Dive into Nigella's cookbooks before her GBBO debut

Fans of Nigella Lawson and the Great British Bake Off are counting down the days until the new season of the show—Nigella's first as cohost with Paul Hollywood—airs in September. If you've never discovered the delight that is a Nigella Lawson cookbook, or if you just want to reacquaint yourself with her effortless warmth and charm, there is no better time than now to dive into one of many bestselling cookbooks she has written over the last three decades.

Nigella Express, released in 2007, is on the most Member bookshelves (6213 to be exact), while 2010's Nigella Kitchen has the most recipe notes (223). That is followed closely by 2020's Cook, Eat, Repeat (206) and Nigella Express (204). Perhaps most pertinent to the upcoming season of GBBO is 2000's How To Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Food (UK), the book that made her a culinary superstar.

When Nigella first pitched the concept of How to Be a Domestic Goddess, she said her publisher was skeptical. “In the UK, at any rate, baking was seen as the province of some notional rural granny, an uncool throwback that had nothing to do with The Way We Live Now,” she told Woman and Home in 2025, on the book's 25th anniversary. With the popularity of GBBO and baking books in general, it can be difficult to imagine a time when baking did not rate in the national zeitgeist.

As we now know, the book was a smashing success, followed by a string of wonderful cookbooks. Besides the excellent recipes and clear instructions that are a delight to read, there is another reason for Nigella’s continued success, and that is her warm and approachable persona, which should shine through in her judging on GBBO. She's no stranger to television, hosting programs like Nigella Bites and Nigellissima, and this also won't be her first time judging a reality cooking competition. Nigella was one of the three judges on a special battle of Iron Chef America, which pitted White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali.