Vallery Lomas may not be a household name, but she should be. She won The Great American Baking Show. She traveled to England and baked it out in the iconic tent. She got a Paul Hollywood handshake, won Star Baker during Bread Week, and no one got to see her struggle to win the season. Lomas was on the show the season that the #MeToo movement hit the professional kitchens, and one of the judges of her season came under scrutiny for his treatment of female employees. The show premiered, airing the first two shows back to back, and then got swept under the rug. But she’s back with her own cookbook, to tell her story and show off her amazing bakes.
Lomas grew up in Louisiana, learning to bake from her grandmothers. She went to law school and practiced in New York, but she spent time in Paris when she could, learning about French pastries. She started her food blog, and then her Instagram account, and that’s when casting directors came calling. But even after her triumph and tragedy with The Great American Baking Show, Lomas refused to give up on her dreams of baking. So she went back to the kitchen, turned on her oven, and kept finding new inspiration for her recipes.
Life Is What You Bake It is her first cookbook, and it is filled with inventive recipes, family favorites, lots of gorgeous photography, and inspiring personal stories of growing up, law school, traveling, and baking. There is her Accordion Biscuits, based on the recipe that her great-grandmother would bake for her father and the rest of her grandsons, and they would eat them and eat more of them and eat even more, covered in the homemade preserves made with the fruit her father had gathered from their orchard.
There is her Lemon Chiffon Cake, which her boss tasted and then dreamed she was a contestant on The Great British Bake Off. When she’d made it for him for his birthday, she’d auditioned for the American version of the show but hadn’t heard if she made it on. And she hadn’t yet told anyone anything about it. There is a recipe for her Vanilla Gamache Macarons, from when she was a young lawyer in Manhattan with a weekend business baking and selling macarons.
There is the Candied Sweet Potato Pie, based on her mother’s recipe, because every good Southern family has that one person with the iconic sweet potato pie. And the Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Brownies based on the recipe she made with a friend of hers in Italy when they were homesick for the States and those box brownie mixes. They didn’t have a mix. They didn’t have much more than one pot and a fork, but they managed to create a fudgy brownie that made them feel like home was close by.
And there are the recipes from her time on the show. The German Chocolate Sandwich Cookies that Paul Hollywood loved and the Gingerbread Cookie recipe that she used to build her Manhattan brownstone, that came crashing down just as time was called in the challenge. Luckily the judges loved the flavor, and she continued to bake. But her experience being surrounded by cameras as her gingerbread house came buckling down was something she’d never forget. And there is the recipe for Beignet Fingers, from the time she appeared on The Chew to make beignets. It was her first time doing a live cooking segment for a major television show, and she was nervous, but she got out there and had a lot of fun. I mean, how could you not, with Carla Hall and Clinton Kelly right there with you?
With these dozens of recipes, Lomas also includes pro tips for things every aspiring baker needs to know. There are articles on things like knowing which pie crust to use, how to fry a doughnut, how to troubleshoot problems with your cookies, how to get the most from a fresh vanilla bean. She even includes a scannable code that you can use to go directly to her video tutorials on topics like piping macarons, making meringue, or determining gluten development in your breads.
Frankly, there are a lot of things to like about this cookbook. Lomas takes the time to explain her techniques, talking about all the recipe testing that went into these ideas. The photographs are stunning (note to self: don’t read then when you’re hungry!). The insider stories of The Great American Baking Show were lots of fun to read. But my favorite thing about this cookbook is her personal stories about her family, about her travels, about her struggles with the bar exam. It’s when she talks about her memories, her inspiration, her setbacks, and her triumphs that I feel most connected to these recipes and to the desire to express myself through baking. Her stories are powerful, and I think that’s what draws people to her, the openness she displays. I’m just so sorry that one person’s misdeeds means that we don’t get to see her triumph in the tent, because I think that would be as inspiring as this cookbook.
A copy of Life Is What You Bake It was provided by Clarkson Potter through their Ambassador program for a free and unbiased review, with many thanks.
