Customer Reviews

Confections of a Closet Master Baker: One Woman's Sweet Journey from Unhappy Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I work in a bookstore and read soooooooooo many books that and often I lose interest and toss the book aside to move on to the next one.

Well. I LOVED this book. I read it in two days and found myself making home made bread and vanilla cake (which was THE BEST EVER).

This is the story of Sandra Bullocks's sister, Gesine, who worked in Hollywood for her sisters production company and gave up a career most American's would drool over. Famous Stars - check! Fabulous clothes - check! Lunch/dinner dates - check!
First class travel - check!

Gesine chucked all the "phoniness" of LA to follow her passion for baking and ended up opening her own bakery - due mainly to an offhand comment her sister made about Gesine's fabulous macaroons.

If you love to bake (or eat) hurry and place your order for this book. If you're not a foodie but your doing a job that drains you and long to do something else, buy this book!

It's a heartfelt, easy, inspiring, read.

Truly the best book I've read all year. I will not be loaning my copy to ANYONE. And I rarely keep books I read (I usually pass them on). I have ONE SHELF that holds favorite books (6 in all) - and this takes first place.

Did I mention I LOVED this book! Funny. Heartwarming. Inspiring. Funny.

And there's recipes!!!!

Fresh out of law school and hanging out in L.A., Gesine's sister hits the big time, and she becomes an executive at her newly formed production company. Several years later, her very health-conscious mother dies from colon cancer. Hit hard by the loss, she finds herself channeling her grief into baking. Day after day she produces popular treats in a fashion that renders even the most congealed L.A-weary hearts putty in her hands, working out her angst into heavenly macaroons. After realizing that she was profoundly unhappy in the biz and always would be, she takes off for Montpelier, Vermont, and sets up shop. There she finds the kitchen a haven from the unplesantness she experienced in Hollywood, and falls passionately in love with what she does.

Including wondrous nostalgia for the ways of her mother and grandmother, Gesine takes the reader through the world of her childhood in Austria and Germany and along the way, ending each chapter with a recipe that makes you want to run to the store and start baking like mad. The Golden Eggs recipe--for a simple yellow cake that tastes just like donuts--is not to be missed, nor all the recipes for truly divine German treats. She really cares about what she does, and it shows.

Now this is not a touchy-feely heroine who throws rose-petals at your face because she's found her own happiness--she's not the touchy-feely type--she's a self-confessed misanthrope who is usually way too blunt and socially inept for most people's taste. She initially loves the kitchen for its anonymity and not having to deal with people, which is what I like best about this book--it displays a remarkable honesty about her own character and who she is and why she does what she does--baking is the best way she has of expressing goodness to the world, and although she feels like she's never fit in, she finds that through her gift she becomes an integral part of people's lives in her new home town. This is because (oh, and I love her for this) good treats matter, dammit, so put down that Twinkie and have a piece of properly made cake! Now!

So if you're into baking or just want a good quick yet insightful read about finding what's true for you in your life, then this is the book for you and your book group. Gesine's no poet--the language is very plain spoken and blunt--but she wrote a book packed with meaning and self-truth that I loved. A real treat, inside and out. I'm truly glad to have read it.

Gesine Bullock-Prado lives the life that I am living in quiet desperation. Her bakery is the bakery of my dreams, her life the one of my aspirations. I, too, am a closet baker, giving love and affection to whoever will appreciate the time and care that go into a perfect chocolate chip cookie, a decadent double chocolate brownie pie, or anything else baked in my tiny kitchen in upstate New York. Gesine's road from Hollywood to Vermont makes perfect sense to anyone who dreams in sugar, flour and butter...and often chocolate, too. Her autobiographical story of lawyer to baker truly is well written and understandable, funny and intellectual...and then there are the RECIPES: almost as many as in any cookbook, but woven in as part of a story from a European-flavored childhood (Apfelkuchen and Zwetschgendatschi) to the very adult Devil's Cream Pie and Espresso Cheesecake. Can't wait to try them all. I loved reading this book and am thrilled to add it to my collection of special cookbooks that tell their own story. Please get this book; Gesine's story will make you laugh and will touch your heart.

This autobiography is organized as "a day in the life" with each chapter being the next hour of the day. This gives a nice structure to the book as the author's memories jump around, triggered by some event that hour. It's also a nice touch to have recipes included at the end of every chapter! I am curious why the title changed from the hardcover's "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" to the softcover's "My Life from Scratch"?? Either way, it's a heart-warming story of the author's transition from working at a profitable-but-unpleasant job to a calling.

