Signe Johansen’s Scandilicious Baking is a timely follow up to her first book, Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking: Scandilicious.  Timely because it seems that everything Scandi comes up top trumps on trend. With Noma overtaking our own Heston as the world’s top dining experience, the resurgence of Gudrun & Gudrun knits and the killer television drama coming from the north, it’s no wonder we’ve all gone Scandi-mad.

As with most people born in that part of the world, Johansen is a bombshell, but that’s not all she’s got. A food writer, blogger and food scholar, Johansen has been  studying and writing about Scandinavian food for years.

In the book, she shares her childhood memories and explains each recipe with love and attention before going on to offer recipes with casual, easy-to-understand instructions.

Being a baking book, this one focuses on grains, but does have a nice variety of grains at that, with recipes for barley, rye and spelt. Categories cover breads, pastries, cakes and tarts and amongst the more modern recipes, there’s also lots of traditional, family recipes that give the reader insight into the comfort food of the north.

Like the lady, the book is pretty. Lots of slick full page images, nicely styled and a very simple, blog-like layout. Scandilicious Baking is perfect for baking enthusiasts to expand their skills into a territory where spices are ‘for life, and not just for Christmas’ and the recipes have a British relatability, but a Scandinavian sensibility. You can catch Johansen talking about her new book at the Henley Literary Festival in September.

{ISBN:1444734679}