Any fan of the Great British Bake Off will know only need to hear the words “Kim-Joy” to remember the delightful baker whose whimsy and technique made her a fan favorite. Her adorable animal designs repeatedly won over experienced bakers and beginners with her creativity, her sweetness, and the sublime joy she got from baking.
Now she’s back with a second baking book, this one filled with fun and delightful ideas for Christmas baking. Christmas with Kim-Joy is filled with recipes for cookies, cakes, and numerous treats as well as decorating ideas that are festive and adorable. Expect bakes adorned with or baked to look like foxes, penguins, snowmen, reindeer, turtles, seals, polar bears, panda bears, and owls.
She starts with cookies, offering up recipes for shortbread, speculoos, and ginger cookies and a recipe for Royal Icing that you can use to create and decorate any number of cookie ideas, from individual iced cookies to a gingerbread (or speculoos) house. Kim-Joy also has a couple of cake recipes and a few breads you can try. She has recipes and tips for macarons and meringues. But most of her recipes are for little treats, and this is where she lets her creativity and design ideas run wild.
There are Reindeer Bakewell Tarts, Christmas Pudding Chocolate Orange Profiteroles, Irish Cream Snowman Choux, Yuzu Curd Santa Tartlets with Strawberries and Cream, Hedgehog German Cookies, Festive Bunny Madeleines, Marshmallow Seals in a While Chocolate Igloo, Arctic Fox Sandwich Cookies, and Owl Apple Pies, among others.
She offers vegan options wherever she can, and many of the recipes (like the Penguin Mincemeat Bao) include step-by-step photos to help you see just how she made them. But as always, it’s Kim-Joy’s ingenious ideas in design and decoration that lifts her recipes with those adorable creatures and playful innovations.
Fans of Kim-Joy will not want to miss out on this cookbook!
