Cook book addicts !!

My Godmother sent me a book token as an engagement present and I used the Christmas Cake recipe to make my 3tier wedding cake . It was summer when I made it for October wedding , I was on a roll and made a Christmas cake too .I used the same recipe every Christmas since and made DD 3 s wedding cake too , but this time I iced it as my Mum always wondered if we got the right cake back from the bakery after they iced it for my wedding lol

I used to be o have a vast collection of cookery books but when my ex and I split I just kept my favourites and left him with most of them, including Jamie Oliver, Keith Floyd and Nigel Slater books.
I still have
Readers Digest Cookery Year
Readers Digest Guide to Creative Cooking both well used over the years
Delia's complete Illustrated Cookery Course
Ditto her Summer, Winter and Christmas books. I have to say though That I've found her cooking times too long.
Jocelyn Dimbleby's various little books all have something delicious.
The Milk Marketing Board Dairy Cookbook
Marguerite Patten's Feeding the Nation, just out of curiosity when she was regularly featured on Chris Evans afternoon show.
Levi Roots Carribean Cooking
John Tovey Country Weekends. When I used to entertain!
Nigella, How to Eat
Bill Grainger Holiday, hardly used
Betty's cookery School, recreates the recipes from Betty's Tea Shop in Harrogate
The Archers Cookbook both of these are really good.
The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley. Gut busting and horribly tempting recipes if you just want to get fat and have a heart attack!

I rarely use any if them these days as the Internet has everything and that's where I go for Mary Berry, but just once in a while it's good to dip into an old favourite.

I almost forgot the best Asian cookbook ever.
The All Asian Cookbook by Jackie Passmore. Very labour intensive but with fabulous results. I remember stringing up a raw duck from a beam over the bath to dry out before doing the Peking duck with pancakes! Just buy it ready made from M & S nowadays.

Luv luv luv James Martin for his unpretentious recipes. Also go to Atul Kochar for deletable curries but can't abide Nigella Lawson at any price.

When I went off to college in the mid 70s at the age of 18, all I could cook were shortbread biscuits & rock buns! My mother never encouraged us to help in the kitchen & we made these treats on a weekly basis. I took Marguerite Patten's Step by Step cooking with me & all my cooking started with that book. I too had the Dairy Cook books & Grandma's Cheese Pudding remains a huge favourite. I like to own & look at cookery books - 2 Greedy Italians, Hairy Bikers, Antonio Carluccio, Jamie Oliver ( can't stand him but love his recipes), the 2 Indian chaps- but, like so many others, tend to use the internet these days, although I do have a fair pile of recipes torn from magazines.

I started years ago with a Stork Margarine advert giving a recipe for Christmas Cake which I scaled up for a 3-tier wedding cake and put into a word processor. Since then it has grown to a 48 page collection of tried and tested recipes from many different sources. Whenever I want to find something new I just Google , try it and if it's any good add it to the collection including any tips worked out in the process. I did offer to do a series for the BBC "Grump in the Kitchen" which they chose to decline. My philosophy is to keep it simple and learn from others as I go along. Message me with your email address if you want the document in MS-word 2003 format.

Mastering the Art of French Cookery - by Julia Child - sounds pretentious but her Queen of Sheba chocolate cake recipe and duck a l'Orange were real crowd pleasers. Used to watch her programmes on American TV - she was an absolute scream. The cake is now the 'family cake recipe' for birthday celebrations. Have now 2 copies as the original one in tatters. One of her other books does have the ultimate coleslaw recipe which I have never bettered.

I've culled my recipe books as I have a much smaller kitchen these days but there are a few survivors which are:
Mary Berry's Fast Cakes - replaced an older edition which was literally falling to pieces
M&S Cooking for Two early 80s (bit battered)
McDougall's Better Baking (loose pages taped) which I must have bought around 30 years ago
Be-Ro Flour Home Recipes (£1.25!)
Classic FM Crafty Cooking by the lovely late Michael Barry
I must admit I don't look at them very often now but can't bear to part with them because of the memories.
I'm feeling hungry.

I have cupboards full of cookery books, but the one I always go to for baking is a Stork margarine one my mum got from sending off Stork wrappers. I've had this since starting cookery lessons at secondary school, aged 11. It's nearly 50 years old now.

LOVE cookery books!!
From my Mum's much thumbed Good Housekeepng book (with recipes in her hand wrting on the spare pages) to the new one by Nadia I have them all. Well maybe not ALL but a heck of a lot! Don't get on with Nigella or Jamie Oliver. I have 2 cupboards full of them & Delicious magazines.
Howvever I have recently decided to cancel subscription to Delicious & not buy anymore books as I note my first choice when researching a new recipe is my PC.
Cannot bear to throw or give any away yet though. There are not many cuisines I do not have a recipe book to cover.
My family will have to think a bit more now about presents.
I even got one of my own original recipes published in Lakeland cookery book a few years back- so chuffed!

I still have my late mothers Bero cook book together with the New World recipe book that came with our brand new 'pride of place' gas cooker.
I have yet to find a recipe that will surpass Bero's
Congress Tarts. They are always in great demand on our local WI cake stalls.

