Title:	How to Bake for Beginners: An Easy Cookbook for Baking the Basics
	Author:	Mahy Elamin
	Published:	March 3, 2020, Rockridge Press
	No. of Pages:	170
	Cover Price:	$15.99 Paperback, $6.99 Kindle

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How to Bake for Beginners: An Easy Cookbook for Baking the Basics by Mahy Elamin is an excellent cookbook for anyone who doesn’t know much about baking, but wants to learn. The book includes information on baking ingredients, baking equipment, and baking terms. It also includes a chapter on baking fundamentals, which is excellent for beginners, and that chapter also includes photographs, which is really helpful.

After reading about and learning the basics, Elamin goes on to the recipes, which are mouthwatering and appealing. Most of the baked goods are pictured, which is definitely helpful, especially to new bakers. While the cookbook doesn’t have recipes for difficult or time-consuming baked goods that are often found in pastry shops, it does have recipes for simple things like bar cookies, drop cookies, basic breads, pies, cakes, and even cobblers. The instructions are easy-to-follow and the finished products (so far for me) have turned out picture perfect.

Elamin has added hints and tints at the end of each recipe to insure good results, and the prose is very readable. Although the purpose of a good cookbook is to present recipes that will turn out right, it is a bonus when the author includes her personal notes and views on the recipes, and makes it seem like the recipes have come from a friend. Elamin has done this, and beginning cooks will not only enjoy reading from this cookbook, but also baking from it, since the recipes actually turn out.

This book would make an excellent gift for anyone who wants to learn to bake, and for those who are experienced bakers, it has recipes that are actually doable and enticing.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.