Title:	The Artful Baker: Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker
	Author:	Cenk Sonmezsoy
	Published:	October 17, 2017, Harry N. Abrams
	No. of Pages:	384
	Cover Price:	$50.00 Hardcover, $16.79 Kindle

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Love to bake, but want to bake something really special and beautiful? The Artful Baker: Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker by Cenk Sonmezsoy, creator of the popular food and travel blog, Café Fernando, is a fabulous cookbook filled with decadent recipes that are actually doable at home.

While the recipes are mostly for desserts, there are also several excellent bread recipes. I first tasted Simit at Simit Sarayi, a chain of Turkish bakeries – this one was in London and I fell in love with these chewy sesame-coated pieces of heaven. So the first recipe I tried from this impressive book was the Yeast Simit. They were quite easy, and so good, that it’s no wonder that Simit is a bread that has become extremely trendy. I made the Banana Walnut Muffins, which were immediately devoured, and every time I pick up the book, there seems to be something new to add to the queue. There is a recipe for a Fig, Thyme, and Blue Cheese Galette, as well as Crispy-Chewy Oatmeal Walnut Cookies, Lime & Ginger Cookies, Double Chocolate Bundt Cake, and Vanilla Bean Meltaways to name a few “must-taste” baked goods.

Sometimes famous cooks try to intimidate their readers by making the recipes seem more difficult than they really are. Sonmezsoy, on the other hand, makes the ones in this cookbook easy to understand with concise step-by-step instructions. The target audience here is the home baker, and there is something for everyone, whether a seasoned baker or a beginning baker.

The photographs are beautiful, the book is well-organized, and every baker will fall in love with Turkish baked goods. The Artful Baker: Extraordinary Desserts From an Obsessive Home Baker is highly recommended as a must-have in any respectable recipe collection.

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