Bready or Not Guest: Author Pat Esden with Popovers
I’m happy to welcome Pat Esden to Bready or Not! Her novel A Hold On Me comes out in February from Kensington. I have never tried popovers (shocking, I know!) and her recipe for them looks fantastic.
My novel A HOLD ON ME is a new adult paranormal tale of love and revenge. The main character, Annie, grew up dealing antiques and traveling with her father. When he’s diagnosed with dementia, she’s forced to return to her estranged family’s estate in Maine.
One of the few people on the estate she sees as a potential ally is Laura, an employee whose main job is to produce a seemingly endless supply of comfort foods. Laura lived on the estate as a child. She went away in her teens and returned a few years later with a young son in her arms. What happened to her in those years is a mystery. But, now—almost twenty years later–Annie shouldn’t mistake where Laura’s allegiance lies. This cook may be known for her strawberry jam and popovers, but she also knows her way around the darker side of the kitchen’s garden.
LAURA’S SKYSCRAPING POPOVERS:
INGREDIENTS
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup white flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons melted butter
Position oven rack in lower part of oven. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Heavily grease popover pan cups with butter (I use 4 ceramic custard cups for this recipe or a traditional six cup cast iron popover pan) Just BEFORE filling cups with batter, preheat them in oven until sizzling hot.
BATTER
Whisk eggs and milk together
Add flour, salt, and melted butter
Whisk lightly (batter will be lumpy). Let batter sit for 5 minutes, then whisk lightly again. Repeat letting batter sit and whisking lightly until white flour lumps disappear. This process of whisking lightly and letting the flour be absorbed into the batter slowly is the key to extra-tall popovers.
Fill pre-heated popover cups ½ way with batter.
Bake for 45 minutes without opening oven.
Eat right away. Popovers shrink quickly. A hole poked in the top of the popover to vent the steam will slow the shrinking, but not for long.
LAURA’S RECIPE IDEA BOARD ON PINTEREST
A HOLD ON ME (Dark Heart Book #1) by Pat Esden
Kensington Books
Release date: February 23
She never wanted to return.
He wants nothing more than for her to leave.
But the fire between them is as strong as the past that haunts them.Annie Freemont grew up on the road, immersed in the romance of rare things, cultivating an eye for artifacts and a spirit for bargaining. It’s a freewheeling life she loves and plans to continue—until her dad is diagnosed with dementia. His illness forces them to return to Moonhill, their ancestral home on the coast of Maine—and to the family they left behind fifteen years ago, after Annie’s mother died in a suspicious accident.
Once at Moonhill, Annie is shocked when her aunt separates her from her father. The next time Annie sees him, he’s a bizarre, violent shadow of his former self. Confused, she turns to an unlikely ally for support—Chase, the dangerously seductive young groundskeeper. With his dark good looks and powerful presence, Chase has an air of mystery that Annie is irresistibly drawn to. But she also senses that behind his penetrating eyes are secrets she can’t even begin to imagine. Secrets that hold the key to the past, to Annie’s own longings—and to all of their futures. Now, to unlock them, she’ll have to face her greatest fears and embrace her legacy…
Add A HOLD ON ME on Goodreads
PRE-ORDER NOW!
PAT ESDEN would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts. An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle literary magazine, and George H. Scither’s anthology Cat Tales.
Read MoreBready or Not Guest: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley with Lemon Fairy Cakes
I’m happy to welcome author Sylvia Spruck Wrigley as a guest of Bready or Not! Her novella Domnall and the Borrowed Child was published by Tor.com just this Tuesday, and it’s all about FAIRIES. A unique approach to fairies, too–you get to learn about changelings, from their perspective! Quite appropriately, Sylvia is here to share a very British recipe for Lemon Fairy Cakes.
About Domnall and the Borrowed Child:
The best and bravest faeries fell in the war against the Sluagh, and now the Council is packed with idiots and cowards. Domnall is old, aching, and as cranky as they come, but as much as he’d like to retire, he’s the best scout the Sithein court has left.
When a fae child falls deathly ill, Domnall knows he’s the only one who can get her the medicine she needs: Mother’s milk. The old scout will face cunning humans, hungry wolves, and uncooperative sheep, to say nothing of his fellow fae!
Excerpt at Tor.com
Audio Excerpt
Amazon.com | MacMillan, with buy links everywhere
These days in Britain you are more likely to see a cupcake than a fairy cake. Cupcakes are modern, decadent, bold. Fairy cakes are old-fashioned, relics of children’s parties from years gone by. They are smaller than cupcakes and, to my eye, a little more refined. A fairy cake is easy to recognise because it is never, ever topped with thick swodges of buttercream but instead gets a quick white glaze made with icing sugar (powdered) and water. Very special cakes get “royal icing” made with egg whites.
