Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Desserts

Recipes for every palate and mood—the Semi-Homemade way creates an inspiring pairing of fresh ingredients and packaged foods.
Indulgent dessert creations that are as spectacular in taste as they are in presentation.
Unabashedly rich homey favorites, mouthwatering American classics, to-die-for chocolate delicacies, fabulous special occasion sweets, and festive holiday treasures.
Star-studded sweet treats from such celrbrities as Jamie Lee Curtis, Eric McCormack, and Katie Couric.
Sandra offers a special chapter of inspiring menus, creative tablescapes, and entertaining hints to make celebrating every occasion a snap!
Helpful Semi-Homemade hints and tips ensure success.
All-new bonus chapters feature shortcut cookies, light and healthful treats, and dazzling dessert gifts with amazing packaging and wrapping ideas for a "wow!" presentation.
Beautiful photo of finished food with every recipe plus hundreds of how-to photos to ensure success

Customer Reviews:

Sickeningly sweet and some even silly ideas.

By k b - August 29, 2004

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... read more

Breathtakingly Bad

By Vermyn - August 12, 2004

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.

Do not waste your time or money

By A Customer - December 4, 2003

This book is filled with recipes using name brand pre-processed food items. You don't eat a dessert everyday so why not use fresh ingredients without all the trans-fats, additives and preservatives that pre-processed food contain. Her idea of the a berry cobbler used canned berries and packaged sugar cookie dough, that would be so cloyingly sweet my teeth hurt just reading it. Please do not waste your money on this.