A HALF BAKED IDEA
HOW GRIEF, LOVE AND CAKE TOOK ME FROM THE COURTROOM TO LE CORDON BLEU
When her mother died, Olivia Potts, then starting her law career, was overwhelmed with grief. According to Laura Freeman in the Times, Potts’s description is ‘devastating’: ‘She writes of the nitty-gritty of grief. When the death of someone close to you comes, you will be wearing the wrong shoes (the skittering heels from the night before), you will have to take the call in someone else’s loo, your phone will run out of battery.’
Potts found solace in cooking, in particular baking. She left behind a promising future as a barrister and embarked on an unknown but ultimately more fulfilling one as a creator of delicious, inventive patisserie. In the Guardian, PD Smith found this memoir ‘moving, funny and mouth-watering in equal measure’. She even includes a recipe with each chapter. ‘I held my breath reading Olivia’s account of making multi-layered entremets’ Baking queen Prue Leith in the
Spectator marvelled at what could be squeezed from a profiterole: ‘There is a lot of patisserie in it. But non-cooks should take a chance, and be amazed at what drama there can be in a patisserie exam. I held my breath reading Olivia’s account of making multi-layered entremets (one large and two single portions) for her final test.’
Freeman in fact wondered if the book really needed all the legal stuff: ‘The (unavoidable) structural flaw in the book is that you have to have a couple of chapters in the courtroom before you can get to the kitchen. The legal part seems slow. Enough with the Bar, on with the crème brûlée!’ But she nonetheless found ‘wit and warmth on every page. This is a book of courage, consolation and more custard than you can shake a whisk at.’