Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am adding to this review (below is the first review) after using this book many more times. I've made recipes three, four, five times and I've tried some new ones and I gotta say, I still feel the same way about this book. I don't usually get this detailed in reviews, but I'm so tired of spending money on untested recipe books. I just finished mixing up the chocolate chip cookie recipe and even in this one, which should be a no brainer, there are such ridiculous instructions "cut up the room temperature butter in cubes". Why? I feel like making a new ccc recipe and I get to the bottom of the recipe, looking for the oven temp and see this instruction: Wrap up the dough and refrigerate for at least three days. WTF? Who waits three days to bake off cookie dough and who thinks they might want ccc in three days? I tried making the cheddar biscuits and once again they fell flat after baking, into lumps of cheese. If biscuits take so much technique to get high and fluffy, I'll find a better recipe. Again, I think if Shauna moved off of the island and lived on the mainland for a year or two, she'd be embarrassed by some of these instructions and recipes. People are too busy for this cookbook. Also, all the things I wrote below remain the same after more tries. This book is a huge disappointment. I am a very good baker and have followed Shauna and been baking GF for years. I have made several recipes and it is clear that these recipes were *not* well tested outside of Shauna's kitchen (or the testers didn't feel they could tell her the truth when a recipe was a mess). And mess it is. The Apple Crumb Cake recipe, while tasty, will not possibly fit in an 8 inch pan. You will have batter all over your oven unless you use at least a 9 inch and even that is dicey. The bagel recipe was so far off in the liquid ( a problem in several recipes, namely because if the recipes were tested on the East Coast, outside of an island environment, this would have revealed itself quickly) that they were largely a fail. The Pasty recipe could NOT have been tested, as there is twice as much filling as there is dough. How can measurements be that far off? There was no way to put more filling in each one and the dough is very difficult to handle and the recipe is too small for enough dough for each pasty. This is not a cookbook for beginners and if you are a seasoned cook, take heed. If something looks off, it probably is. Also, in some recipes there are vagaries, like the Gumbo recipe, and then there are obvious directions that don't need to be there. Also, there are not enough photos, especially of the more unknown recipes. Makes no sense. Sadly to say, this is par for the course in these cookbooks being created by home cooks who've had some blog success, not cooking success. A good cookbook should give precise directions and be predictable, which this is not.