Annabel Karmel: You Can Cook {Review and Giveaway}- CLOSED

Over the weekend my daughters and I decided to try out some of the recipes from the book I received by Annabel Karmel. The cookbook is called, “You Can Cook” and it’s specifically written for kids. After watching an episode of Master Chef last week my five year old daughter told me that she wanted to be a chef so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. Initially I was a little disappointed with the book I was sent because my favorite part of cookbooks are the pictures and this one had the first few pages in color but then the rest of the book printed in a somewhat pixely black and white grayscale print, I assumed this was only because I was receiving a copy to review and that the one in stores will be in full color. There was also a duplicate page spread in my book but again I assumed it was just a rough draft of the book itself and I was just grateful not to be missing any pages.

I liked that the beginning of the book talked about kitchen hygiene, safety and equipment. My five year old and I went over all of this before starting anything. The first thing we decided to make was the Tomato and Cheese toast. It looked delicious and it was time for lunch so it worked out perfectly! It was an easy thing to start with and grandma and grandpa ate it with us too- everyone loved it! My five year old was so proud that she had made most of it all by herself with only mom’s stand by guidance.

The next day we decided to bake something, both my 5 year old and 6 year old helped with this one. Now I must first say that I consider baking a technical art and that it is so important to be precise with measurements. We decided to try the “Best Muffins Ever” and the variation we chose was for Double Chocolate ones. The directions, ingredients and measurements were fairly easy to understand and laid out well but when it came to the substitutions you needed to make for the double chocolate muffins it was a little confusing. They referred to the flour and cocoa powder measurements in tablespoons rather then in cups like the original recipe laid out. Now being one who loves to bake I knew that 1/4 cup is 4 T. The recipe called for 1 1/4 cups of flour and the substitution said to replace 2 tbsp flour with 2 tbsp cocoa powder. There was also something else that was worded similar to that we had to sit down and figure out. To me that’s quite confusing and being a book for children I would think that it would be written in a little easier terms. So it did take me a few minutes to figure everything out but the muffins ended up great! We actually baked them right before hosting a football game party at our house so they were gone within minutes and we didn’t even get a picture.

There were a few things in the book that my kids thought didn’t look very good- specifically the fish dishes but I like the variety of recipes they had and I liked that they weren’t too simple but still great for kids. My kids begged to make the smoothies in there but we weren’t stocked with the correct ingredients so we’ll be pulling the book out again in the next few days.

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Disclosure: This review is based on my own honest unbiased opinion of Annabel Karmel’s You Can Cook Cookbook. You may or may not agree with my opinion. I was sent product free of charge to review. Annabel Karmel or anyone associated with the production of this book was not involved in the writing of this post.