Does anyone else remember Katherine Whitehorn's 'Cooking in a Bedsitter' which was brilliant for me in my bedsitter days in London? The results of some of her recipes were really appreciated by my then boyfriends! I've actually still got it on my kitchen bookshelf.

We've got all the Simon Hopkinson books, such a good read not just for the recipes. After watching him on television we decided to give him a go and were hooked. We do seem to collect others as well. My son uses Yotam Ottolenghi recipes, which are stunning.
My mum used to use a Be-Ro paperback recipe book (I have a feeling it came free with her new cooker!), but she was a good plain cook. I looked at my herbs and spices the other day and remembered she just used salt and pepper and Oxo (if we were being posh).

I used to have a big collection of recipe books. I scaled it right back to 5. I now have a Pinterest board of recipes and cakes etc.

Much easier and cleaner to use than a cook book.

The books I have kept are my late Mom's cookbook my late Father gave her when they married (I kid you not) It's a 1000 page Good Housekeeping cookbook. I can't nor wont get rid of it.

It is so full of memories, aroma's, page markings etc and so on I couldn't bear to get rid. It is battered by the years. It all filled with the charm, love and happy memories

My other books are 1s I have had bought me by family I have kept

I often get myself to sleep by playing 'Desert Island Cookery Books' with myself - I've never stayed awake long enough to announce a winner! But there are several contenders. I do like the Readers Digest Cookery Year which really is encyclopaedic. I LOVE Simon Hopkinson's books and really enjoyed him on TV. I've got a lot of time for the usual suspects - Delia, Mary B, Nigel S, Elizabeth D and now Nadiya is coming up on the rails. The Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten is wonderful. But on my desert island, for convenience and accessibility I think I'd choose 'Perfect' and 'Perfect Two' by Felicity Cloake, the Guardian food writer. She analyses classic recipes and compares and contrasts how well-known chefs deal with them. Then, her research done, she comes up with her 'perfect' version of the dish. I find her approach fool-proof - and she does all the hard work! Result.

I too am a cookbook addict though I rarely seem to have time to look at them. I also have piles of recipes I have cut out or printed off over the years.

DH commented in front of a friend that I had so many recipes that I'd be dead before I could cook them them all.

She told him in no uncertain terms that cookbooks were for looking at, not just for cooking!

Long live food porn!

Favourites are Nigella; Nigel Slater [I love his manner on TV - and his kitchen!]; a Stork cookbook [for basics I was given at school aged 14!!!]; and a miscellaneous selection which includes gluten free; bread making; juicing; muffins, gut sensitive recipes......

I went into a bookshop recently and was just overwhelmed by the number of cookery books on sale. They seemed to overtake everything else. I like trying new things but some of the ingredients I've never heard of!!1

I still use my Marguerite Patten book too - so glad to know I'm not the only one! I do love Delia. Would highly recommend her parmesan parnips - always a favourite in my family. Could not live without Mary Berry or Nigella either. I have hundreds of cookery books, and just love them all! Always a great treat to be given a new one too. I cannot resist recipes fro magazines too - have a huge folder of them. So glad to know there are like minded people out there..... enjoy your weekend cooking everyone!

As well as 101 cook books ! I also cut recipes out of magazines and newspapers too. They then get put in a wicker basket in the kitchen. When too many are in there, I start going thro them again and throwing some away. Now am fully retired I hope to start actually using some of them ! It's just that pleasure we all get from creating something healthy but delicious that our families all love.

I had a good clear-out when DS came to stay a couple of weeks ago. Cook books were victims of the purge because, thinking about it, if I want to find a recipe, I now tend to find it on the internet. But I've kept Delia and several veggie cook books. I couldn't give up my 50-year-old Mrs Beeton's Cookery and Household Management, if only for the comedy value of how to be the perfect housewife in the middle of last century. Not that I ever was that person!

I love cookbooks, especially Nigel Slater. I have pre-ordered his 'Christmas Chronicles', which is out soon.

My most treasured cookery book was given to me by my parents when I was ten in 1965. It's a Good Housekeeping Publication called 'Cooking is Fun'. It's so dog eared now but I still refer to it for basic recipes. Vintage in the true sense.

Shysal Thanks. Foolproof is what I need now.

Jaycee5, I can recommend Lorraine Pascale's trifle! I have a couple of her books, and yes they are foolproof recipes.

I tend to google recipes now although I don't do that much cooking nowadays.

I've just won a Lorraine Pascall cookbook which I am waiting for and her cooking seems to be quite simple so hopefully there will be something in that to try.

I too have the early Marguerite Patten, Mary Berry and Oxo spiral books. I also have some by Delia, Nigella, Jamie, Paul Hollywood, Nadiya and many more. However, my favourites are the Australian Women's Weekly Cook Books. They are cheap and the titles are endless, but I prefer the baking ones, which are packed with recipes, each one with a photo, which is important to me.
Women's Weekly Cook Books

Jamie Oliver’s five ingredients plus his superfoods, anything by Hugh Fernley whittingstall all real food plus Delicious Ella