Sunday Quote is glad the election is over
Read More“Don’t know who will publish my book. Don’t know at all. No reason to let it slide though. Must keep at it. Necessary.”
~John Steinbeck
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Nutella Swirl Muffins
Some foods are delicious but not particularly photogenic. These Pumpkin Nutella Swirl Muffins, however, have it all going on.
Chocolate and pumpkin are a fantastic pairing. Nutella works so well here, creating a shiny chocolatey cap to these bright orange muffins.
The texture of these is magnificent: cakey and fresh, with a light pumpkin taste. Plus Nutella. We can’t forget the Nutella.
Speaking of which… if your Nutella is older or you’re near the bottom of the jar, it can be lumpy and hard to spread. To fix that, put the Nutella in a microwave-safe dish and give it a zap in the microwave.
Trust me, that lumpy Nutella may still be delicious, but you want it to be soft enough to create a beautiful swirl on these muffins!
Modified from The Novice Chef.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Nutella Swirl Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 Tablespoons milk or almond milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup Nutella or other hazelnut cocoa spread
Instructions
- Preheat oven at 350-degrees. Line muffin pan with liners and apply nonstick spray.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In large bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, white sugar, and brown sugar. Beat in the egg, vegetable oil, milk, and vanilla extract. Slowly mix in the dry mixture until it is just blended.
- Add the batter to the muffin pan, filling each about 3/4 full. Top each muffin with about a teaspoon of Nutella and use a butter knife to swirl it into the batter.
- Bake muffins for 14-16 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in a center muffin comes out clean.
- Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in a sealed container.
- OM NOM NOM!
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Sunday Quote doesn’t change her clocks
Read More“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
~William Faulkner
New Stories and Poems for November
My focus has been on books this past while, but I still have shorter works coming out as well. Here’s the latest!
Novelocity
– 5 Big Reasons Literary Agents are Important Beyond the Book Deal
Stories
– “Moon Skin,” Swords & Steam Short Stories
– “A Recipe for Rain and Rainbows” (reprint), Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith
Poetry
– “Witch and Stick,” New Myths issue 36
– “The Death of the Horse,” Remixt Magazine Volume 1 Issue 8
– “Morning During Migration Season” and “Horse and Girl,” Star*line 39.4
#SFWAPro
Read MoreGuest: Author Tina Connolly Talks About SERIOUSLY SHIFTED, a special comic, & book tour
I’m excited to welcome Tina Connolly today! She’s the author of a whole pile of awesome novels from Tor and Tor Teen, plus a short story collection from Fairwood Press (that I happened to blurb). Her latest is the second book in her funny and fun YA series about a teenage girl, witchcraft, and all sorts of mayhem. Tina is kicking off a book tour and has an especially nifty incentive for buying her book: a one-page comic!
One of the most fun things about the Seriously Wicked series has been getting to collaborate with other artists. The series overall is about a girl who’s stuck living with a seriously wicked witch. But she also has to keep up her grades and pass Algebra and deal with everyday 10th grade problems, as well!
In the first book, Seriously Wicked, Cam falls for a cute boy-band boy who plays guitar. He writes a song about her, “Lion Tamer”, which is written out in the book. So when Seriously Wicked was released, I thought it would be really fun to have this song available to hear. I got my good friend Spencer Ellsworth to record the song and you can hear his awesome work on Soundcloud—lion roars and all.
In book two, Seriously Shifted, I knew I wanted to include another artistic character in the series. Enter slightly geeky Henny Santiago-Smith, who writes an online comic called Henny’s Pathetic Love Life. Poor Henny gets caught up in witchy things when one of the new wicked witch characters decides to make Henny’s life an absolute disaster. Henny flees to the girls’ bathroom, where she encounters Cam secretly working a spell.
In the book, this scene is of course from Cam’s point of view. But I thought it would be great fun to see how this scene looked from Henny’s point of view, as if she were writing it up (as she keeps threatening to do) for one of her online comics.
I contacted another friend of mine—amazing cartoonist Becky Hawkins—about developing a piece that would illustrate this scene. Becky writes a delightful comic called French Toast Comix, and it has a really playful, fun style that I could see fitting the work of an (obviously super-talented!) teen.
Becky came up with a one-page comic for me that is just fantastic, and I decided to use it as a giveaway on my upcoming book tour stops for Seriously Shifted. So come see me at one of those and you can collect your very own comic page that goes along with the book!
Here’s a teaser of the comic for you:
Alternatively, if you don’t live near my tour stops, you can email me (I’m tinaconnolly on the gmail) with a picture of your proof of purchase of Seriously Shifted (take a selfie with the book or a pic of the receipt or whatever works for you!) and I’ll send you one of these darling comic pages in the mail. Offer good to December 15, 2016, or while supplies last. 🙂
Here are the tour stops; read more details on my Appearances page on my website:
>Wordstock – Portland OR, Nov 5, 10am panel
>Powell’s Cedar Hills – Beaverton OR, Nov 7, 7pm
>University Bookstore – Seattle WA, Nov 14, 7pm
>Corvallis Library – Corvallis OR, Nov 15, 4pm
>Mysterious Galaxy – San Diego CA, Nov 16, 7:30pm
>Powell’s Cedar Hills – Beaverton OR, Nov 20, 4pm
>Another Read Through – Portland OR, Dec 3, 1:30pm
Many thanks to Beth for having me on the blog, and I’m delighted to see Seriously Shifted out in the wild at last!
#SFWAPro
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