How do you show kindness? For the volunteers from Good Bitches Baking (GBB) it means baking treats in their own kitchens, with their own ingredients, to give to people having a tough time. Baking is their way of offering comfort and kindness, without judgement. Sure, it’s not going to fix someone’s problems, but knowing someone cared enough to make you a treat means a lot. From the title of a book presented by a baking group, I expected this to read like highlights of the Edmonds Cookery Book: Anzac biscuits, custard squares and cheese scones. I couldn’t be more wrong and I’m delighted. With 3,500 volunteer cooks from a staggering diversity of origins, the treats offered here are wide-ranging and not always baked. Here you’ll find fesenjān, a sweet and sour Iranian chicken stew now cooked by Kiana in Dunedin, Uncle Dean’s magic mussel fritters with their secret star ingredient, milk toffee from Sri Lanka and bota-mochi from Japan via Wānaka. Each recipe is accompanied by a story from the contributor, making the dish personal and, for me, more precious. Whoever had the genius idea of presenting these recipes in their original language alongside English deserves a shout out. Will I ever learn Japanese kanji to make kūmara yōkan or decipher Polish to cook kartoflaniki? No, but as a lover of language just seeing the beauty of fluid lines of script I can’t read adds layers of interest and connection to the recipe and the story told by the cook. ‘Treat’ implies something special, and this book is a treat. Available from gbb.org.nz. TRACY WHITMEY