A Half Baked Idea: How Grief, Love and Cake Took Me From the Courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu

'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