Review: Lola Berry’s The Happy Cookbook

COOKBOOK REVIEW

The Healthy Cookbook by Lola Berry

Price: $24

Health rating: ★★★★★

Easy to follow recipes: ★★★★

Recipes tried:

• Coconana-berry smoothie. Pg 56
• Chia puddings with granola and mixed berries. Pg 25
• Crunchy paleo granola. Pg 20
• Crispy salmon and kale mix-up with avocado and dill. Pg 135
• Lemon coconut ice slice. Pg 213

Good for: anyone lacking healthy food inspiration. If you are looking for healthy ways to make old favourites or want a starting point for eating healthy without sacrificing flavour, then this book is for you.

 

 

Initial thoughts: I was already a big fan of Lola before I purchased this book. My vast collection of cookbooks already contained ‘The 20/20 Diet’ and ‘The 20/20 Diet Cookbook’, so adding her latest addition, the ‘Happy Cookbook’ was a no brainer.

This isn’t your average cookbook, Lola’s personality radiates from the pages and her colloquial style of writing often has you laughing as you sift through the beautifully shot and presented recipes. This cookbook doesn’t use refined sugar, gluten, processed grains and only a small amount of dairy, which mirrors the messages in her previous books. Lola’s food is both very satisfying and healthy, meaning there is no room for guilt, not even in the Divine Desserts and Sweet Treats chapters, which is what you would expect from a qualified nutritionist. Aside from the recipes, this book is beautiful to look at, it has been wonderfully designed and could almost sit pride of place on you coffee table, as well as on your pantry bookshelf. Lola breaks up the recipes, (all 130 of them!) with little nuggets of wisdom and healthy tips on the likes of exercise, food choices and mindfulness adding to the message of healthy living, not just healthy food, that the book portrays.

What’s great: Icons indicating which recipes are gluten free, dairy free, vegan and fructose-friendly. Lots of vegetarian and Paleo recipes. Relatively easy to make, not many steps and not too time consuming.

 

What needs to be improved: As with many healthy cookbooks, a lot of the recipes, especially the baked goods require some very niche products, bee pollen, vanilla pods, coconut nectar etc, which are often hard to find and can be expensive, however, if this bothers you, they are easy to sub-out for more readily available ingredients.
Also, I have tried a couple of Lola’s sweet slices and neither of them came out edible, the texture was off as well as the flavours, and neither had that delicious sticky sweetness you would expect from a dessert, albeit a healthy dessert. I will try a few more of the sweets and post an update.

 

This is the first cookbook review I have posted on the blog! What are your thoughts? Keen to see more? If so let me know any books you would like to see featured in the comments below. 🙂