Bake in Black - Music inspired baking for rock music fans!

If you love home baking and hard rock music, this new recipe book Bake in Black is for you. Featuring 58 recipes for cakes, biscuits, doughnuts, brownies and pies, each creation is a tribute to an iconic rock or metal band. Inspired by the sounds of bands such as Slayer, The Sex Pistols, ACDC, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath and Nirvana, each sweet treat is a unique bake designed to capture the essence of the music, with interesting flavour combinations and imaginative presentation. Every bake has been named after a track or album title, using some brilliant cake-related puns. How about Rainbow's "Since You've Been Scone" or Guns and Roses "Sweet Tooth O'Mine" or Meatloaf's "Battenburg Out Of Hell" to get you started? It's genius!!

Thankfully, not only is this book visually stunning, filled with humour, awesome rock band references and the coolest cake designs, it is also a great recipe book in its own right. The recipes are clear and concise, using easy to obtain ingredients and equipment. So you can reproduce these bakes and desserts at home. You can put your own spin on them and create your own versions of these amazing cakes and bakes.

I had a go at making one of the cakes, and although I needed to tweak it a little to adapt it to the pans I have at home, the essence is pure punk rock! I made the brilliantly titled "God Save the Cream", a homage to the Sex Pistols.  The minted whipped cream worked wonderfully with the fresh strawberries and blueberries, covering the light sponge.

I am so inspired by this book that I am now trying to create an entire rock music themed dinner party for Ian's 47th birthday next week, complete with musical puns and awesome presentation. Maybe start with some Alice Soup-er served with Bread Zeppelin rolls followed by some Mexican food using Red Hot Chilli Peppers  and with a "Megadeth by Chocolate" birthday cake for dessert. It's still a work in progress!

Bake in Black is available from musicroom.com for £14.99. It would make an excellent gift for anyone with a passion for rock music and home baking, especially when paired with the Electric Guitar Baking Spatula (which is £6.99). It's a brilliant addition to any bookshelf and has brought buns with puns into my repetoire. Whoever said baking wasn't rock 'n' roll!

Musicroom is the largest online retailer of sheet music, tutor methods, instructional DVDs, music software, instruments, accessories and gifts. It sells everything for the musician or music lover. We received the book to review.

The Little Prince #BookReview

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Every so often a book comes along that changes your life, and The Little Prince is exactly that. The children's book was originally written  and quirkily illustrated in 1942 by a French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It tells the story of a pilot who has crash landed in the Sahara Desert and meets a strange young boy who introduces himself as the Little Prince. The Little Prince tells him the story of how he grew up on a tiny asteroid before travelling across the universe from planet to planet before coming to earth.

The Little Prince's experiences, encounters and discoveries are retold with childish innocence, but they give us a profound, philisophical and thought provoking reflection on human nature. The book is rich in allegory, highlighting the strange behaviours and beliefs of mankind, told in a simple yet quite, extraordinary way.

The Little Prince has met many characters on his travels such as a vain, petulant but beautiful rose, which he loves and cares for; a lonely, authority-obsessed king with no-one to rule over; the perpetual streetlamp lighter who spends all day doing his repetitive job; the business who endlessly counts the stars, which he claims to own and the railway switchman stuck in an endless cycle of comings and goings. The prince questions everything and his curious, mysterious reasoning is just so thought provoking that we recognise our own traits and foibles and question ourselves in return. The book is a journey of self-discovery wrapped up in a beautiful, innocent and touching short story. We come to realise that grown-ups are indeed really odd creatures and it is the things we seek with our heart that will bring us true contentment.

The Little Prince is the most translated book of fiction ever, available in 250 languages, and it is one of the top five best selling books ever. If you haven't discovered it already then check out the new translation by Gregory Norminton published by Alma Classics, which is £6.99 in paperback. It includes a section of extra material for young readers and features all the original artwork. The book is aimed at ages 7 - 11, but transcends age restrictions. It's my 19 year old daughter's favourite book and at 46 I love it too.

www.almaclassics.com/the-little-prince

Some Beautiful Books on Review - from Buster Books and Michael O' Mara Books

I have received some stunning books to review from Buster Books and Michael O'Mara Books Ltd. 

