly have no problems with ANY of these recipes. This is one of my favorite dessert baking cookbooks.

Great book for beginner bakers. The first chapter includes basic techniques that are used throughout. They are well illustrated. The remaining chapters include recipes for breakfast items, cakes, pastries, cookies, bars, pies, and many others. Recipes are simple and easy to follow. The ebook has photos of several items.

I love Mary Berry on the baking shows and really looked long and hard at her cookbooks before choosing this one. I went out and bought self-rising flour because most of her recipes use it and was really looking forward to start through the book. I chose the first recipe - Flap Jacks - which aren't in any way pancakes, which you can tell by the photo by the way, and was rather disappointed. They were hard and unpleasantly crunchy and basically oatmeal bars with not much flavor. Ate a few and threw the rest away. Next up were the Chocolate Cupcakes. I went exactly by the recipe and cooking times (checking at the minimum time) and they ended up miserably dry. The frosting was OK, but nothing special. I hesitate to try any other recipes at this time because I don't have much hope for them. She does have a nice selection of different baked goods and a nice pre-recipe section on different techniques. I wouldn't really recommend this book, but will still be watching this wonderful woman on the baking competitions!

I am in no way a professional or experienced at all with baking. While I love Mary Berry and her wisdom with baking, the ingredient amounts found on this book are DECEPTIVE. I made her pie crust and the butter amount listed was WAY OFF. The crust came out extremely hard like a rock and ruined the pie I made. I thought I did something wrong or that I kneaded the dough too much. So I did my research by comparing and contrasting different bakers and I found out that their butter content for the crust was double or triple the amount that Mary has listed on her recipe. She listed 6 tablespoons of butter, while all of those bakers listed 3 STICKS OF BUTTER. She also did not mention that the butter must be chilled before mixing it with the flour. The bakers advised to shred the butter with a cheese shredder and then chill it for at least an hour so that the butter is cold enough when handling in the dough. So Mary’s lack of instructions and tips caused unnecessary wasting of ingredients, headaches and double the amount of research. I am in no way hating on Mary Berry, but it’s disappointing to see her lack of care and effort in this book. The Mary Berry shown in GBBO would be appalled with the ingredients listed in this book. So amateur bakers, I would be very very cautious to use any of these recipes without double researching it elsewhere. Do the research, make sure what she lists similarly aligns with other bakers on the web. It will relief you of unnecessary stress.p

Nice book will enjoy using it.

Happy with the purchase!❤️

Je suis très déçue, ayant acheté l'ouvrage d'une cuisinière anglaise réputée, les unités de medure dont americaines! Pas évident à convertir selon les ingrédients. Franchement il aurait fallu le stipuler. Je ne peux pas offrir ce livre à une jeune fille

I saw Mary Berry on a YouTube video and was impressed with her recipes. I love the book. I will probably buy another one of her cookbooks

Love Mary Berry's baking books and this one is no exception. Many beautiful recipes to make and enjoy!