MAKER COMICS: Bake Like a Pro! by Falynn Koch, 124 pp, RL 4

- August 23, 2019

MAKER COMICS: Bake Like a Pro!

Purchased with grant funding

for my school library

MAKER COMICS: BAKE LIKE A PRO is an excellent graphic novel that teaches readers how to bake while also showing the science behind baking. Using a fictional format, the book begins in a village where wizarding students are being given their assignments for the day. While her friends happily head off to learn pyromancy and transfiguration, Sage is not happy to hear that she will be learning baking with Wizard Korian. Using talking food, Wizard Korian begins her lesson by showing Sage that cooking is heating food, but baking is alchemy! Unenthusiastic and showing it, Sage jumps at the chance to bake a perfect pound cake and end the lesson. Left alone with the recipe and the ingredients, who are talking and trying to get her to follow the instructions, Sage fails the task and conjures an "instant cake." Not only does this passage serve to show readers WHY it is important to follow the instructions when baking, but also what the differences between scratch and box are.

With Sage's mindest shifted from fixed to growth, she is now ready to learn - and bake. A quick walkthrough of the tools of the trade and Sage and Wizard Korian start their lesson with chocolate chip cookies. A seemingly easy place to start, it is also foundational, with each of the seven bakes to follow building on the science learned from this recipe. From chocolate chip cookies to biscuits, pizza dough, sponge cake with buttercream frosting and a lemon meringue pie to end, this book is every bit as entertaining as it is educational! In fact, Andrea Ayers at The Beat included her step-by-step experience baking the the cookies, which she called MAGICAL!