Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Boy, is this book confusing. As many have stated in reviews of the hardback version, the ingredients amounts are off, sometimes waaaay off. I was hoping these errors would have been corrected in this new 2005 paperback version -- but no.

Just out of curiosity after receiving the book, I went to Nigella's official website and looked at three of the recipes from this book reprinted on the site. When you click on the American equivalent the ingredient amounts shown there differ -- sometimes dramatically enough to guarantee disaster -- from the printed book (U.S. version) in all three recipes. For instance, the Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes: in the printed version before me it calls for 1/2 cup sugar; on the website: 3/4 cup of sugar (no wonder a previous reviewer complained they weren't sweet enough). In the book: 1 cup "self-rising cake flour" (an item that American bakers don't even use -- and this item crops up everywhere in the book!); on the website: 1 cup all-purpose flour + 1 tsp baking powder + 1/4 tsp baking soda. For the icing the book calls for 1/3 cup + 1 TB heavy cream; the website: 1/2 cup.

But the scariest discrepancy is in the recipe for Coconut Macaroons. The book: 1/3 cup sugar; website: 1/2 cup. Book: 2 TB ground almonds; website: 1/3 cup. But here's the kicker: Book: 1 cup + 2 TB shredded coconut; website: 3 1/3 cups! That's not even close! Needless to say I now have very little confidence in these recipes.

So. Three stars because I like Nigella and her writing, and because the book is very handsome. But I'm returning my copy and ordering the UK version -- I'd rather deal with metric conversions than these appalling mistakes.

While the author's first book, How To Eat, gave an overview of the entire cooking process with some desserts thrown in, How to be a Domestic Goddess focuses entirely on baking. Being a domestic goddess she says, (and I paraphrase) is returning to a basic love for cooking minus the hassles of daily life.

Lawson's trademarks are evident here with her conversational style and easy to follow recipes - (you must try the dense (fallen)chocolate cake: it is superb). Aside from the usual baking sections, there is a chapter devoted to recipes that children will have fun helping out with as well as a holidays section.

This book is hardback and printed on beautiful glossy paper. The photos are well-lighted and look so real that they jump off the page and will make you rush to your kitchen. This is definitely a better and more focused book than How To Eat (but then again, I prefer to bake!).

I heard about Nigella from English relatives last summer. Then I caught her show on the Style Network. She's a great cook, beautiful, and she truly does flirt all the way through. It's all done with a bit of kitsch, so it's OK in my book. I ordered my copy of this book from Amazon.co.uk, so the version I have has English measurements and ingredients, so be warned that that's the version I'm reviewing.

Nigella is first and foremost a brilliant writer. Even if you aren't planning on cooking anything at all from this book, it's enjoyable to have, as the prose is a pleasure to read, and the photography is beautiful.

Here in the US, we have this view of English cookery as being bland, boring, and not worth our time. Nigella will quickly put those views to rest. She is, like me, an avid cookbook junky, and she always cites her sources, so you're getting recipes filtered through Nigella from sources all over the place.

I have this book on my coffee table, and my husband and I are both always leafing through it. The Nigella recipes I've tried have always worked out, and I've been able to choose with confidence, since each recipe is described in painstaking detail. You know what to expect. And you often have a photo to check out, too.

Most recipes are intended to be easier than the resulting dish would have eaters believe. So, less work, more praise. Hell, maybe she is overcompensating for something else in her cooking, but more power to her. We're the better for it. She does it knowingly with beautiful irony, especially in the title.

Love Nigella. She's going to take on the world.

I was unfamiliar with Nigella Lawson but thought the recipes in this book looked extraordinarily good. I bought the book (American version) and tried making the Blackberry Galette. While making the crust, I thought there was way too much fat and water in proportion to the flour and cornmeal called for, and sure enough, when baked the crust dissolved into mush - really quite tasty mush, though. Knowing that the European practice is to weigh dry ingredients rather than use volumetric measure, I got on Amazon.uk.co and ordered the British version of the book. A week later I repeated the recipe, and sure enough, the American version had underestimated the flour and cornmeal by about fifty percent, at least the way I measure dry ingredients. This time the recipe came out as advertised. I'm wondering if anyone actually tested the American versions of the recipes, or if they were translated directly from the British version using standard conversions. At this point I would give the British version 5 stars, and the American version 4 stars.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents to the other reviews here by showing which recipes worked for me and which didn't. I had great luck with: butterscotch layer cake, rhubarb grunt, scones, rosemary loaf cake, baklava muffins, lemon syrup loaf, red currant clafouti.
Not so great luck with: Granny Boyd's cookies--I think the shortbready texture is correct, but Nigella must be using a different type (or amount) of cocoa--you can't taste chocolate at all w/just 2 tablespoons. Supper Onion Pie just wasn't so hot when I tried it.
Mixed: damp lemon-almond cake--it IS very buttery. I found after it sat a day or 2 it tasted great--but it was way too buttery when it was still warm.
chocolate loaf cake--I was a little ho-hum on this one.

Overall, this cookbook is great to read and to look at. Some of the recipes are great, and not all are difficult or time-consuming--I'm not sure why the one reviewer has such a bee in his/her bonnet about the "superwoman" aspect. Duh, she doesn't SUGGEST you rush home from work and bake one of these things EVERY NIGHT. Personally I find the author's approach very refreshing; she's upfront in each recipe about how hard or time-consuming it is, and some are very easy--the rhubarb grunt is so easy and SO good, and the same goes for Lily's scones. However, I'm very annoyed that the publisher wasn't more careful with the American edition in testing recipes--I do think that amounts and types of ingredients are off in some cases. Argh!

