Customer Reviews

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Desserts

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Ms. Lee has no real grasp of balancing flavors within foods it seems. Having seen her recipes on her show, which are mostly included in her books, and read recipes in her books, it becomes obvious she's all about themes of the day rather than good food.

The idea of semi-homemade is nothing new. Some simple additions to homemade food purchased products are great. Ms. Lee does not seem to understand that food should taste good and balance flavor. Sickeningly sweet is really what I get from many of these recipes.

Sugar overkill and and obsession with canned frosting and angel food cakes.
She has at least 10 angel food cake creations in her book. If I recall correctly all of them call for purchased angel cake, which isn't the greatest (always slightly stale) especially when a boxed mix is simple to prepare--and still would fall into the semi-homemade concept.
But then she slathers all of these light airy cakes with heavy canned frosting. One cake included Corn Nuts as a decoration? Corn Nuts?

Immensely silly in what could have been a fun and romantic section are her ideas for romance:
Pixi Stix as a base for dusting powder and she asks you to dust it onto your bed and yourself.
Canned colored frosting as body paint.
Lip gloss with food color and Crisco.

Can you imagine the sticky, sweet, grainy mess (I'm no prude...but pixi sticks?)

The other complaint and it's extremely distracting throughout the book: Trademarked name brands throughout the entire book. She may not be getting kickbacks from them, but she certainly has shown who the book is being created for...and it's not the people who are trying to get good recipes and ideas. Seems to be a book created to get deals with all of these companies.

She basically thumbs her nose at good cooks and is insulting to those hoping to learn.
(sure there are some good recipes...but wading through the rest, definitely not worth the money.)

This book is filled with recipes using name brand pre-processed food items. You don't eat a dessert everyday so why not use fresh ingredients without all the trans-fats, additives and preservatives that pre-processed food contain. Her idea of the a berry cobbler used canned berries and packaged sugar cookie dough, that would be so cloyingly sweet my teeth hurt just reading it. Please do not waste your money on this.

OK, she recommends using flavored Crisco as a lipgloss!!

That should be enough to scare you away .. but there's more. And it's NOT good.

Cool Whip, oodles of canned frosting, canned biscuits. Dream Whip!! Yes, they still make it and she commands you to use it.

Anyone with a first grade education can buy an angel food cake and slather it with canned frosting. You do not need her 10 or so "recipes" for how to do this.

This is not a book for busy people who want to make something quick and tasty. It's a book for people would apply canned frosting to twinkies and serve it to guests.

I think somebody must have dared her to use as many brand name products as possible. I've got nothing against using mixes, but she takes it to extremes - in less time than it takes to thaw Cool Whip, you can toss cream and sugar into a mixer and have real whipped cream; if you have a stand mixer, you don't even have to pay much attention to it. And if you don't have a stand mixer, you should - that's something that really saves time and money. If you make desserts often, "from scratch" (generally just sugar, eggs, and flavoring) is cheaper than Cool Whip and frosting cans, even when you include the cost of the mixer.

Save your money - look on the sides of your cake mixes, they generally have ideas just as good as hers.

if I could use negative number I would. This woman and her way of not cooking is meant to encourage a distain for cooking. Too many people already avoid cooking and feed their families a steady diet of bad food, takeout and foods filled with fat, sugar and preservatives.

Please, if you love your family, don't buy this book. It belongs in the garbage right beside Sandra Lee's food.

This dessert book was awful. The bizarre combination of ingredients left you with a big blob of "too sweet" in your mouth. The other posts I've read here are obviously employed by the "lifestylist" herself. Bah Humbug. This book goes in the trash.

This book feeds into people's fears that cooking and baking are tasks that are completely unobtainable. It suggests that the only way to achieve good results is to use prepared, loaded-with-fats-and-salts products, throw them all together and claim it's "homemade" to impress your guests. Wouldn't it be just as easy-easy (and better tasting) to just go to a bakery
and buy desert?

Instead of following a "recipe" to mix many name-brand, packaged products together with practically no fresh ingredients and call it your own, how about using boxed mixes to save time, but blending them with fresh items to create simple, elegant desserts?

I've used boxed scone mix, prepared as recommended and used the warm scones to make a simple strawberry shortcakes, with fresh sliced strawberries and some vanilla ice cream on top. Does that mean I should get my own cookbook and tv show now?

But seriously, there aren't only two options here: slaving away all day to make ornate, fussy, complicated desserts from scratch or using all pre-packaged, unhealthy foods to come up with something that you can call semi-homemade because you added
lemon extract.

There's a middle ground in using some mixes and prepared foods when needed but also adding fresh ingredients whenever possible and of course, in learning to make simple, quick desserts that are all "home-made".

This book and its author, however, would like people to think that there are only those two extreme options available and that the "nothing is made from scratch" is a bragging point.

Amazon really needs to let you give a negative rating. I've seen the "author" on Food Network and was amazed at what a horrible show she has. When I saw her book I had to check it out. It's just as bad. If you really don't have time to cook do yourself and your family a favor and find a good local bakery, or at least choose Sara Lee over Sandra Lee.

P.S. If you think that Katie Couric really does her own cooking I have a some beachfront property in Oklahoma I'd love to sell you.

What a pointless book! It is clearly nothing more than a marketing ploy. After all, why make something using expensive, bland pre-fab ingredients that will not save you any time and are expensive. In most instances cooking from scratch will at worst take no longer, will cost signifigantly less and will contain higher quality ingredients. You have to ask yourself if this woman actually cooks. And then to promote the pollution of the environment by suggesting disposable dinnerware as a matter of course so as to save washing up...? If you want a pre-fab food book, there must be others out there that are better but there are certainly none worse.

I happened to catch Sandra Lee's show on the Food Network and decided to try her book. I have never really been a baker and like so many of us, I don't have a lot of time to cook so the whole "quick cooking" idea sounded appealing. Unfortunately while Sandra Lee does offer the shortcuts she promises, the food just isn't very good. And the desserts are expensive to make, which is doubly disappointing. I am willing to pay extra for convenience but some of these recipes cost way too much. Maybe this is just me but not one dessert I tried looked like the picture on the page. The photos are coffee table pretty and this is one of the reasons I bought the book, but it would take you hours to accomplish the same thing at home, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose.

There seems to be a lot of shortcut cooking books out there. Rachael Ray and Gale Gand are on the Food Network too. I bought their books too and the recipes are easier and taste a lot better. If you're looking for a book on quick desserts, you'd probably be happier with either one of them. Sandra Lee's book is very disappointing. I'm sure she has some good recipes but they are not in this book.