Watch Jennifer Garner Channel Her Inner Ina Garten

published Dec 23, 2017
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Celebrities, they’re just like us! They drink coffee, they walk in the park, and they love Ina Garten. This week movie star Jennifer Garner channeled her love of The Barefoot Contessa and filmed a “Pretend Cooking Show” for Facebook, and it’s adorable.

Garner’s homage to Ina Garten might be called a “Pretend Cooking Show,” but it’s not that much of a departure from the real thing. Garner’s gorgeous white kitchen is well-lit and full of high-end appliances and matching jars for different kinds of flour, sugar, etc. Her hair and makeup are done so she looks like … well, like a movie star, and she even has her own music.

Jennifer Garner starts off her video by expressing an abiding love for Ina Garten, and specifically Ina Garten’s recipe for Honey White Bread from Barefoot at Home.

“If you want to make your whole family happy over again and again, this is one recipe that if you get it down, you can do anything with it,” she says, holding up a copy of her cookbook.

“Bye, Ina!” she says, setting the book aside and giving the photo of Ina Garten on the cover a big kiss. “Love you, Ina.”

Garner explains that she likes to use Garten’s bread recipe as a versatile base for other projects.

“Here’s what I love about this dough — you can do anything with it. My mom made bread men for my sisters and me when we were little and they were our favorite things ever,” she says. “So that’s one. Cinnamon bread — everybody loves it, that’s two. And then a plain old loaf of honey white bread, that’s three.”

Then she proceeds to use the recipe to make “bread men,” by cutting the dough up into pieces and arranging them into vaguely humanoid proportions before baking them.

“The thing I love about making bread men with half your dough is they are ready right away. I never do a second rise with them — Sorry, Barefoot, I don’t know. I just never do,” she said with a shrug to the imaginary Ina Garten in her audience. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t know what you’re doing. These could not be less perfect, but my kids will love them.”

The audience sure seems to love her, too. In two days, the video has been viewed more than 61,000 times and shared more than 124 times. The commenters on Garner’s Facebook page adore her.

“I love how Jennifer is just a regular person!” one commenter said.

“Look, you have to do this more! We want to see real cooks, in their real kitchen, making imperfect yummies!” another gushed.

Garner’s pretend cooking show was super cute, and actually informative. You can’t go wrong with Ina Garten’s bread recipe, and Garner’s method of shaping the bread into little people will definitely be a hit with kids.

What do you think of Garner’s new foray into TV cooking?