Our Verdict: Sweet Enough
Kirstin: I’ve been thinking a lot this month about how I feel about this book. I was so very excited to have new Alison Roman content in my life. But the bottom line is that I was disappointed. Now this could have been because as you all know, I am not a baker. Maybe I chose the wrong recipes, maybe it was my inexperience with baking. Maybe I just don’t like baking, with all the bowls and mixers. And the washing up. Let’s not forget that part either. Roman has a double spread near the front of the book; love hate in which she writes about all the things she loves and hates about baking. I hoped when I bought this book that I would be more in the love camp by the end of the month but no, I am very firmly in the hate camp. This is not all down to Roman. Of course it isn’t, but I think I had hoped this book might sway my feelings about baking and that was a big ask. That said, I can’t wait to see what Roman gets up to next, but I am hoping that she chooses to write a book like her previous books where the dessert recipes are a section at the back and that they are chosen because the effort to taste ratio is in that Alison Roman sweet spot of her other recipes.
Maureen: Yup. “Disappointment” is the word I’d use too. Like you, I was really looking forward to this, but it ended up being, as the Brits like to say, a damp squib. [For those of you who don’t know, a damp squib is literally a damp firework, but it means something that fails to satisfy expectations.] To be fair, some of the recipes were delicious, but that occurred only after I learned the hard way not to trust the timings. It’s unfortunate because I do love Alison Roman’s recipes. She’s famous for all the Thes: The Cookie. The Stew. The Pasta.
She says herself in the introduction that she’s not a huge fan of desserts, which begs the question: why write an entire cookbook about them? It wasn’t the worst cookbook we’ve ever reviewed, but it’s far from the best, either. It is, to use a football analogy, solidly mid-table. But given how cookbooks we’ve now cooked from, that’s damning with faint praise.
