Tag cooking

Baking Bonanza: Dough Knights and Dragons / Jake Bakes a Monster Cake

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Dough Knights and Dragons
Dee Leone and George Ermos
Sterling

Here’s a ‘Great British Bake Off’ tale set in the days of yore when dragons roamed and knights fought them.
A young knight comes upon a cave filled with novel ingredients and cannot resist cooking up a huge pot of savoury stew.
So delicious is its aroma that it arouses the resident dragon and before long the two have formed a forbidden friendship because it’s deemed in this land that every knight must slay a dragon and every dragon must eat a knight.
As their friendship flourishes so do their culinary skills but as the day of impending contest draws ever nearer, the two realise that they must cook up a clever solution by means of the thing that has bound them together in friendship.

And what a tasty solution that turns out to be with its mix of semantic niceties and unusual shaped doughnuts;

and the outcome changes the nature of competitions between knights and dragons for ever more,
This is a recipe for a lip-smacking storytime: there’s adventure, friendship, edibles, suspense, chivalry and a sweet ending, all delivered through a rhyming narrative readers aloud will enjoy sharing, and vibrant, playful digital illustrations.
Take a look at the end papers too.

More cooking in:

Jake Bakes a Monster Cake
Lucy Rowland and Mark Chambers
Macmillan Children’s Books

Jake is busy in the kitchen; he’s called in his pals to help him bake an extra delicious cake for sweet-loving Sam’s birthday tea.
His fellow monsters scoff at Jake’s cook book deeming instructions a waste of time …

and instead invent their own recipe, a concoction of altogether unsavoury items. Surprisingly, the mixture tastes pretty good to Jake though.

When it’s baked to perfection, off go Jake and his fellow cooks to deliver the enormous confection; but suddenly disaster strikes …
Is that the end of a wonderful birthday treat for Sam?
Lucy Rowland and Mark Chambers have together rustled up a deliciously disgusting tale. Lucy’s the rhymer and Mark the picture maker and their latest offering is sure to illicit plenty of EEUUGHs from young audiences.
There’s an added treat in the form of a pack of scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers: clothes pegs at the ready!

As Nice As Pie

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Dolci and Ellena relishing the story …

As Nice as Pie
Gary Sheppard and Tim Budgen
Maverick Arts Publishing
When Mavis Manewaring decides to share her freshly baked loaf with a bird one day, little does she expect that within a week she’ll be catering for twenty, all enthusiastically stuffing themselves with her delicious pasties and pastries …

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A couple of weeks later, her hungry throng has reached hundreds: birds of all shapes and sizes– great greedy gannets, a plump parakeet, chubby-cheeked crows, potbellied pigeons and the like have heard the news of the tasty fare Mavis has been dishing up to the avian throng. What’s more it’s not merely bread, but biscuits, buns and bacon baps she’s feeding  her winged visitors. Mavis’s shopping bill must have gone through the roof and now it seems she’s no time for anything else but satisfying the ever-increasing throng.

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Enough is enough decides the long-suffering cook and having baked a giant flan case, she issues an ultimatum to the hungry hoards: either join her in a co-operative venture or become the filling for that “Birdie Surprise” flan.

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For her guests, blind-folded at her request and already knee-deep in gravy, it’s a no brainer and before long there’s a new co-operative enterprise operating in the village …
Rhyming stories seem to be all the rage at the moment but unless they’re well written, the rhyme works against them. This one of Gary Sheppard’s, with its sprinklings of alliteration and jaunty rhythm works a treat. Add to that Tim Budgen’s chirpy, chucklesome illustrations and the outcome is an altogether tasty read aloud. And then there are those counting opportunities and potential for discussions on teamwork and sharing.

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The Great Dragon Bake Off

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The Great Dragon Bake Off
Nicola O’Byrne
Bloomsbury Children’s Book
Followers of TV cookery shows will chuckle at the names of the characters in this tasty treat of a book. There’s chief protagonist, Flamie Oliver – a dragon, enormous and terrifying; well, that at least is the impression he gives but in fact, Flamie isn’t ‘very, very good at being very, very bad.’ This is clearly going to be a bit bothersome when he joins the Ferocious Dragon Academy for the most ferocious dragons-in-training where all his classmates are excellent do-badders.
The other thing about Flamie is his particular penchant for pastry of all kinds.

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So whilst his classmates hone their dragon skills, off goes Flamie to have a bake-up; and having perfected his pastry he moves on to more fancy fare. The snag is there’s nobody to share the fruits of his labours with, but even worse Flamie has been neglecting those dastardly dragon skills he was supposed to have been working on.
Consequently, when finals day dawns the lad feels singularly unprepared, even more so as he watches classmates, Heston Blowitall, Scaly Berry and Paul Firewood do their stuff and delight teacher, Miss Puffitup.

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Flamie of course, fails to delight, fails all his exams to be precise, leaving him just one way to graduate. “You must kidnap a princess and eat her!” Miss Puffitup declares.
Sick at the thought, but sicker at the prospect of not graduating, off flies Flamie to capture himself a princess. Having secured one, he sits in his kitchen contemplating his next meal – not an appetising sight …

 

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and muttering to himself about sauces when Princess Rosewater speaks up. Before long the two of them are busy concerning themselves with a suitable accompaniment to the princess dish; but nothing seems quite right. Fortunately the princess has an idea: can it be successfully served up for a Dastardly Dragon Skills degree though? Suffice it to say, the proof of the baking is in the much appreciated tasting: a degree? – that would be telling.

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This truly mouth-watering tale is a treat to share with young listeners. My audience drooled over the delicacies, despaired at the prospect of the princess’s demise and clapped at one particularly mouth-watering spread; and one girl was thrilled to see a dragon wearing specs similar to hers.

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