Pinkalicious Cupcake Cookbook

Gr 2 Up—After plugging the books in the Pinkalicious franchise, Kann instructs readers in cake-decorating techniques for more than 20 projects. Recipes for homemade frosting and cake, including gluten-free variants, are included, most requiring brand-specific products, though reasonable substitutions are sometimes provided. Readers are also encouraged to use prepackaged mixes and frosting as the book's slant is heavily on decorating, not baking. Templates for some recipes are provided, as are source lists for procuring supplies since many ingredients are only available in specialty shops. While marketed to an elementary school audience, it is obvious quite early on that the book's actually for experienced cake decorators. Though beautifully impressive, these creations are not practical for even the average layperson. The basics of cooking with children and kitchen safety are suspiciously absent, while hand washing is not even mentioned until rather far along. Symbolic bubbles containing ideas for child involvement are brought to readers' attention, a feature inconsistently executed and questionable in usefulness. Some bubbles are absent of ideas, while others contain tasks far too simplistic to balance the complexity of the recipes. For those wanting to introduce kids to baking or to enliven the world of Pinkalicious, this volume is far too sophisticated. For adult collections, it is purely a secondary purchase, and entirely unnecessary for juvenile collections.—Rebecca Gueorguiev, New York Public Library