I received an autographed, gift copy of Gesine Bullock-Prado's book for Christmas this past year. The givers were my brother and sister-in-law who live in Vermont, about 20 minutes drive away from Gesine's bakery. I plan to visit the bakery and them - probably in that order ;-) - when I next find myself in Vermont.

I loved this book! Quite apart from the fact I am an unabashed "foodie" -- known to drive ridiculous distances in quest of just one perfectly prepared food item -- I not only shamelessly slobbered all over the pages when ingesting the recipes, I laughed myself silly while reading the trenchantly witty, often self-deprecating narrative. And nevermind her serving as throwdown judge with FoodNetwork's, Bobby Flay. Gersine is a worthy battle of wits match for that bad-boy chef turned Travel Channel globetrotter, Anthony Bourdain. I'm betting our girl Gesine could leave claw marks on Bourdain's psyche before he knew he was bleeding.

That aside, the timing of receipt of this book proved poignantly bittersweet for me when I read the portion of the book devoted to loving recollections of Gesine's late mother, Helga Bullock. I am currently serving as caretaker for my own mother, who is in the final stages of Alzheimers. I split duties with my sister, as Gesine did with her actress sister, in providing my Mom with pretty much whatever she wants to eat -- mostly ice cream, in my Mom's case. When I read about the lengths to which Gesine and her sister went to supply their dying mother with her favorite foods, I literally had tears in my eyes. I'm guessing, at some irrational level they felt, as I have, that feeding their mother exactly what she wanted might in some miraculous way, heal her, even though it didn't.

I was thankful for the fact Gesine counter balanced the painful recollections of her mother's death, with screamingly funny recollections of her, in life. In particular, the incident involving the righteous wrath Mother Helga visited upon Gesine the Child, after Gesine was found to have stolen cookies from a neighbor's kitchen cupboard. So relate-able! I laughed aloud in recalling the time my own mother marched my eight year old self right back into a grocery store, and not only made me return a half eaten candy bar I'd pilfered, I had to apologize to the store manager. The humiliation of that stuck with me, to the extent I never shoplifted anything, again.

This is THE book to read when one is mired in indecision and debate over career changes. Gesine gave up an assured, big-bucks business career for more soul-satifying work that requires rigorous, uncompromising self-discipline and long hours of plain hard work. Yet she rejoices in providing exactly the right confection, to even the most temperamental of customers -- including: a screaming little boy who wanted a chocolate croissant as much as Gesine once craved to eat taboo Oreos, instead of her mother's homemade, whole-grain bread.

Finally, to Gesine: If I move to Vermont, will you puh-lease let me work in your bakery?

This book is not at all what I had expected. I didn't realize when I got it that the author and focus of the story, Gesine, was the sister of Sandra Bullock. Gesine moves to California with her sister, completes law school and works for her sisters production company. She finds that she is unhappy in her chosen profession, so she packs it all up and heads to Vermont to open a bakery. At first blush it sounds like a story that I can really get into. Unfortunately, in practice it doesn't work out that well.

Confections of a Closet Master Baker is not particularly well written, jumping from subject to subject so that each chapter can be tied in with a recipe, which makes for a read that is quite difficult to get truly invested in. One moment you are reading about L.A. lunch meeteings and then next you are reading about naked Vermont hippies four years in the future and then back again to L.A. at a completely different moment. There isn't much by way of transition or storyline.

The author's writing is at times charmingly casual and at other times it is irritatingly so, reading much like a grouping of diary entries. The author takes pains to point out just how misanthropic she is, which ends up reading like a defense mechanism: "I am not America's Sweetheart like my sister - I already hate you before you can hate me," which I felt tended to get old after a while. In the end, instead of being a story about a woman stuck in the worst of L.A. jobs who runs away to make good on her dream, it is a story about a woman that is clearly unhappy living in the shadow of her sister who runs away to make good on her dream using the fame of her sister to achieve success. Instead of being a story of hope and motivation for anyone wanting to check out of the rat race and into a dream life, it is a story of a woman with fabulous connections sharing her memoirs. That isn't a bad thing, just different than I was expecting. I suspect that if I had known what I was getting into before I started this book I would have liked it more.

