BOOK REVIEW: The Hummingbird Bakery's Home Sweet Home

YOU have to hand it to Tarek Malouf – a man who identified a gap in the market and completely went for it.

While working in America, London-born Tarek noticed that a certain type of OTT cake and bake was noticeable by its absence from the UK market. Clearly inspired by companies such as New York’s Magnolia Bakery, and the cupcake revolution already beginning Stateside, he set out to learn the trade in the Big Apple.

After returning to the UK, he knew his market and set up the first Hummingbird Bakery in trendy Portobello Road in 2004, up against the competition of the Primrose Bakery – the rival UK brand set up the same year. Since then, four more Hummingbird shops have opened in boroughs of London and Tarek spread to Dubai with his first non-UK opening last year.

And he’s been no slouch on the merchandising front, something American establishments have long recognised as a way to bring in the bucks.

On that front, this is the third Hummingbird book release, following an eponymous tome in 2009 and Cake Days in 2011. There have also been mini gift versions of the first book. So what else can there be to say on this sweet subject?

Tarek explains in his introduction that it’s a celebration of “classic home baking with best-loved flavours and nostalgic recipes”, and there’s a particularly American heritage to, or spin on, many of the recipes. Cherry pie, key lime pie, peach cobbler, banana Boston cream cake, Mississippi mud cake and Chicago fudge cake are just a few of the latter, and there are many, many others to tempt you.

Your fillings will ache over seven sections as you read the recipes for delights such as the Candy Bar pie which includes US favourites peanut butter and Oreo cookies, plus a well-known UK brand combining chocolate and peanuts.

And even though I have pledged my eternal baking love to Nigella Lawson, who came up with her own Malteser cake way back in 2004 in Feast, I am tempted to give his version a go.

Read it and drool.