Contessa Confessions & Coconut Cupcakes: Thoughts on Ina Garten's Memoir

And also some baking

I began cooking in a world where Ina Garten was already an established legend. I bought my first Ina book in 2016, Cooking for Jeffrey, because I had heard a lot about her and read a glowing review of the book, maybe on Jezebel.

And the first few recipes I tried from that book were absolute disasters. I knew not about Diamond Crystal kosher salt being two times as salty as Morton, and so I served a painfully salty butternut squash hummus to friends.

I have since learned to reduce the amount of plebeian salt (Sam’s Club sea salt these days, thanks) that I use, and I have cooked many great recipes—and some fine recipes—from Garten’s books. I own every single one now.

Photographic proof.

While I like Ina and respect her commitment to quality, I am not an Ina superfan. I am a regular fan, reluctant to bestow a royal title on any one person, mostly because I find that a sensible way to move through the world.

The upshot from all of this is that I was modestly excited for Ina’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, if not a bit disappointed that it wasn’t a cookbook. I put a library hold on the audiobook, read the Ina profile in The New Yorker, and moved on with my life, confidently believing I had a sense of what was contained therein. If nothing else, it would be fun thing to listen to on my 45-minute drive to the grocery store whenever my kid fell asleep and I could turn off the Elmo.

What was I expecting? I suppose more of the same narrative that I absorbed about Ina through the cultural zeitgeist plus the combination of knowing her through her cookbooks and TV shows. To me, she has always conveyed simplistic joviality, and I absorbed her as a representation of entertaining perfection. So I expected the narrative of the infallible Ina: the recipes always succeed, the choices are always tasteful, Jeffrey is the best, and being rich—how easy is that?

Getting Into Be Ready When the Luck Happens

What I found in the memoir, however, was so much more complex and interesting. Ina, as a person, is different than my shallow conception. She is a bit reckless, constantly jumping into things without thinking about the consequences. She is strong-minded, self-doubting, and incredibly hard-working. She spent a good chunk of her life flailing around trying to find a purpose, she hated school, she partied so hard in the Hamptons with her staff once that someone had to pull her out of a stranger’s pool.

Be Ready When the Libby Hold Comes Through

The book, to my mind, can be divided into three rough parts. The first is the pre-Barefoot Contessa years. This includes all of Ina’s upbringing, her marriage to Jeffrey, her boring DC jobs, and everything else up to her purchase of the Barefoot Contessa store in 1978.

Following this is, to my mind, the meatiest and most fascinating section. The middle part is about Ina as an entrepreneur, figuring out how to run, grow, and walk away from Barefoot Contessa.

Then, it covers Ina’s transition into cookbook author and TV star in her 50s. This part is really inspiring and occasionally hilarious, like when Martha Stewart’s crew tried to film a TV show at Ina’s house, breaking the septic system, and spewing sewage everywhere. Ina comes off as strong, competent, collaborative, and a generous mentor. She messes up, she problem solves, she runs out of money, she reinvents herself, she holds convictions. I loved it.

Finally, there is the last part. All memoirs, as a function, tend to have less-realized concluding sections. The closer authors get to the present, the less perspective they have. The same can be said for the final parts of this book. They are gossipy and bright, mostly about celebrity friends and backgrounders on viral moments. While the rest of the book feels reflective and candid, Ina recedes into her polished image in this part. Life is just a happy dinner party, and all the famous guests are so fun.

That is not to say she is baring her soul entirely through the rest of the book. She puts barriers up around Jeffrey and her relationship with him. Just as the food world hails Ina as a flawless deity, so too does Ina prostrate before her higher power: Jeffrey. Jeffrey saves her and supports her. Like Ina’s recipes, Jeffrey never fails.

By now, all the most salacious tidbits of the book have been pulled and quoted, and if you pay any attention you probably know that in the 1970s, Ina and Jeffrey separated briefly. Still, Ina shows that Jeffrey was faultless. I believe no one owes us any story about themselves that they don’t want to tell, and I greatly respect the protection Ina puts around Jeffrey.

I think it also reveals something about this book on the whole. Ina has invited us in, but she is still our ever-gracious host. She’s going to make us feel good for the night. She’s arranged everything just so, according to her vision. But don’t worry about the mess, and please, let’s keep the conversation mostly light, shall we? We don’t need to dwell on that. Now who needs another drink?

Cooking with Ina

Of course, part of reading this book is learning about food, and sending you running into the kitchen. (For example, did everyone but me know that Chicken Marbella is pronounced “Mar-BEY-ya”?!)

There are three recipes included with the memoir: Coq au Vin, Coconut Cupcakes, and Outrageous Brownies. Due to current kitchen constraints (my oven in broken), I chose to make Coconut Cupcakes in my toaster oven, which will not fit the entire sheet pan requisite for the brownies.

Coconut Cupcake

This recipe is classic Barefoot Contessa fare, and one of the store’s most famous. The coconut flavor comes entirely from shredded coconut in the batter and atop the cupcake. No coconut extract, flour, oil, or sugar here (many of these ingredients being obscure to nonexistent at the recipe’s creation). There is almond extract in both the cake and the cream cheese icing, which makes that more of a dominant flavor.

The yields for these Barefoot Contessa Recipes are pretty huge. While ostensibly enough for 18-20 large cupcakes, I got 24 big cupcakes cooked in an average pan. The muffin tops spread out over the top of the pan, I think by design, but my life was made easier when I sprayed the top of the pan with cooking spray before baking the second batch so I didn’t have to extract them so carefully.

I made a half batch of icing, which turned out to be more than enough to frost the whole batch, plus some leftover.

Upon first taste, the cupcakes were distinctive. My husband declared they tasted like something from the 80s or 90s. With further discussion, we determined there was a richness that harkened to another time and place.

While I mostly zone out while baking, I decided to compare the recipe to other cupcakes to see if it was, in fact, richer.

And it is! Significantly! I combed my cookbook collections for cupcakes—classic cupcakes, contemporary cupcakes, current cupcakes—only to find that every single one called for, at most, eight tablespoons of butter per twelve cupcakes. Ina, in contrast, called for twelve—50% more butter. On top of that, most recipes included one to two large eggs max per twelve cupcakes, whereas Ina’s recipe called for two-and-a-half extra-large eggs.

I am worlds away from the Hamptons of the 1980s, but, opulent cupcake in hand, it tastes like I’m right there in that store, rubbing shoulders with Lauren Bacall and Steven Spielberg, asking for a roast chicken to go.