The Best Of Mrs Beeton's Cakes and Baking - Tapa dura

From simple and economical recipes such as gingerbread, banana cake and breads for everyday filling-up to extravagant gateaux oozing with fruit and cream, from basic breads to muffins and crumpets, this selection of international classics provides the modern cook with everything he or she needs to provide delicious freshly-baked goods for all occasions. With helpful tips, serving ideas and the basic recipes you need to allow your own culinary creativity to take flight, this bakery bible deserves a place in every kitchen.

Isabella Mary Beeton was born in London is 1836, where she grew up in a household of twenty-one children. It took Isabella four years to compile her masterwork, publishing Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 1861. It contains an enormous amount of information to help people live, in Isabella Beeton's own words, 'economically, tastefully and well'. Her style, imparting information as clearly and simply as possible, was hugely influential. The book sold 60,000 copies in its first year, but Isabella Beeton died four years later, in 1865, aged just twenty-eight. The enduring popularity of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management is testament to the quality of her advice.