Second Acts and Other Happy Endings: Confections of a Closet Master Baker Launches Today

I am not a therapist. I am not a priest, rabbi or minister. But if the delicious, new, wickedly funny, confessional memoir with recipes by baker Gesine Bullock-Prado is any hint at what I have been missing, I might have to rethink the second act of my life, and start hearing confessions. But that is exactly what "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" is all about, the choice we get to script the second act of our lives and have the story play out as we wish and end as we dream it might. In the second act we get to find our true selves, shed our agendas and regrettable regimens for that which makes us truly happy. It is how to get rich. As in having the richest life possible and living up to one's potential. Sadly, it is where Julie Powell left off in Julie & Julia, and where Bullock-Prado takes up and soars. This book is as impossible to put down as a real passionfruit French macaroon. Ironic that for this recovering lawyer and Hollywood insider that her path might inevitably lead back to story-telling and the business she escaped from. Enlightenment takes many strange forms and travels many twisty routes. This one is a beauty. It is real and compelling and current and charming. It is almost unfair how smart this book is. The use of language is sharp and precise and sophisticated. It is studded with bon mots, expletives and German love taps like currants ( or in this case dried cranberries, p.42) in the perfect scone; just right. This is a women who clearly loves words as much as she loves sweets, and whose mastery of both is on full display in this memoir like a full bake shop case at the start of the day. Confession time of my own. At the risk of losing my culinary credibility, and in spite of the fact that I am a pretty good cook who uses love & butter in every dish. I have a James Beard Award, my own TV & radio programs about food, and I have been a judge in the National Pie Championships, but no matter how I try, I am a terrible baker. I suck. I couldn't bake my way out of a paper bag. (My sister came into the kitchen one time and asked incredulously " what the hell are you making? every pan in the house cake?" Actually that day I was attempting to make popovers. Don't ask. ) In the inspiring self-exploratory spirit of this book I offer my own culinary vulnerability as context. Baking is hard. I know what I am doing and it is really difficult to do well enough to serve to family & Friends, let alone to sell to others. Like all seemingly simple things it requires the gifts of patience, precision,love and faith. All things I like to think I have. Still my popovers sink. Gesine Bullock-Prado's popovers don't sink and her French macaroons are delicious, and her Opera Cake is majestic. "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" on sale September 8, 2009 from Broadway Books is perfect. If you thought Eat,Pray, Love motivating and found Julie & Julia was worthy you will love Confections. We cheer the little sweet-toothed smarty-pants who has risen to discover her own crown and claim to the Diva DNA she was born with. The Diva of Dough, which for this daughter of an Opera star, reads like a satisfying Hollywood ending. Tune in to "Sunday Brunch" on the Food & Wine Radio Network Sunday September 13, 2009 at 2pm AZ time on www.kvoi.com for a live, exclusive interview with the author. Her well written blog is http://www.confectionsofamasterbaker.blogspot.com/