How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking
by Nigella Lawson

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Book Reviews of How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking

Book Review: Cakes, cookies, and mince-pies...oh my!
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking

How to Be a Domestic Goddess is not about being a goddess, but about feeling like one. What this deliciously mouthwatering cookbook demonstrates is that it's not actually hard to bake a pan of muffins or a sponge layer cake, but the appreciation and satisfaction they bring are disproportionately high. Filled with over 220 gorgeously illustrated recipes, this book understands our anxieties, feeds our fantasies, and puts cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings, breads, and cookies back in our own kitchens. The domestic goddess has to maintain her (or his) cool when faced with pastry, of course -- but with Nigella Lawson's guidance, even puff pastry can be pain-free.

"You know, I'm not a cook-to-impress kind of girl," Lawson says midway through the book, but she must admit there are few things more rewarding than putting a warm homemade pie or fragrant cake on the table--especially after preparing a home-cooked meal. How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking makes just such a reward possible, in fact positively enticing, with its delicious selection of easy-to-make cakes, pies, cookies, breads, even jams, presented in Lawson's chatty, pleasantly glib manner. Turns out, you don't have be a Pierre Herm? to make to-die-for chocolate confections; nor do you have to spend hours "faffing around" with hot pans and jars to have jam at teatime. You just need to try baking once, then again, and next thing you know, you'll be turning out cookies and desserts every chance you get. Many of the recipes are hand-me-downs or adaptations from other sources, be it a favorite cookbook or a restaurant in some far-off region, but all are imbued with Lawson's wit and distinctive touch. Profiteroles, My Way are "monumentally impressively better" than the original, thanks to burnt-sugar custard and toffee sauce. Her Coffee and Walnut Splodge Cookies are "American-style cookies; in other words just dropped onto the baking sheet free-form," and so on.

A sophisticated female alter ego of British mop-top Jamie Oliver, and considerably more sly and comedic than most American gourmets, Nigella is sure to convince more than a few up-and-coming hostesses that baking is indeed women's work. --Rebecca Wright

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