Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Dessert Book!
Review: I have always been cooking challenged in the kitchen. So when I tried making something from this book, I was sceptical. But the recipe turned out terrific! My date loved it, too, and couldn't believe I made it. I had to show him the book to prove it! I can't wait to try another recipe from this book. Maybe my inability to cook days are over!
Rating:
Summary: I recommend this book to everyone!
Review: I have heard so much about this book, and was so excited to run out and buy it! I am so glad that I did! I bought it just in time for Halloween. My children and I enjoyed making the Halloween treats together so much that we have made cooking in the kitchen a weekly family event!
Ofcourse the crunchy dounut eyeballs were their favorite. We made the caramel parfaits, (which were so easy) and the pumkin cake with the ghost on top. Only you Sandra would have thought of that! The recipes are so simple and easy that I would recommend this book to everyone!
Rating:
Summary: A busy woman's dream cookbook
Review: I loved this cookbook! I bought it after seeing Sandra Lee on the Food Network and was immediately intrigued and inspired! For anyone who needs the guesswork taken out of cooking...especially dessert, this is the cookbook for you!I've been so successful with all the recipes and each and everyone has been better than I ever would have imagined so I actually went out and bought the first cookbook as well..if only I'd known about it earlier!
I've thrown 3 dinner parties this last month and all my friends and family were so impressed because I would never usually have the time. Bravo Sandra Lee...can't wait to see what else will follow!!
Rating:
Summary: a wonderful dessert book and so easy
Review: I think Sandra Lee's newest book is fantastic. It is so simple to use and the results are quick. I have been totally in awe of all of her new adventures over the internet and learned so much, in the Semi-Homemade magazine and the TV show on Food Network every Saturday morning here in the Pacific Northwest.
I am not much of a cook, I do not find much pleasure in all the time and preparation it takes to make a gormet meal anymore. My idea of cooking is to get out of the kitchen as soon as possible. However with Sandra's two books underarm, it doesn't take much time to feed my husband and I. Since I do not have the luxury of someone to cook for us, my husband finds the books a plus ... he gets to have some good food again. I would recommend both books to anyone .....
Rating: 
Summary: Did she write this on a dare?
Review: I think somebody must have dared her to use as many brand name products as possible. I've got nothing against using mixes, but she takes it to extremes - in less time than it takes to thaw Cool Whip, you can toss cream and sugar into a mixer and have real whipped cream; if you have a stand mixer, you don't even have to pay much attention to it. And if you don't have a stand mixer, you should - that's something that really saves time and money. If you make desserts often, "from scratch" (generally just sugar, eggs, and flavoring) is cheaper than Cool Whip and frosting cans, even when you include the cost of the mixer. Save your money - look on the sides of your cake mixes, they generally have ideas just as good as hers.
Rating:
Summary: I wish there was a rating lower than 1...
Review: if I could use negative number I would. This woman and her way of not cooking is meant to encourage a distain for cooking. Too many people already avoid cooking and feed their families a steady diet of bad food, takeout and foods filled with fat, sugar and preservatives. Please, if you love your family, don't buy this book. It belongs in the garbage right beside Sandra Lee's food.
Rating:
Summary: Sickeningly sweet and some even silly ideas.
Review: Ms. Lee has no real grasp of balancing flavors within foods it seems. Having seen her recipes on her show, which are mostly included in her books, and read recipes in her books, it becomes obvious she's all about themes of the day rather than good food.
The idea of semi-homemade is nothing new. Some simple additions to homemade food purchased products are great. Ms. Lee does not seem to understand that food should taste good and balance flavor. Sickeningly sweet is really what I get from many of these recipes.
Sugar overkill and and obsession with canned frosting and angel food cakes.
She has at least 10 angel food cake creations in her book. If I recall correctly all of them call for purchased angel cake, which isn't the greatest (always slightly stale) especially when a boxed mix is simple to prepare--and still would fall into the semi-homemade concept.
But then she slathers all of these light airy cakes with heavy canned frosting. One cake included Corn Nuts as a decoration? Corn Nuts?
Immensely silly in what could have been a fun and romantic section are her ideas for romance:
Pixi Stix as a base for dusting powder and she asks you to dust it onto your bed and yourself.
Canned colored frosting as body paint.
Lip gloss with food color and Crisco.
Can you imagine the sticky, sweet, grainy mess (I'm no prude...but pixi sticks?)
The other complaint and it's extremely distracting throughout the book: Trademarked name brands throughout the entire book. She may not be getting kickbacks from them, but she certainly has shown who the book is being created for...and it's not the people who are trying to get good recipes and ideas. Seems to be a book created to get deals with all of these companies.
She basically thumbs her nose at good cooks and is insulting to those hoping to learn.
(sure there are some good recipes...but wading through the rest, definitely not worth the money.)
Rating:
Summary: This book is a real treat
Review: My wife (a registered nurse) received this book by Sandra Lee as a gift from me. I am a man of considerable taste and refinement, and when I saw this wonderful cookbook with its cornucopia of toothsome recipes, I knew it would make the perfect Valentine's Day treat. And such a treat it is! Each and every recipe in this book, if read correctly and followed exactly, will produce a dessert worthy of serving to your most distinguished guests. Many of our friends here in our exclusive resort community have requested copies of the recipes. Sandra Lee is nothing short of a culinary genius!
Rating:
Summary: Breathtakingly Bad
Review: OK, she recommends using flavored Crisco as a lipgloss!!
That should be enough to scare you away .. but there's more. And it's NOT good.
Cool Whip, oodles of canned frosting, canned biscuits. Dream Whip!! Yes, they still make it and she commands you to use it.
Anyone with a first grade education can buy an angel food cake and slather it with canned frosting. You do not need her 10 or so "recipes" for how to do this.
This is not a book for busy people who want to make something quick and tasty. It's a book for people would apply canned frosting to twinkies and serve it to guests.
Rating:
Summary: There are better ways to achieve easy and delicious
Review: This book feeds into people's fears that cooking and baking are tasks that are completely unobtainable. It suggests that the only way to achieve good results is to use prepared, loaded-with-fats-and-salts products, throw them all together and claim it's "homemade" to impress your guests. Wouldn't it be just as easy-easy (and better tasting) to just go to a bakery
and buy desert?
Instead of following a "recipe" to mix many name-brand, packaged products together with practically no fresh ingredients and call it your own, how about using boxed mixes to save time, but blending them with fresh items to create simple, elegant desserts?
I've used boxed scone mix, prepared as recommended and used the warm scones to make a simple strawberry shortcakes, with fresh sliced strawberries and some vanilla ice cream on top. Does that mean I should get my own cookbook and tv show now?
But seriously, there aren't only two options here: slaving away all day to make ornate, fussy, complicated desserts from scratch or using all pre-packaged, unhealthy foods to come up with something that you can call semi-homemade because you added
lemon extract.
There's a middle ground in using some mixes and prepared foods when needed but also adding fresh ingredients whenever possible and of course, in learning to make simple, quick desserts that are all "home-made".
This book and its author, however, would like people to think that there are only those two extreme options available and that the "nothing is made from scratch" is a bragging point.
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