****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I've been buying gluten-free baking books for a while now, ever since I decided to cut back on gluten products, and they tend to be very much "hit or miss." This book, however, is a hit, even if not all of the recipes are perfect as is.The recipes are, as the title implies "easy," especially in relation to how difficult gluten-free baking can sometimes be. I've tried several of the recipes so far and the best were the muffins. As someone who loves muffins, giving up or cutting back on regular ones is a problem. I've tried the recipe now with throwing in frozen cranberries and with blueberries and, next time, might toss in some nuts, as well. While the Coffee Cake Muffins--OMG, they are so easy, easy...and so very good.I've made the Cheddar Dill Bread and it is also easy and tastes more like a biscuit than bread, which the author indicated. But I think I might experiment next time and not the dough all together in a loaf pan as the bread is very crumbly (far too much to even think of toasting it). If you really like dill, I might also add a tad more than what the recipe indicates. I think this recipe can be played with a fair bit as it is a nice basic savory bread recipe, but suffers from some of the complaints of non-gluten bread in regards to not holding together well. I suspect it would do better as biscuits.The book itself has a hard cover and is made so that you can open it to a page and it will lay flat, a problem with some cookbooks that aren't built in a "ring-binder" style so that you end up balancing cans or something on them in order to keep the page open while cooking.There are pictures of some of the baked goods, but this is not primarily a cookbook with lots of color pictures. I would have liked more pictures because that is one reason why I collect cookbooks, but as the recipes are so useful, I'll forgive that one "fault."This isn't truly a "beginner's" baking book, but it might be a good place to start if you are just getting into baking gluten-free. As someone who has years of practice in baking with gluten, this book is simple to deal with and easy to read and even make adjustments to as need be. I have tapioca and potato starch and all that, but I sometimes just use rice flour (white or brown) and the xanthan gum--a huge plus for any gluten-free baking--and it tends to turn out just fine anyway. But, probably for the first time, I'd follow the original recipe and then dabble later. Some things just AREN'T as good without the special flours.EDIT: I've just recently tried the chocolate cake and it was easy easy and turned out great. No one at the party ever would have guessed it was gluten free. I've also found that just using plain old rice flour rather than the sweet rice flour in some of the recipes works out just fine--I have a hard time finding sweet rice sometimes, whereas regular rice flour is much more common.Having tried out a few other gluten free baking books, I have upgraded this review to 5 Stars, as I now have much more of an appreciation for this gluten free baking book! I would snap up another baking cookbook from this author in a second!
