Product Description

This is a book about baking, but not a Baking Book. The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces is not good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel stressed and overstretched, but like a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in her languorous wake...' How to be a Domestic Goddess is not about being a goddess, but about feeling like one. What this deliciously reassuring and mouthwatering cookbook demonstrates is that it's not actually hard to bake a tray of muffins, or a sponge layer cake, but that the appreciation and satisfaction they bring are disproportionately high. The 'domestic goddess' has to maintain her (or his) cool when faced with pastry, too, of course - but with Nigella Lawson's guidance even puff pastry can be pain-free. Here at last is the book which understands our anxieties, feeds our fantasies and puts cakes, pies, pastries, pudding, breads and biscuits back into our own kitchen. This is the art of baking and comfort cooking made simple and alluring for the modern cook - with everything from cup cakes to certosino, brownies to bagels, peach cream pie to pizza, game pie to blueberry boy-bait, from rhubarb schnapps to Barbie cake - not to mention children's cooking, festive foods, pickles and preserves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30668 in Books
• Brand: Books
• Published on: 2000-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 388 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Those who love comfort food have cause to be grateful for Nigella Lawson's book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Cause, too, perhaps, to wonder that she isn't the size of a house, since baked comfort foods typically encompass large quantities of butter, cream, eggs, sugar, chocolate, nuts, cream cheese and all the other foodstuffs to which with dreary inevitability attaches the deadly word "sinful". But in Nigella Lawson's hands these dangerous, even feared, substances are transmuted alchemically into the healing balms of the goddess, who presides (perhaps a little ironically) over a harmonious kitchen realm.

The recipes are suitably divine, covering cakes, biscuits, pies, puddings, breads, with special sections on cooking for (and by) children and Christmas. Most are sweet, though there is a choice selection of savoury pies and puddings--Pizza Rustica, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Cornish Pasties. The sweet things range from the airy elegance of Pistachio Macaroons, through the luscious spiciness of Norwegian Cinnamon Buns, to the trailer-trashiness of Coca-Cola Cake.

Nigella Lawson's poise never falters, whether she is discussing serving mulled wine with mince pies ("Don't fight it") or a strange passion-fruit liqueur required for one of her trifles ("the most divinely camp liqueur you could ever come across"). She plays a kind of game with her readers, insisting constantly on her greed, but really invoking our own. What a fascinating book: hints of obsessiveness revealed behind the beautifully projected personality of a laid-back voluptuary.--Robin Davidson

Synopsis
In the busy, stressful life of the modern woman, there could be more feelgood mileage from running up a tray of muffins or baking a cake than in almost any other cooking. But we're so busy making efficient, 'modern' food, that we too easily forget, what Nigella demonstrates in this mouthwatering and deliciously reassuring cookbook, that actually it's not hard to make a cake, that the appreciation and satisfaction it brings are out of all proportion to the little effort involved. A domestic goddess has to maintain her cool when faced with pastry - but with Nigella's guidance even shortcrust pastry can be pretty pain-free. Here at last is the book which understands our anxieties, feeds our fantasies and puts cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings, bread and biscuits back into today's kitchen and our lives. Everything from cup cakes to certosino, from brownies to bagels, from peach cream pie to pizza, chewy amaretti to Blueberry boy-bait, from baklava to a Barbie cake, as well as children's cooking, Christmas baking and other family treats.

From the Publisher
The art of baking and traditional comfort cooking made simple and alluring for the modern cook - another culinary triumph from the bestselling author of How to Eat which taps straight into every working woman's cooking fantasy and demonstrates that it's not pie-in-the-sky but a real mouthwatering cake in the oven.

Customer Reviews

A Necessity if you like to Bake
This is a stalwart in my kitchen. In fact I may have to buy another copy because some of the most used pages are now stuck together and the cover is a distant memory. In this book there is something for every occasion from the simple to the incredibly technical. Each recipe is well laid out and easy to follow and the whole thing is a joy.
The only recipe I have ever had a problem with is the chocolate brownies, but I think that's down to my brownie pan. Everything else I have ever tried has been 100% perfect. The Autumnal Birthday cake is a particular highlight in our family, as is the dense chocolate loaf cake. My particular favourite is the dark chocolate mousse cake, which sounds complicated but really isn't and is well worth a go.
We have also tried many of the savoury recipes. The pizza dough gets regular outings and the savoury onion pie and chickpea and filo pastry pie are brilliant at parties if you're bored of quiche.
Sensible, practical, no nonsense advice from the queen of all baked goods. If you could give this book more than five out of five I wouldn't hesitate.

The Best Yet
I have several of Nigella's delicious books, and this one is the best yet. I only bought it last year, as I'd been out of the country, and having enjoyed the TV series of her recipes, and appreciating the way in which Nigella talks to her readers, offering helpful suggestions and making everything so easy for even a beginner, I was not disappointed. This book can be read like a novel,and the recipes are easily written, and the finished results are shown, beautifully photographed. Try her Brownies, Baklava Muffins and her Plate Trifle along with My Mother-in-Law's Madeira Cake, and wait for the compliments...

Does what it says on the tin...
This is my favourite cook book and you can tell by the amount of pages that are now stuck together!
Word of warning - do not buy if you are on a diet! Most of the items in this book are quite calorie laden and sumptious, not for the weight watching.
Although i make the brownies quite often, the apple kuchen is my favourite and all my workmates will testify its deliciousness!
Nigella's writing style is witty and she definately has a sense of humour and sees the kitschiness in what she does with her often very camp recipes. She is easy to read and has a good style somewhere inbewteen Jamie Oliver's throw it all together approach and and Delia Smith's step by step, precise style.
I have three of Nigellas books and although the others are good, this is my favourite. Buy it if you want to impress eveyone with decadent gooey mouth watering cakes!