Geraldene Holt's Cakes

The earliest version of this book (which was the cookery writer Geraldene Holt's first work) was the result of years of baking for a stall in a nearby Devon market town. People soon recognized that here was a talent for writing books that helped in the kitchen and that here was a great collection of recipes that scored bullseye after bullseye. Most people's copies of this have started to fall apart after thirty years of baking. A new edition that took into account some changes in taste and some improvements in technique seemed to be called for.In ten Chapters, Geraldene takes us from the basics and the necessary equipment to the successful creation of scones and teabreads, sponges, fruit cakes, cakes that taste of chocolate (yum-yum), spicy cakes and nutty cakes, tiny cakes and pastries, biscuits and some cookies, culminating with celebration cakes (not forgetting Christmas and birthdays).This is not a picture-book with recipes. Cakes don't really need pictures, they need reliable instructions and these are here in spades.If you think the best cake is one you bought from a shop, think again. The best is one you made yourself. Perhaps even better, is one that was made for you. As these new-born wonders emerge from the oven, filling the kitchen with the aroma of content, you understand the point of cooking and cookery.Geraldene Holt's first professional calling was as potter and teacher. She practised her craft in her Devonshire farmhouse near Tiverton. It was from that same farmhouse that she began to bake an expanding range of cakes and biscuits, first for her family, and then for a cake stall in Tiverton's Pannier Market. The success of her enterprise prompted her to record her recipes and working methods in her first book, Cake Stall, published in 1980. Geraldene Holt's Cakes revisits Cake Stall, revises it, improves it, and expands it.The great success of her first book led to fame and fortune as a cookery writer, including titles such as Travelling Food, Budget Gourmet, French Country Kitchen, Recipes from a French Herb Garden and Geraldene Holt's Complete Book of Herbs. Geraldene Holt lives in Oxford and the Ardeche region of France. When in France she devotes much of her time to her magnificent herb garden which is described in her Diary of French Herb Garden.