Short & Sweet: The Best of Home Baking

Dan Lepard’s collection of 280-plus baking recipes is a thorough and fun guide designed to be a “blueprint for great baking at home.” Lepard is a baking columnist for the Guardian in the U.K. Chapters are broken down into categories including “Breads,” “Cakes,” “Cookies & Crackers,” as well as “Small Things” and a selection of muffins, brownies, and scones. The collection begins with “Tips & Techniques,” with the goal of making the book a place “where skills and recipes meet.” Sweet and savory fill the pages. The “Supper” section includes meal-worthy mozzarella, broccoli and Parma ham tarts; spinach and ricotta pastries; and chicken and leek pies. Puddings from the U.K. (including cherry dick and blackcurrent roly-poly, and tripe and suet mincemeat), Australia’s Jammy Lamingtons (cakes used for fundraising similar to Girl Scout cookies in the U.S.), Scotland’s pumpkin and cider farls (a pancakelike dish), and oliebollen (fruit donuts from Amsterdam) lend an international flair to the collection. A cheerful and well-thought-out design along with full-page color recipe photos balance out the instructional text, making this the type of book readers will want to bake from. (Apr.)