Madhouse Family Reviews: Picture book review : Fairies of Blossom Bakery : Plum and the Winter Ball

Sunday, 15 September 2013

Picture book review : Fairies of Blossom Bakery : Plum and the Winter Ball - Mandy Archer & Kirsteen Harris-Jones

One of the lovely new picture books that we have been reading is Plum and the Winter Ball from the Fairies of Blossom Bakery series. (I have two more books from the collection to tell you about, so keep your eyes on the blog over the next couple of weeks if you want to find out more.)

The basic premise reminds me very much of Strawberry Shortcake : "Over the hills in a land of sweetness, little fairies bake and play. Would you like to peep at their secret, scrumptious world? Make a wish, then step into the magic of Fairycake Kingdom." We meet fairy friends Cupcake, Sparkle, Button, Butterfly, Cookie and - the star of this book - Plum.

Plum turns out to be a lovely little fairy, kind and considerate but rather clumsy and lacking in self confidence. For example, she isn't very good at skating and when she makes a special cake, she manages to drop it on the floor.

She thinks she doesn't stand a chance of being picked as Snow Belle at the Winter Ball but, even if she can't see them herself, everybody else, including Princess Crystal, can see her qualities. It's a lovely feel-good series about friendship, baking and fairies that gives some important life lessons to little readers, such as not underestimating yourself in this story.

Another lovely feature of the series is that each book ends with a recipe that figured in the story. In this book, it's for Plum's Upside Down Pudding.

We followed the recipe and came up with this absolutely gorgeous, melt-in-the-mouth, buttery cake.

Pierre was very proud to have helped make such a lovely cake, although I did have to convince him that it wasn't necessary to drop it on the floor like in the story because we didn't have any fairy friends to help out with their magic !

star rating : 5/5

RRP : £5.99