The following pages come from one of the first cookery books I ever owned. It was produced by the publishers of Woman’s Own magazine at a time when the womens magazine business was booming. A lot of the pamphlets from the archive have been supplements of the womens magazine and so I suppose an entire book was seen as merely an extension of that.

This particular volume was produced in the late seventies, during the cross-over from black and white to colour images. This book contains both, though the colour images are on ‘plates’, full colour glossy pages distributed through the book, to reduce publication costs I would imagine.

Be that as it may the photography, both black and white and colour, is of a very high standard. To my mind, some of the photographs involving the finer, more intricate icing work on the wedding cakes are better in black and white than colour.

I was given it as a present on either my twelfth or thirteenth birthday and I loved it. I still do I suppose. Since my long suffering family had had to dutifully chew their way through many of my, shall we say less successful, offerings through those early years at least with this they might be able to enjoy a fairly decent cake once in a while!