Description

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'A tender and beautifully written tour-de-force on love, grief, hope and cake. If this is not the book of the summer, I will eat my wig. An absolute triumph' The Secret Barrister

'An utterly beautiful, moving, bittersweet book on love and loss. I loved it' Dolly Alderton

At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake, badly. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband. So she ate the cake, completely unaware that, 275 miles away, her mother was dying.

Afterwards, grief pushed Olivia into the kitchen. She came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Her cakes sank and her custard curdled. But she found comfort in jams and solace in pies, and what began as a distraction from grief became a way of building a life outside grief, a way of surviving, and making sense of her life without her mum.

And so she concocted a plan: she would begin a newer, happier life, filled with fewer magistrates and more macaroons. She left the bar and enrolled on the Diplôme de Pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu, plunging headfirst into the eccentric world of patisserie, with all its challenges, frustrations and culinary rewards - and a mind-boggling array of knives to boot.

Interspersed with recipes ranging from passionfruit pavlova to her mother's shepherd's pie, this is a heart-breaking, hilarious, life-affirming memoir about dealing with grief, falling in love and learning how to bake a really, really good cake.

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'A heart-wrenching yet humorous portrayal of grief, a delicious collection of recipes, an inspirational tale of changing careers, and a feel good love story' Vogue

'Funny, sharp and sad. I laughed so much (and I cried)' Ella Risbridger, author of Midnight Chicken

'A brilliant, brave and beautiful book: funny and charming; utterly inspiring and life-affirming' Olivia Sudjic

About the Author

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Olivia Potts is an award-winning food writer and chef. She read English at the University of Cambridge and practised as a criminal barrister for five years before deciding to leave the bar for a career in food. In 2017, she graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and was awarded the Young British Foodies Fresh Voices in Food Writing Award. She was recently shortlisted for the Fortnum and Masons Cookery Writer of the Year Prze 2019. Now Olivia is the cookery columnist for the Spectator, and also writes for the New Statesman, the Guardian and the Telegraph, among others. A Half Baked Idea is her first book.

Praise For…

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I cannot express how much I adored this book. It made me laugh, cry, salivate and, on no less than four occasions, resolve to learn patisserie and leave the criminal Bar. Olivia Potts has delivered a tender and beautifully written tour-de-force on the four tenets of the human experience; love, grief, hope and cake. If this is not the book of the summer, I will eat my wig. An absolute triumph - - The Secret Barrister

An utterly beautiful, moving, bittersweet book on love and loss. I loved it - - Dolly Alderton

A heart-wrenching yet humorous portrayal of grief, a delicious collection of recipes, an inspirational tale of changing careers, and a feel good love story - - Vogue

An honest, brave and funny account of what it is to love, to lose love and how to make macarons - - Red

I loved it so much. It's funny, sharp, sad and full of clear observations about food. I laughed so much (and I cried) - - Ella Risbridger, author of Midnight Chicken

A brilliant, brave and beautiful book: funny and charming; utterly inspiring and life-affirming. I loved it - - Olivia Sudjic

An open-hearted, uproariously funny, moving love story. It will make you laugh and cry in equal measure, and fall in love with baking, with eating, and with love itself. A remarkable book by an enormously talented writer - - Kate Young, author of The Little Library Cookbook

Her writing inspires resilience - - Woman & Home