Jo Seagar Bakes

Start a family baking tradition today.

Today few people learn to cook at the side of their grandmother or mother, wearing a pinny and licking the wooden spoon. The reality is that grannies often live miles away and mothers hold full-time jobs and time is precious. Cooking is a learnt skill not an instinctive art and Jo Seagar has decided that it’s time to share her knowledge, and the knowledge of those who have gone before her, through her new book Jo Seagar Bakes.

In Jo Seagar Bakes, Jo is assuming the role of mother/grandmother/teacher, and through these pages will stand beside you, taking you through all the stages of each recipe. She’ll explain the important steps, the shortcuts, techniques and tricky cheats that she has mastered over the last fifty-odd years so that you can successfully create these delectable treats every time.

Many of the recipes in this book are ones that have been handed down from generation to generation like the recipe given to Jo by her mum on Pg133 Fays Mumbles, or the Louise Cake on pg113 that Jo’s Great Aunt Annie used to make on her coal range.

But Jo Seagar Bakes doesn’t just contain all the classic recipes you’ll ever need for cakes, slices, biscuits and muffins, it also has new and popular favourites and some recipes with updated flavours.

How about trying something new like a delicious Feijoa Cake or Mars Bar Bubble Slice. Gluten free? Well there are lots of options there too like Jo’s Flourless Chocolate Cake or her Crunchy Peanut Butter Biscuits and all the recipes are easily identified by a GL symbol just under the page number. Need the perfect scone recipe? Jo’s got two to choose from.

Jo Seagar Bakes is the book all her fans have been waiting for. It is Jo’s baking bible, and will soon become yours.

I especially like the look of the Gin & Tonic Lemon Cake

Jo Seagar on Tour

To promote Jo Seagar Bakes, Jo will be undertaking a nationwide tour during November and December 2014. Details of her events will go up on our website soon www.randomhouse.co.nz/events, but until then here is a list of cities and towns she will be visiting.

Ashburton, Auckland, Christchurch, Cromwell, Dunedin, Feilding, Hamilton, Hawera, Hawkes Bay, Kerikeri, Masterton, Morrinsville, New Plymouth, Oamaru, Pahiatua, Palmerston North, Paraparaumum, Porirua, Stratford, Tauranga, Upper Hutt, Wanaka.

About the author:

Jo Seagar and her husband Ross run Seagars at Oxford, their cafe, cook school and kitchen shop. Jo’s passion is for simple, contemporary, but impressive food. She is the author of many best-selling cook books and is the proud Patron for Hospice New Zealand.

Trained as a cordon bleu chef in Paris and London, for many years Jo ran the popular Harley’s restaurant in Auckland.

She was ‘ahead of the curve in the whole seasonal/local/simple food-done-well philosophy’ (Weekend Herald). Her promotion of fresh local ingredients with cooking that should be a ‘doddle’, combined with her humorous down-to-earth approach, has endeared her to the nation, with the first edition of her classic You Shouldn’t Have Gone to So Much Trouble, Darling selling over 70,000 copies.

A real sense of joy and passion infuses her approach to cooking: ‘There’s a lot more to food than getting nutrients.’ As well as her trademark books on stress-free entertaining she has written cookbooks for novice cooks and for children. She adores entertaining and cooking for friends, and always has a houseful of people staying. Enjoying country life, polo, pet lambs, old recipe books, trashy novels, good jokes and gardening, she runs the very successful Seagars at Oxford - cook school, cafe, kitchen shop and bed-and-breakfast.

Random House

10 October 2014

RRP $55.00

Hardback