Colouring in is not just an activity for little kids, adults can enjoy this pastime too.  Colouring in can be a very therapeutic, stress relieving and relaxing thing to do and these first two titles offer hours of enjoyment to grown-ups.

Creative Colouring for Grown-Ups 

Beautiful Patterns

Packed with beautiful illustrations and intricate patterns, this A4 size books allows adults to indulge and explore their creativity and unleash their inner artist.  The pictures are so detailed and cry out for colour to transform them into a beautiful masterpiece.  You don't need to be a talented artist to create something quite  wonderful.

Unwinding with a colouring book and some pencils really can help improve your general wellbeing, and is a lovely way to spend some quality 'me' time.

Publication date:  11/09/2014

Price £9.99

The Neon Colouring Book

This book is filled with funky designs and crazy patterns using black, white and neon colours.  Featuring pages of animals, plants, landscapes, food, accessories or vehicles alongside detailed patterns, the pages can be coloured in using highlighters or coloured pens to create some dazzling designs.  It's fun and jazzy, perfect for teenagers looking for a relaxing way to unwind.

Publication date:  11/09/2014

Price £9.99

For the younger kids, there are lot of colouring books, activity books, doodling books and ticker books available from Buster Books.  Whatever a child is into, there is a title that will appeal to them!  The next two books are perfct for my little boy Freddy who is 5.

The Diggers and Trucks Colouring Book

From bulldozers to lorries to cranes to tractors, this colouring book is packed with fun pictures for kids to colour in.  Each page invites truck mad kids to get moving and colour in the scenes that include snowmen driving snowploughs, pirates on a forklift laden with treasure and gorillas in the back of a truck. The pictures are detailed without being too complicated.

Price: £5.00

The Halloween Activity Book

Filled with hair raising games and activities, this seasonally themed activity book will give kids hours of gruesome fun.  With dot to dots, a graveyard maze, 'orrible origami and ideas for things to do, this book is filled with creepy but cool stuff!  The colour illustrations feature brains, gore, eyeballs and severed limbs...all the things that your little monsters will love!  It is the perfect activity book for Halloween.

Publication date: 04/09/2014

Price: £5.99

The Owl and the Pussycat

The final book is a beautiful anthology that introduces children to poetry.  From much loved classics including Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Lear and Tennyson to modern works by Carol Ann Duffy and Benjamin Zephaniah, this book is divided into sections featuring poems about themes such as Humour and Nonsense, Monsters, Beasts and Fairies, War and Death and Animals. 

Children can explore a world of rhyme and rhythm, fostering a love and appreciation of poetry.  I love my children having access to the sonnets of Shakespeare, the works of war poets and the nonsensical humour of Edward Lear is such an easy to digest anthology.  It's a lovely book that can be dipped into and enjoyed at any time, and adults will enjoy revisiting and sharing favourite poems with their children.

Publication Date: 04/09/2014

Price £9.99 HB

Children's Books on Review - Dinosaur Beach, None the Number and Love Monster

New to Freddy's bookshelf this week are three lovely picture books courtesy of Harper Collins and Pavilion Children's Books.  Freddy is getting so interested in books now the 'reading penny' has finally dropped and we've been delighted to share these gorgeous books with him.

Dinosaur Beach

Frann Preston-Gannon is the author and illustrator who wrote the lovely How To Lose a Lemur, which is one of our favourite books. Her latest book, Dinosaur Beach, is the simple story of Farmer Jack's trip to the coast.  He's packed a picnic and buckets and spades for a lovely day beside the seaside. The text may be simple, but the pictures accompanying it show that the trip is anything but that, because travelling with him are his four huge dinosaurs and his Dino Dog!  The funny, chaotic illustrations contrast beautifully with the deadpan style of the writing.  The dinosaurs are completely oblivious to the destruction that they cause, but when disaster threatens, they work together to save the day and make new friends.  It's a lovely book to talk about as you read, looking at what is going on in each of the pictures.

