Food Tube is Jamie Oliver’s YouTube community of food lovers – the series showcases the most popular talent on the channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/JamieOliver
One of the first three books in the affordable Food Tube series, The Cake Book is from the cupcake queen of Food Tube, Jemma Wilson (Cupcake Jemma).
I’m liking
For something different, the chapters of this book are divided into seasons. You can thus find seasonal ingredients and flavours neatly categorised for when they’re available and for when you feel like them. Bear in mind the Christmas-type recipes are found in the winter section of this book though!
There’s quite a good mix of the very traditional, common recipes (vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cakes), foodie fads (salted caramel, fruit goo, velvet cakes) and original options to try (cherry bakewell cupcakes, popcorn cupcakes).
Magical food photography always helps in a little book like this, and you’ll find it in great measures between these pages.
Things that made me go hmmmm
You do get a wee bit of a ‘seen it before’ type feeling looking through cupcake books nowadays, I think. As previously mentioned though, some of this content is pretty original. Some of the ingredients range on the pricey side in NZ, so you’d need to select your recipe carefully if that’s an issue for you.
The conclusion
It’s a good price for this little gem by Cupcake Jemma. If you know a big fan of whipping up impressive cupcakes and cakes, then this book is probably a good one for them to try. Take a look at some of the videos on Jamie Oliver’s You Tube channel for a taste of what to expect in the Food Tube book.
The Cake Book is published by Penguin and has an RRP of $15.99.
