Part work, Baked and Delicious magazine has been a big hit on Facebook with 14,000 people who “like” it, several thousand of whom declared their love before copies were on sale.
The first issue costs 99p, the second £2.99 and subsequent issues are £4.99. It claims to be “packed with international classics and traditional favourites” and that it “brings the very best of baking to today’s cooks.” As a further sweetener, each issue comes with a piece of colourful silicone bakeware. Subscribers also get “free” gifts such as electronic kitchen scales, cake tins, cake slices and the all important binder.
I’ve been amazed how many people have raved about this magazine in other blog reviews, to the point I’m wondering if they haven’t given it much thought or feel uncomfortable calling it a dud.
My Baked and Delicious Magazine REVIEW
We call spades spades here. My impression after reviewing issue one of Baked and Delicious was that it is:
- Flimsy at fewer than 30 pages per issue
- Cheap with pound shop quality bakeware gifts
- Overpriced for such a short magazine even bearing in mind the “free” gift
- Dated with 1980s yellow tinged photography
- Dreary with graphics that look like they were created in MS Word
- Unsophisticated with uninspiring food styling
- Badly edited with inconsistent layout and typos
On the plus side, the Gateaux St Honore recipe was the most useful but you’d do better to spend your cash on some generic baking books instead of doggedly committing to this week after week. For around £7.99 you can easily pick up little hardback baking books in the supermarket and discount book stores. You can add to your bakeware collection as necessary.
(For a highly informative post on the pros and cons of silicone bakeware, check out my friend Ozoz Kitchen Butterfly’s excellent post here)
Baked and Delicious has been out a while now but new subscribers get to buy back copies. Sixty issues are planned. If you want to back out, I’m informed you can cancel subscriptions at any time.
The baking revival has been going for a fair while now and the bottom feeders are now all getting in on the act; see the various reviews on I Heart Cupcakes and American Cupcake in London about the crap cakes being produced by the bandwagon jumpers.
I’d like all the food magazines to recognise that some people who were beginners a few years ago, are now probably ready to tackle some more challenging recipes. It feels like almost every other recipe book or magazine out there has the word ‘easy’ in it.
Interesting review this… I normally used to flip between Olive, Delicious and Good Food when I was in the UK, but only the odd issue… I ended up collecting a year’s worth of magazines, and they were all seasonal, so I think I did well. I brought them all to Canada with me too. But I started subscribing to Canadian Living here, and I think its a really good one, as far as recipes and food styling are concerned. Plus its a half lifestyle magazine too, so I satisfy my mag craving without having to buy something like Glamour.
You don’t hesitate to call a spade a spade though, do you? One of the reasons I come back to your blog 🙂
I’m very pleased to see that my instinct to refuse to review this product was correct! I pretty much refused on principle due to a hatred of marketing that tricks people into parting with a *lot* of cash gradually. It would be much better, as you say, to buy a couple of decent baking books and the necessary tins to get yourself started than end up with flimsy magazines and flimsy silicone bakeware.
Although having looked at the initial email, I wasn’t offered a copy for review, merely asked to promote it on my blog, erm…. no! I replied saying so and subsequently ignored their response…..
Yeah, they were hesistant to send me one too, they were asking people to promote it without them having seen it hence my pestering for an actual copy of it. Imagine if I’d just said to my readers “oh blah di blah there’s a lovely new magazine out about baking”?!