Sphere The Great British Bake Off: The Big Book of Amazing Cakes

Disappointed with this book. The other books have been all about the latest series. This has bakes that are totally irrelevant, one chapter on the current bakers and recipes from past bakers which I already have. I’ll still bake a few recipes from it, but nowhere near as good as previous books!

This book includes all the bakers and their favourite recipies from Season3 of Paul, Prue, Noel and sandy.It's laid out in a lot more depth then some of the other books from the series and to my mind this *may* be one of the best books yet. The instructions are a lot more concise and detailed and now the recipies tend to span 2 pages. So 5 stars all round but here's a strange thing. a lot of the recipies don't have pictures of the finished prodyct to incentivise you or even give you an ideas of what doing it right should look like. Instead on the second pages you get pictures of fields and flowers (see photo's) ... to be honest I'd rather have more pictures of the cakes .... anyway I still think this is one of the best they have produced so I would thoroughly recommend it.

The title made me think this book would be full of more complex bakes - some of the really beautiful show stopper bakes that we have seen over the years.Many of us have been watching the show & baking along for years now and I was hoping for some more complicated things to try.I was disappointed to find 2 brownie recipes, a lemon drizzle tray bake, Victoria sponge, banana bread, devils food cake and fairy cakes. It’s nice to have some easier bakes but these can all be found in previous books.There are also some cakes which aren’t too pretty which is a shame.It’s a nice book though- very pretty and the free-from section is a great addition.I think last years book was much better. Perhaps they should have chosen a different title, I wouldn’t have had such high expectations.

I'm in two minds about this book. It is very pretty and provides me with great baking inspiration. I like that the book gives me new ideas for flavour and texture combinations. The photos provide great inspiration for decoration and presentation. The white chocolate blueberry cake turned out beautifully as did the chocolate roulade.But. The chocolate caramel brownies were an unmitigated disaster - and I'm an experienced baker. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in this book are unnecessarily fussy and complicated. I filled my whole dishwasher after the blueberry cake. After a few attempts to follow the recipes exactly, I've found myself reading about the cakes in this book then turning to basic recipes I trust to create the desired effect more quickly and simply. In my opinion, Inexperienced bakers will really struggle with this book and experienced bakers will already know how to make the components of these recipes with much less fuss and mess.

A beautiful, bright book with TONNES of recipes and handy hints. I have loads of cake/baking books, this being the first from the bake off series. I agree with a previous review that all the recipes were not necessarily from this years series but this didn’t bother me so depends what you are looking for. Sections on classic bakes, chocolate, fruit & nut, ‘free from’ etc. One of my favourite baking books already, really pleased! Looking forward to testing out the bakes 🎂 🧁