Pavilion Children's Books PB RRP: £5.99

Love Monster and the Last Chocolate

Monsters LOVE chocolates, so when Love Monster returns home from holiday to discover a box of chocolates on his doorstep he finds himself in a conundrum.  Should he eat them all himself or share with his friends?  As he ponders this problem he worries that someone might eat his favourite one or that he might be left with the coffee one (heavens forbid!!  Although coffee is my favourite so I'd happily eat it for him!!)  He thinks he knows what to do, but when it comes to the crunch he follows his heart and finds out that some things are better than chocolate!  This is a delightful story that reminds us that following our hearts and doing the right thing can bring us the biggest treats of all.  The chocolatey illustrations are lush and Love Monster is an adorable character that little ones will love! This title joins the other Love Monster books from the very talented Rachel Bright.

Harper Collins PB RRP: £6.99

The Hueys in None the Number

The Hueys love numbers and counting, but they are puzzling over whether 'none' is a number.  To demonstrate the concept of zero, they count things from 1 to 10 then take all those things away to get back to 'none'!  They take readers on a counting adventure with quirky illustrations and humorous suggestions for each number, such as four being the amount of tantrums Kevin throws each day.  The four little pictures of Kevin having tantrums over different things are wonderful!  This book is by the brilliant Oliver Jeffers who has such a fantastic style and such an unconventional way at looking at things, which never patronises his young readers.  At the end of the book is a small passage for the grown-ups so they can learn the history and significance of 'none' as a number and ponder the conundrum of whether nothing can be considered as  a something for themselves!  It's a great, thought provoking, counting book with a difference,  that I enjoyed just as much as Freddy did! 

Harper Collins HB RRP £12.99

Carrie and David Grant - Jump Up and Join In

Carrie and David Grant are very popular in our household.  We were big fans of Fame Academy and Carrie and David's Pop Shop, so when we heard that they had brought out a range of children's books we were really very excited.  We were given the chance to review Elephant's Birthday Bells and Lion's Speedy Sauce  and we couldn't wait to read them!

The 32 page full colour paperback books are beautifully illustrated and introduce a host of music loving animal characters to young children.  The books include a fun story along with a CD that includes original songs, karaoke, music lessons and an audio version of the story narrated by Carrie and David.  They also include a craft idea so children can make their own musical instruments using household bits and bobs.  They are really interactive books which will get the kids jumping up and joining in, as their theme tune suggests!

The books bring musical concepts to young children in a fun way.  Elephant's Birthday Bells focuses on loud and soft, while Lion's Speedy Sauce is all about rhythm.  The concepts are tied into the story and the lessons in a way that children will understand and enjoy.

Learning through music is a wonderful way for children to enhance their speech skills, memory, educational, physical, social and emotional development.  It exposes them to the arts and offers them a creative outlet.  It really can enhance a child's learning experience to be involved in the listening and making of music.  Carrie and David clearly encourage this in these easily accessible books and CDs.

I loved how the books tie the theme together so neatly.  In Elephant's Birthday Bells we are introduced to Elephant whose trumpets and stomps are just too loud for the family band.  Mum and Dad want to find something a bit quieter for her to play.  Through the story, children are introduced to the concept of soft and loud.  They then get to practice how to sing or play loudly and softly with the fun music lessons. They can even make their own jingly bells like Elephant had.  Children can learn to sing Elephant's song and even go on to learn how to sing harmonies.  

In Lion's Speedy Sauce, we meet Lion who is too sleepy to keep the beat in his band.  That is until he has a very spicy lunch!  Children learn all about counting and rhythm and progress onto scales.  They can learn how to make their own bongo drums using a saucepan and join in with the songs.

These books are a whole musical activity session and so much more than just a story.

Freddy really enjoys the books and CDs in the car where he can join in and sing along from the comfort of his car seat.  They keep him occupied and entertained on car journeys.  It is also something he can share with his music loving sisters.  He really liked the animal sounds that serve as a prompt to turn the page of the book, which are a really nice touch and show the attention to detail of this series.

At £6.99 each they represent great value for money, giving children a full musical experience that will help them to learn about  and develop a love of music.  The format of the book and CD really captures the imagination and Carrie and David's upbeat and energetic personalities shine through. We are very impressed!