by Sur La Table, Diane Morgan
Andrews McMeel Publishing, $25.00, 192 pages
Prestigious kitchenware superstore Sur La Table’s Gifts Cooks Love: Recipes for Giving by Diane Morgan is a baking gift-givers dream! Offering recipes perfectly designed for wrapping up your homemade yummies in colorful ribbons or Christmas tins, this book itself is a great gift idea. From muffins to candy, jellies to dried snacks and baked goods to festive drinks, this book markets it all. Morgan not only gives you the ideas of what to cook or bake for gift-giving, she also covers the presentation of your home-produced treasures in beautiful and cleverly-accentuated packaging. The complete process is given with picture-perfect instructions and ideas. Glossy, thick pages are filled with photos of the finished products or showing the process of making your gift disclosing the ease or complexity of each gift. It doesn’t hurt Sur La Table that many photos capture the handy can’t-live-without kitchen gadgets either. But the message is clear in Gifts Cooks Love: Recipes for Giving is all about using your hands and talent to show the ones you love how much you care for them. The best part? Not a fruitcake in the entire book!