(3.5 stars) “While perfection might be possible in baking, in life, well, it’s impossible. The perfect wife, the perfect child, the perfect mother? None of us can be these. They’re mere fancies.” The search for a new ambassador for Eaden’s high-end supermarket chain brings five amateur bakers to a Buckinghamshire mansion for a Great British Bake Off-style competition. Kathleen Eaden, the author of The Art of Baking (1966), recently died, and the contest aims to find the new face of traditional British baking.

As the contestants produce their best Battenburg cakes, gingerbread houses, bread loaves, and afternoon tea treats, we delve into the histories of Victoria, Jenny, Karen, Claire and Mike and go deeper than the shorthand stereotypes (the desperate housewife, the middle-aged woman whose husband is cheating on her, the cougar with an eating disorder, the single mum and the widower). For many of them, food is a stand-in for the love they have sought from a parent or no longer get from a partner.

The third-person narrative switches between the perspectives of the four female participants and Kathleen Eaden herself, whose idealized image hides a painful path to motherhood. The setup – multiple contemporary stories responding to one historical one – reminded me a lot of J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements. I’d recommend this to Bake Off watchers but also to anyone who likes cozy, food-themed reads.