This beautiful book is a collection of treasured baking recipes from New Zealands top chefs and food writers such as Peta Mathias, Peter Gordon, Al Brown, Julie Le Clerc, Ray McVinnie, Tui Flower, Alison Holst, Julie biuso, Simon Wright and Martin Bosley to name but a few.

Released late last year this book is the brain child of Lauraine Jacobs, herself a well known food writer. It was produced as a fundraising project for The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation (to whom all the royalties go). All the recipes were made by New Zealands leading baker Dean Brettschneider who aparently flew in from Shanghai to bake all of the recipes at the AUT school of hospitality and tourism kitchen in Auckland along with the help of a few (lucky!) AUT students.

Baking is such an important part of New Zealands cooking history, and this lovely book is definatly one to treasure and pass down through the generations.

Recipes include Almond, cherry & cranberry cookies, Aporo treat (which has totally caught my eye. It's gluten-free and I just love that they have used the Maori name for Apple in the name), Baked french chocolate tart, Feijoa coconut bread (my favourite fruit! The rest of the world, you don't know what your missing out on!!)and Rhubarb friands that are cooled, sliced in half and filled with whipped cream and rhubarb compote.......*sigh*.

This book features lots of old-school recipes, such as the good ol' Pavalova, carrot cake, and even a recipe named "19th century American spiced apple...