The holidays often mean more baking. It is usually the classic favorites everyone wants to eat. However, I think it can be fun to discover a new favorite treat. I just love trying new sweets. So, I was really happy to find a new book called Bake Something Great! It is a book with 400 recipes for bars, squares and cookies!
The first thing I noticed about the book was the way it’s put together. It’s got a hardback with rings on the inside. This keeps the staggering 480 pages together nicely without ruining any of them if you leave the book open to a certain recipe. So, yay for that! I love when something is logical. Haha!
The book is divided into parts: Bars & Squares and Cookies. Part 1 (Bars and Squares) features delicious recipes for brownies, shortbread, chocolate, fruit, nut, no-bake, and cake mix bars and squares. It even has a section called “Good for You, Too” which features healthy bars and squares. Seeing as how I’m trying to be healthier, this was a much appreciated thing. This includes Fabulous Fig Bars and Raisin Applesauce Squares.
Part 2: Cookies has a collection of cookie recipes (obviously). It has drop, refrigerator, pressed, cutout, sandwich, shaped, chocolate, shortbread/holiday, and cake mix cookies. It also has the healthier section of cookies with recipes for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Carrot Cake Cookies, and Cherry Fruit Logs among other things.
I really like the set up of the recipes in the book. Each recipe is accompanied by the author’s short one sentence introduction to the item. Then, it tells you how many the recipe yields. It includes time required for preparation as well as baking. Then, it tells you if the cookies are good for freezing (or not). Meaning, you could bake many of these cookies or bars ahead of time and then thaw them out to eat at a later date (really handy around the holidays).
The recipes also feature tips. These tips are unique for each recipe. These tips include things such as storage of the fruits involved in the recipe. So, they are actually useful and handy tips. The book also includes variations for the recipes. So, it’s really like having more than 400 recipes if you consider how you can alter each recipe.
I do wish there were more pictures in the book. The ones included look wonderful and make me want to bake. So, I think more pictures would have been fun. However, it is a thick book. So, perhaps, they cut down on the images to keep the book at a reasonable length which is totally understandable. I also would have liked some tab dividers of some sort in the book. This would have made flipping to the correct section easier. However, I guess that it would have been more expensive to do this and I can just add tabs myself. 
Overall, I was thrilled with this book. I can’t wait to Bake Something Great now. With all of the tips and variations found in the book, you can’t go wrong with this one. There’s bound to be a recipe for everyone in it.
Have you purchased Bake Something Great? What do you think of the book? Do you own other Jill Snider recipe books? Which is your favorite?
Disclosure: I received a free copy Bake Something Great. No compensation was received. The opinions expressed are my own.
I would love to read this book. I’m always looking for new cookie recipes!