However, this book isn't just about one woman's adventures in baking. It is also stocked with recipes, one at the end of each chapter. As much as I despise books that pepper recipes around stories (I don't want to have to search through a novel to find recipes), I have a feeling that this book will sit on my cookbook shelf for regular use rather than on my bookshelf forgotten. The recipes in this book absolutely redeem any sort of lacking in the story and when the author writes about baking is when her writing truly comes alive. The focaccia is light and delicious, the Espresso Cheesecake is rich and moist, the Zwetschgendatschi is so delightful that it almost pushes my own grandmother's recipe out of place. And the carrot cake... mouthwatering. It is dense and moist, with just the right amount of carrot to cake ratio. Gesine proclaims that she has learned to find her place in the world and her connection to other people through baking. It is just as true that she will capture the reader and make this book worthwhile through the same method.

When I first started reading this book it was like the author was speaking directly to me. Yes, I love to bake! Yes, I totally know that 'high' you get from feeding other people! Yes, I am totally jealous of you being able to pursue your dream! I feel like the book started out strong, going through the author's day, getting a sneak peak into the bakery and her routine as well as the driving motivators for doing what she did. The last two or three chapters are what turned this from a 4-star to a 3-star review. The author admits to not particularly being a people person and I feel that towards the end of the book she feels like she is tired of having this conversation with you; something about the tone changes and while that can perhaps be attributed to the subject matter it sort of lost me. I also found that the book ended on a bit of a sour note, with her 'recommendation' . . . well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone so let's just say I found it very contrary to what I would have expected and hoped for. I really respect the author for minimizing the Hollywood bits and leaving out names and not turning it into some sort of trashy tell-all. Too bad for people who pick it up and are expecting that element and are disappointed; this is an entertaining, touching read that has so much more to offer.

Now while I love reading reviews on books, I usually don't review any. But Gesine's memoir is so delightful to read, I wanted to put in my two cents. You won't regret getting this book! It's charming and funny, but most importantly very sincere & heartfelt... Makes me want to have a cup of coffee with macaroons or just fly to Vermont!! (Now her sister's THE Sandra Bullock, but Gesine doesn't rub that in to sell her book... instead, Sandy pops up in the book like how any other older sister would.)

I admit it, I have dreamed of one day quitting this rat-race and becoming a pastry chef. I admit it, I'm a huge fan of Top Chef: Just Desserts, so I was eager to dive into this tale of foodie love. Bullock-Prado, sister of actress Sandra, and a former H'Wood Development Executive, leaves the glam life behind to open her own patisserie in Vermont. Heaven! With the same joie de vivre as Peter Mayle in his iconic book, "A Year in Provence", Bullock-Prado recounts her trials and tribulations on the road to finding confectionary bliss. Along the way, Bullock-Prado treats readers to mouth-watering descriptions of mandelhoernchen (a German type of macaroon), and provides recipes guaranteed to motivate even the laziest of cooks. I especially loved the touches of family history Bullock-Prado weaves into her tale - it gave a real foundation to her choice and formed a fitting tribute to the women who inspired her passion for cooking - including her mother (who recently died of colon cancer). Bullock-Prado's memoir follows a single day in the life of a busy baker, yet it is so much more: in the zen-like ritual of making and baking for her family and customers, we come to see the art of pastry for what it truly is - food for the soul as well as the palate. Yum!

To have a passion and be able to pursue it is a blessing, to be able to bring joy to others with that blessing - that is a gift. This is the life of Gesine Bullock-Prado. It doesn't matter who your famous family or friends are, what matters is the sweet luscious scent of chocolate or fresh baked bread. This is what is important in life and if you are taught by your much adored mother- well then- that's all the better.

Bullock-Prado describes her life before owning her own shop and her life after. There is no comparison, when you hate what you are doing, but make a gazillion dollars you still hate what you are doing, but when you are building a business, getting up at 4am and trudging through snow and ice to do it, well, then life is good. So, you don't have a gazillion dollars, but you do have coffee and delicious fresh pastries.

Owning your own business and meeting your new neighbors in a new town 3,000 miles away, well, you just have to see life an adventure. So the building is falling down and has to be rebuilt, the suppliers don't deliver soy on demand and the town has a few odd-balls. That's ok, there are always croissants.

This book is a delicious gastronomic pleasure. But my words of advice - get over the whole name thing. People are going to pronounce it wrong. And not everyone is going to have a subtle sigh when they say it.