This is not your mother's or grandmother's baking book. The hairy bikers are real men, and the recipes show it. Most baking books are mostly desserts, and maybe a few breads with at most a few savory crackers to show good will. Well, this book has the desserts, it has the breads, it has an impressive number of savory snacks, but it also has several hearty main courses including meatloaf, chicken pie, and soups. Soups? in a baking book? Well if they have just told you that the bread is best with a certain soup, they have to give you the soup recipe, too, don't they?

Now to get back to the desserts... or the breads... What should I bake tomorrow? My husband has already discovered the other hairy biker cookbook I own, so I don't need to bother myself with the potato, sausage and sauerkraut casserole from Slovakia. ( )

Hairy Messrs King and Myers may be, but coarse cooks they certainly are not – in other words, popular BBC chefs Si and Dave are no amateurs when it comes to the kitchen and this, their seventh book, contains a variety of unusual and sophisticated recipes.

The hirsute duo present baked treats from around Europe and while France, Austria and Germany are renowned for their torte, brote and gateaux, the bikers include items from unexpected cuisines to enliven your menus: Norwegian-style savoury cheesecake, Spanish Galician pie, Italian Polenta bread, Romanian Television Cake and Hungarian Bacon Scones are just a few of the more uncommon offerings.

Obviously this is not a collection for anyone counting calories or carbs – or cents either, come to that: the method and ingredients are clearly laid out and the photographs, naturally, are superbly enticing. However, for those who like to engage with food writers, this text is charmless and impersonal, the recipe selection a tad random and, for me at least, the appeal of the hairy bikers proved elusive. ( )