A Half Baked Idea: Winner of the Fortnum & Mason’s Debut Food Book Award

A moving, heartwarming and exquisitely funny memoir about one woman’s journey from criminal barrister to p tissi re

At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband.In the grief-stricken months that followed, Olivia came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Even when it went badly (which was often), cooking brought her comfort. So she concocted a plan- she would begin a newer, happier life, filled with fewer magistrates and more macarons. She left the bar for Le Cordon Bleu, plunging headfirst into the eccentric world of patisserie. 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.