Most of the time when I browse the cookbook aisle at my local bookstore, I'm faced with a never-ending array of cookbooks with a couple of good recipes but mostly stuff that I'll never make. It is hard to find a cookbook that will end up being a treasured repository of personal and family favorites - they just don't come along that often.

When I picked this book up, I thought the name was just a good gimmick, a way to get people to take a look. I was doubtful that there would be much substance behind the nice photography and catchy name. How wrong I was! As I went through this book, the exciting and fun looking recipes amazed me. The recipes weren't all new or flashy, but they were uniformly inspiring. The first recipe in the book is actually a simple lemony loaf cake recipe... but it was the first thing I made because it sounded so yummy! On top of the recipes themselves, the commentary from the author helped me to become enthusiastic about the recipes and about baking in general.

The overall style of the cookbook is really nice. Great pictures for almost all of the recipes. Clear instructions in the recipes themselves. The introduction to each recipe was very well written. Many recipes had variations and other ideas listed.

This cookbook is definitely not for everyone. It does have a British slant both in the commentary and in some of the recipes. For example, there are several recipes for different kinds of mincemeat pies that I'm doubtful I'll be making anytime soon. There are also more subtle ways the British slant comes out, especially in the choice of ingredients. For me, this just added to the charm of the cookbook. The only negative comment I have about the cookbook is that in some cases, I would have liked an explanation of WHY a certain technique was being used. For example, in a recipe for a chocolate loaf cake, you are instructed to alternate adding tablespoons of hot water with tablespoons of flour. I would really like to know why and that type of explanation would have fit in well with the overall style of the book, but it was missing.

Overall, a great and fun cookbook that gave me some inspiration for the holiday season and actually got me back into my kitchen when I was feeling a bit "burnt out" on baking.

This absolutely extraordinary cookbook is a Godsend. After a long day at the office I come home, crack the book and flow into the relaxing rhythm of its recipes. The author calmly walks me through the process of creating masterpieces of culinary comfort. How about a steaming, aromatic potato, parsley and leek tart on a cold winter's night, or a layered butterscotch cake, dripping with heavenly goo?

Recipes, heretofore, considered best left to experts, are made ridiculously simple. Consider Nigella's puff pastry, a thing of beauty. It is produced (using a food processor, no less!) in one quarter of the standard time required in other recipes. As a matter of fact, this puff pastry is the only one I've ever made successfully, and it was a cinch. My husband and children went nuts when I pulled it from the oven. I just sat back and reaped the accolades.

First of all, do yourself a favor and try to catch at least one show of Nigella Bites before buying this book. Just like fingerprints, every cook's dishes look and taste different and her show will give you a feel for her cooking "personality", style and techniques If you relate to that ( I do), read on...
Next, keep in mind that Lawson creates dishes for those who are willing to expand their cooking repertoires, to be a bit experimental and even daring. If you don't like to use spices or have kids who hate them, you might want to avoid this book. But if you like a bit of snap and zing to your meals and think of cooking as akin to creating visual delights and new feasts for the palate, this book may be just what you need to broaden your horizons. I love the show; I love this book!

I love Nigella Lawson's writing, and her cookbooks are beautiful, but beware the amounts of ingredients, especially of butter and oils. Maybe the translations of ingredients for the American edition are at fault, but in most of the recipes I've tried so far, there was entirely too much butter -- so much that I found that the taste and scent of other ingredients such as almonds and lemons were almost totally drowned out. I have gone back and halved the amount of butter called for in many recipes, and the cakes, etc., have come out much better. I have also halved the number of eggs and experienced better results. I am not into low-fat baking recipes, but the fat content in many of these is so high it is almost ridiculous, and, without question, unnecessary. Definitely buy the book because it really is wonderful reading, but be careful and trust your instincts when it comes to amounts of ingredients. This is not a good book for beginner cooks: you really need to know your way around baking in order to fix up the recipes for good results. If you do have experience, however, it is a delight for good baking and cooking ideas. I have all of Nigella Lawson's books and do love them.

A passionate home cook that has been honing her cooking skills for the last 25 years, concentrating on Italian cooking for the last 10 years, writes this review. My favorite cookbooks are "The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute and "Culinary Artistry". With more than 500 cookbooks in my collection I am usually disappointed in my recent cookbook acquisitions. However, I feel that this book is a wonderful addition to any cookbook library.

The book is subdivided as follows:
1. Cakes
2. Cookies, Scones and Muffins
3. Pies
4. Desserts
5. Chocolate
6. Children
7. Christmas
8. Bread and Yeast
9. The Domestic Goddess's Pantry

I am one of those crazy people that cook to relax, but I am much better cook than baker. That being said, the recipes in this book seem to be fool proof. Every recipe that I have tried from this book has turned out perfectly every time. I cannot say the same thing for other baking endeavors in my past.

The recipe for Ricciarelli (Sienese macaroons) is absolutely amazing. Wow, are these cookies good and fairly easy to make. If you are looking for a couple of "knock their socks off" kind of recipes try the Molten Chocolate Babycakes, and the Irish Blue Cheese crackers. Both these recipes are simple yet very impressive.

I think that part of the reason I love Nigella is that Nigella and I both love Italy. Italian cooking heavily influenced this book, and that is a wonderful thing in my opinion. If you love to cook, but aren't as good a baker, give this book a try. I feel like such an accomplished baker when I use Nigella's recipes. This book gave me the confidence to try the more involved bakery products in "The Professional Chef" which turned out better than expected. In my opinion baking is much more a scientific process of chemical reactions. But, with a little more practice everyone's baking can improve. This book is a great place to start.