Live, Love, Bake, Wicked Cupcakes - Luisa Zissman

Live, Love, Bake! by Luisa Zissman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Luisa Zissman shot to fame when she became the runner-up in the 2013 series of the BBC's The Apprentice. A baker by trade, Luisa has been running her hugely successful St Albans cake shop, Dixie's Cupcakery, since 2011. It is her mission to show the world that you don't need a lot of time or complicated ingredients to create show-stopping cupcakes like hers.

In true Luisa style, her cupcakes are bold and brassy - a treat for the eyes as well as the tastebuds. Whatever the occasion, she has a cupcake that's the perfect fit: cocktail cupcakes for a girls' night in; ooh la la cupcakes for romantic liaisons; Dixie cakes, which are perfect cakes for busy mums to cook with their kids; vintage cakes for a stylish soiree and quirky cupcakes with unusual flavours, such as the genius Love Me Hate Me Marmite and Chocolate cupcake.

Packed with helpful advice on how to make and decorate your cakes, Luisa's book will put the fun and sparkle back into your kitchen.



I jumped at the chance to review this cupcake book. What girl does not like to bake cupcakes? I had the perfect opportunity to try some of these out, this week as I had some friends come to stay.

The book is beautiful, it is full colour and of excellent quality. Each page has a high gloss finish on it with beautiful photographs of the cakes you can make.

All recipes are very easy to follow and instructions are clear.

The book is broken into sections of different types of cupcakes such as skinny or signature etc. We learn a little about Luisa at the beginning of the book and she has even included her daughter in the book, which is a nice touch.

The recipes are very easy to follow, I don’t bake a lot and I could follow these well. I also thought that it was really good as it created the minimum amount of mess, I have no idea how but I used little equipment which is always a bonus when cooking!

At the beginning of the book there is a guide on how to create the tops of cupcakes, using a piping bag etc. This I also thought was very useful for a beginner.

The only suggestion I would have for this book is that the measurements could also have been written in cups. I couldn’t find my scales while I was making the cupcakes so had to google how many cups 220g etc was. This was O.K but I think it would have been helpful to have this information in the book or a conversion table in the front or back.

One other tiny issue I found with this book is the cooking time. It told me to cook the cakes for 20 mins, even though the oven was pre heated it took longer than 20 mins to cook them. I just used a knife in the centre of the cake to make sure it wasn’t wet anymore to check they were cooked.

So I choose to make the cookies and cream cupcakes, they tasted great, were slightly more dense than I expected but I would definitely recommend you to try them if you have this cupcake book. They looked fabulous; they weren’t dry and lasted for the full 3 days stated in the book.


Making Cookies and Cream Cakes:

I prepared my cases with a secret ingredient...

Easy instructions to mix the butter and sugar, plus licking the bowl brings me back to childhood ha ha!

Folding in the flour....

Out the oven and all decorated, using mini oreos. My guests thought they looked very professional. 

This was the final effect, as you can see they look really cute, my guests also loved them! 

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.