A kitchen table, a cake board and a family

Julia has baked with her family for celebrations for many years.

As a parent and now a grand aunt, Julia understands that the best cakes are not always the most perfect. They are the cakes built together, remembered fondly, and talked about for years afterwards.

Children often enjoy making the cake as much as eating it. Crushing the cookies, choosing the candy colours, pressing on the decorations, laughing when a tail leans the wrong way — those are the parts they still talk about years later.

The guides combine practical family experience with modern publishing tools to help today's parents, grand aunts and children make something together.

Nothing here needs a specialist shop, a piping course or a spare weekend. If you can find the ingredients in one supermarket trip, and you have an hour or two with the children, you can make something they will remember.