Three ingredients. That is the whole rule, and it is why this book gets used instead of admired. Emma Ivane set out to prove that baking does not have to be difficult, slow, or dependent on a shopping list as long as your arm, and she built a book of practical, clever recipes that each come together from three things.

Salted caramel fudge. Shortbread that presses its own pattern. A deep chocolate cake cut into wedges. Meringues, biscuits and celebration cakes that look like they took an afternoon and did not. If you have ever wanted to bake on a Tuesday without planning it on Monday, this is the book that makes that ordinary.

Ivane is known in Finland for her baking blog and for the television series Koko Suomi leipoo, the Finnish Bake Off, and this is her sixth recipe book. She made it with the photographer and graphic designer Viola Minerva Virtamo, which is why it is a large format hardback that looks like an art book and behaves like a workhorse. Every recipe is printed in Finnish and in English, side by side in the same volume.