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

Book Description
In the busy, stressful life of the modern woman, there could be more feel good 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.

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