Christmas with Kim-Joy: A Festive Collection of Edible Cuteness

Any fan of the Great British Bake Off will know only need to hear the words “Kim-Joy” to remember the delightful baker whose whimsy and technique made her a fan favorite. Her adorable animal designs repeatedly won over experienced bakers and beginners with her creativity, her sweetness, and the sublime joy she got from baking.Now she’s back with a second baking book, this one filled with fun and delightful ideas for Christmas baking. Christmas with Kim-Joy is filled with recipes for cookies, cakes, and numerous treats as well as decorating ideas that are festive and adorable. Expect bakes adorned with or baked to look like foxes, penguins, snowmen, reindeer, turtles, seals, polar bears, panda bears, and owls.She starts with cookies, offering up recipes for shortbread, speculoos, and ginger cookies and a recipe for Royal Icing that you can use to create and decorate any number of cookie ideas, from individual iced cookies to a gingerbread (or speculoos) house. Kim-Joy also has a couple of cake recipes and a few breads you can try. She has recipes and tips for macarons and meringues. But most of her recipes are for little treats, and this is where she lets her creativity and design ideas run wild.There are Reindeer Bakewell Tarts, Christmas Pudding Chocolate Orange Profiteroles, Irish Cream Snowman Choux, Yuzu Curd Santa Tartlets with Strawberries and Cream, Hedgehog German Cookies, Festive Bunny Madeleines, Marshmallow Seals in a While Chocolate Igloo, Arctic Fox Sandwich Cookies, and Owl Apple Pies, among others.She offers vegan options wherever she can, and many of the recipes (like the Penguin Mincemeat Bao) include step-by-step photos to help you see just how she made them. But as always, it’s Kim-Joy’s ingenious ideas in design and decoration that lifts her recipes with those adorable creatures and playful innovations.Fans of Kim-Joy will not want to miss out on this cookbook!

First and foremost, I love how create Kim joy is. It’s why I gave this book five stars. Anyone can give me a recipe for a macaron... but a teddy bear with a Santa hat. And who knew I needed cookie of a dinosaur wearing a scarf in my life?!? With that being said, there are a few of the same recipes as the previous book. I get why though.... You are probably going to want a recipe for short bread cookie, gingerbread cookie, ginger bread house idea/step by step tips and tips on working with icing on cookies in a holiday cookbook. I was a little disappointed in seeing the same macarons flavors. Her recipes for the fillings are soooo good! I would love to try new flavors. But, I will get over it because there are many other new recipes to try.I highly recommend this book. Kim Joy does a phenomenal job of keeping the instructions simple and easy to follow. She also provides metric and us measurements. There is pretty much a photo of each bake in the book. The book also shows her colorful and fun personality. It’s not your typical cookbook, which is right up my alley. I will continue to buy her books. They always bring a smile to my face.

Kim Joy does an amazing job! The recipes are fun, fanciful and comprehensive. The directions are very clear and her creativity makes her cookbooks so special. Love it!

Kim Joy was one of my favorite contestants on the GBBO, so naturally I was excited to check out her books! I’m a experienced baker, but I’m not great at presentation and decorating, so I was hoping this would inspire me to create more appetizing and cute creations, and it did not disappoint. I’ve made the owl apple pies, the snow fox cookies, the polar bear buns and the turtles breads. All were tasty and although mine weren’t as attractive as Kim Joys, the looked pretty good. This book might be a bit challenging for the beginner baker, but any baker with experience should find her recipes very accessible. I’m an American baker and wondered if some ingredients would be hard to find or involve equipment not easily found in my area, but so far I haven’t had any issues with that. I also like that she has vegan options.

This is such an amazingly well written/illustrated book. Kim’s creations are sweet, amusing, and utterly heart-warming!!!This book would be a blessing to the book shelf of every home celebrating the Winter/Christmas Holiday Season

Kim Joy was/is the most artistic baker on Great British Baking Show. This book is excellent showing little details and how to make yummy beautiful cookies in your own home. Thank you Kim JoySusan Joy

Kim-Joy is one of my favorite Great British Baking Show contestants ever! Her recipes are whimsical and fun!

I really like this book. It’s fun to look at, super cute pics. My toddlers like to flip through the pages with me. I’ve tried one recipe so far, it wasn’t too complicated and the cookies were delicious!