First Picture Cookbook

We got this First Picture Cookbook out of the library recently and have been using it so much I think I'll buy it. It has a really good mix of recipes and being a board book stands up well so you can follow it as you go. We do cook together quite a lot so I did find it quite easy to do the recipes with Rosie. She really loves having a recipe book that is hers and likes to suggest things to make from it.

We tried the biscuits - see picture below! It's a good recipe and worked well. As usual the part Rosie enjoyed the most was eating the uncooked dough. We had some ready rolled icing left over from her birthday so we cut shapes from it and decorated the biscuits with it. I really like the fact that it's for 8 biscuits. That's a perfect amount for a child's recipe and you can always increase it if you want more.

Rosie is desperate to make the fudge recipe. It has icing sugar, marshmallows and butter. I've never seen a fudge recipe like it but I guess it's to avoid the dangerous boiling of sugar that you'd normally do. If it works it might be genius (and everyone's Christmas presents!).

It also includes recipes for chocolate crispies, cheesy shapes, flapjacks, bread rolls and cupcakes - although you could do what we did at a recent birthday party and make the cakes and then just get the kids to decorate them with millions of toppings. It seemed to go down well!

I think this has a great mix of recipes and we'll probably get round to making most of them. Although I would like to try the Annabel Karmel First Cookbook to compare, I suspect it has more things like jacket potato toppings and pizza in it and is for a slightly older age group. I like the way this book has only a few recipes and they are mainly baking ones.