the effect on your waistline, not a beginners guide
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I discovered Nigella by way of her Vogue food column, and was impressed that , like me, she considered not only cooking to be a delight and not a chore, but baking to be a cure for stress and not a cause of it. I was brought up cooking but when I came to uni I knew only two recipes, although those I knew off by heart. I had fairy cakes for slightly stressful times and double chocolate fudge cake for serious crises, and I could make a passable victoria cake if the situation was somewhere in between. I like cooking anyway but cooking and baking are very different - cooking is pottering around the kitchen throwing in whatever you have in the fridge to see what happens, baking requires you follow the recipe strictly, so it takes your mind off bad stuff that might be happening - hence the really complicated cakes for the worst times.
For me, How To Be A Domestic Goddess has therefore just been an extension of that way of life, whilst for most others it is probably a radical departure. The title is meant to be ironic - more about feeling like a domestic goddess than being one - the cookery equivalent of wearing sexy underwear, one might say. The idea is to take the fear and the displeasure out of the kitchen and put the fun back into baking.
The book is a nice chunky hardback, priced £25 (although normally on offer everywhere for £20 and there is a paperback scheduled for next christmas). Even if you never make anything out of it, it's very relaxing to leaf through and read on a rainy afternoon. However, I'd be very surprised if you read a recipe and didn't want to make it. Nigella makes all of the cakes sounds so easy, not least by her informal style of writing. While I think this is a good way of acheiving her aim of reducing the fear-element, and it's a style of cookery book I like anyway, I also think it a) makes the cakes seem deceptively easy and b)assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge and experience. It's very hard for me to be certain about the latter point, given my background, but putting myself in the shoes of someone who has never baked before I'm not sure I would like to start here.
Having said that, baking is NOT difficult - most cakes follow the simple rules of cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the flour, into a greased baking tin, in the oven at about 180 degrees. Simple. For those of you that are baking virgins, rather than Domestic Goddess I would suggest you start with a kids cookery book until you get the hang of the basic idea. However once you have mastered a few simple skills, then get thee to Nigella.
Domestic Goddess is divided into sections of : cakes, biscuits, pies, puddings, chocolate, children, christmas, bread and yeast and the domestic goddess' larder. I have made recipes out of all sections except for the last three and so my opinion will be based on those, and updated when I get around to the others (I'm working my way through the book, as can be traced by a collection of sponge blobs dried onto the pages of recipes I've followed!)
The recipes all start with a description of the cake which will have your mouth watering, as well as making clear which occassion it is most suitable for making. There aren't photos for all of the cakes but what photos there are look good and tasty without being perfect - particularly the courgette cake, which Nigella admits was a mistake to ice with green icing! The ingredients are laid out clearly and then the recipe is written in the same informal chatty style. This is another reason why I suggest you use other cookery books first to familiarise yourself with the process, because it is not laid out in step-by-step bullet point fashion. One of the benefits of this style is that Nigella constantly compares the size of dollops to fruit, mentions what consistency or colour the mixture should be, which is very reassuring if you're making a new cake and not entirely sure with what should be happening now, especially if it's an unusual variation for the usual method, such a the fabulous chocolate cake that involves 250ml of boiling water.
I have had a couple of cake disasters whilst using this book (although, to be fair, I've had disasters using other too). One was the cupcakes, despite these being her signature item (there is a picture of one on the cover) and something I am used to making. However I think the failure is much more likely to have been due to my oven (which was having a long hard day) than her recipe, so that should be bypassed. The other was a butterscoth layer cake which involved making caramel. It is quite a hard process to describe but I don't honestly think Nigella did a particularly good job of it and she assumes too much that you know what you're doing in this particular case. She said the caramel had to be burnt but I think I rather overburnt it - although the cake itself was fine.
However all the other cakes I've made have been fabulous and tasted exactly as her description described. There are enough recipes in the book to keep you going for a few years without repetition, and several recipes also list variations, so if you get good at one cake, you can make it in a variety of ways with relative confidence.
This concludes my review of this wonderful book but I must also mention several pieces of need-to-know information about owning it: *Whilst most of the cakes use standard ingredients, be prepared to buy a variety of them, e.g. many many different kinds of sugars. I had seven at the last count which i think is extravagent by anybody's standards, let along by your average student's.
*Don't own this book whilst on a diet. Cakes need to be made with butter not margerine, or they become too dry and most cakes require a whole packet of butter.
*Nigella has a thing about Italian 00 flour. You don't need to use it, but the cakes are better with it - it's much lighter than normal flour. I found it (eventually!) in a wholefood shop for 75p for a bag, but I have heard that you might be able to find it in waitrose.
*Read the recipe carefully before you start to make sure it doesn't include one of those 'now put the mixture into your food processor...' sentences if you don't actually own a food processor (Nigella thinks we all do, although she doesn't seem to resort to it too often).
*Don't make things in the food processor if you don't have to. Not only is it lazy but it destroys the cathartic power of baking. The initial creaming together of the butter and sugar (tip: if your butter isn't soft enough then put it in the microwave on defrost for 30 seconds) is good for ridding yourself of pent up aggression.
*After making your own cakes you will never want to eat another shop bought cake - they taste horrible.
*Buy an apron. It's impossible to make a cake without covering yourself with flour.
I'm rather suspicious of people who don't like food enough to make it themselves, so I sincerely believe that everyone should own this book. Rather cake than prozac.
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