Book Review: Tanya Bakes

When I saw that Tanya Burr was bringing out a new baking book I knew that I had to have it. I own Love Tanya and my favourite part of the book was the recipe section and the cookies are amazing. I first discovered Tanya Burr years ago when she had a lot less subscribers by searching for ‘Norwich Vloggers’ on YouTube. I used to see her around the city and no one battered an eyelid back then! Being from Norwich, I love watching vlogs based in my hometown. If I’m completely honest, I haven’t really kept up with or watched Tanya much since as her lifestyle became less relatable to mine but I still continue to support her in all she does. 

I pre-ordered the book Tanya Bakes when it first came out and managed to get hold of an exclusive signed copy before they all sold out which I was very pleased about as it didn’t cost any extra to order this copy and I didn’t even know I had ordered this one until after I received the confirmation. Amazon dispatched this on the day of release and I received it the next day.

The book is filled with delicious sweet recipes and none of them healthy which is exactly what I wanted it to be. The photography is amazing, almost mouth-watering. There is everything from cookies to cakes to tray bakes. I decided to try a couple of recipes out myself to see how easy they were to follow. The first recipe I tried was the Smarties Flapjacks. The recipe was indeed easy to follow and turned out exactly as I expected it to. The great thing about these recipes is they suit any budget. I was able to buy the basic range oats and butter and the recipe still turned out delicious but didn’t cost a lot to make.

The second recipe I tried was the Salted Chocolate Tart. One word.. Heaven. Again, I made this with budget ingredients. The bourbon biscuit base was made using Sainsbury’s 30p biscuits and it tasted absolutely divine. The creamy rich filling was sharp and the salt gave it that edge to take the sweetness off. We served it with cream and raspberries and everyone who tried it said it was delicious. It was so easy to make too and took no time at all. There are so many more recipes I want to try and I have already page-marked half the book!

For the full recipes you will need to order yourself a copy of Tanya Bakes! Have you got this book – what is your favourite recipe?

Homemade Hobnobs!

I love baking and trying new recipes, so when I picked up this recipe book I knew I wanted to try something straight away. I usually pick recipe books based on their covers, which I know is shallow, but I want them to look nice on my future kitchen shelf! I loved the pastel yellow colour of this one, and I also picked up a pink cake book by the same author which will go nicely next to this one.

This recipe book is packed with all my favourite biscuits and cookies. They even have recipes for Jaffa cakes, custard creams and Maryland cookies! I want to try them all!

The recipe I decided to try was hobnobs. This was really easy, and we already had the ingredients in the cupboard so it didn’t require me to buy anything extra which is always a bonus! The recipe can be seen below. 

I mixed together my dry ingredients. I knew from the amount of sugar I used, these weren’t going to be healthy! 

I then added the wet ingredients as stated in stage 3 of the recipe. It mixed together really well and the consistency was just right for shaping into biscuit balls.

I possibly flattened my biscuits a bit too much, but they cooked fine. They do spread out a fair bit when cooking, so make sure you space them out more than I did! I actually had to cut them all apart from each other when they were cooked.

They look a bit messier than shop-bought hobnobs but they taste just as good! They’re lovely fresh out of the oven with a cup of tea. You can also melt chocolate on them to make chocolate hobnobs. These didn't last long enough in my house for me to do that though! What should I try next?