Although any type of cake can be made into a cupcake, a fairy cake is based on Victoria sponge. These dainty cakes (just the right size for a fairy) are still seen as more appropriate for children, as they are smaller and with less sugar, whereas cupcakes are popular at weddings and hen nights.
The original fairy cakes (cakes just the right size for a fairy) are first referenced in the 1700s and were baked in ramekins or individual pottery cups. Although many people now make fairy cakes in muffin tins, you should take care to only fill the cups halfway so that they don’t turn out too large and get mistaken for a poorly frosted cupcake!
Now you’d think it’d be easy to make a British recipe in a British kitchen. Further, you’d think it would be easy to convert. Unfortunately, there are some issues which I feel compelled to share with you. I should reassure you first, however, that this is a very simple recipe, commonly the first treat that children in England learn to bake. So don’t take my notes all too seriously – just follow the recipe and I’m sure you’ll be fine.
So first: Conversion
I modified the recipe slightly to convert it to American measurements. The recipe works with imperial, metric and US measures but don’t mix and match between them. The butter/sugar/flour amounts are slightly higher in the US version but no one complained (well, not about the cake, anyway).
Second: Temperature
I’ve simply said to bake these at 180°C/350°F, just like the majority of cakes baked around the world. However, that’s not the way recipes work in the UK.
British recipes give instructions to deal with every kind of oven, like so:
Pre-heat your oven to 200°C or 180°C if it is a fan-assisted oven or gas mark 6 if you haven’t upgraded your oven since 1962.
So if you bake using an exciting oven or even (god help you) an Aga, then I’m afraid you are on your own, but I suspect you are probably used to it.
Third: Yield
The recipe makes twelve fairy cakes but that’s assuming a British bun tin. You can make these with muffin tins just fine, just be sure not to overfill your cases. Standard cupcake cases should only be filled up to the halfway mark. If you make these cupcake sized, you’ll only get nine.
Fourth: Decoration
My first batch, the control group made with British imperial measures, I thought it would be nice to add fairy wings. I thinly sliced some lemons and candied them in the oven at low heat, then cut them in half and stuck them on with the lemon glaze.
Every single person ripped the wings off and discreetly abandoned them somewhere. Apparently, that was not an appropriate decoration for a fairy cake. Who knew?
Fifth: The Appropriate Number of Sprinkles
“Hundreds and thousands,” my boyfriend said. “That’s what you put on fairy cakes.”
“Like, sprinkles?”
“Not just any sprinkles. Round ones. All colours.”
“Round rainbow sprinkles. Got it.”
“No, don’t buy sprinkles. Buy hundreds and thousands.”
This didn’t seem like a requirement of fairy cakes, but I’m not British and I’m aware that sometimes I can miss nuances. So I purchased sprinkles which actually said hundreds and thousands on the label and did the decorating again.
This time, my fairy cakes were accepted with bright smiles. “Much nicer,” said my son with his mouth full of cake. “Needs more hundreds and thousands.”
“What have you done? This is more like tens and hundreds,” muttered my boyfriend.
I asked my friend to adjudicate. “They look lovely.” And the hundreds and thousands? “Well, okay, yes, it’s a bit sparing.”
I gave the very last fairy cake to the security guard who patrols the marina flats. I barely know him but it’s a long cold shift in November and I wasn’t speaking to anyone in the family by then.
“Lovely,” he said, “thank you so much.” He took a bite. “A wee bit mean on the hundreds and thousands, though.”
So learn from my mistakes. Don’t bake things for the British.
Lemon Fairy Cakes
Yield: 12 fairy cakes
Ingredients:
- 4 oz / 100g / ½ cup butter
- 4 oz / 100g / ½ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 4 oz / 100g self-raising flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder OR ¾ cup all-purpose flour and two teaspoons baking powder
- zest of half a lemon
Topping:
- 2 cups (250g) of powdered sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
- Rainbow sprinkles to taste
Pre-heat your fan-assisted oven to180°C/350°F and line your muffin tin with fairy-cake or cupcake cases.
Cream the butter and the sugar at high speed for three minutes or more. Keep the speed on high and add the two eggs one at a time. Once well mixed in, add the flour, the baking powder and the lemon zest. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter until blended.
Drop a large spoonful of batter into each cake case – if using cupcake-sized cases, only fill to halfway.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes, until the cakes have risen and are golden-brown.
While the cakes are baking, mix the powdered sugar with the lemon juice so that you have a thick but still spreadable glaze.
Brush the cakes with the lemon glaze while still warm so that the lemon syrup will melt into the cake. Then remove them from the muffin tin. After the cakes have cooled, brush the tops again with the glaze and sprinkle generously with rainbow sprinkles.
Sylvia Spruck Wrigley was born in Germany and spent her childhood in Los Angeles. She emigrated to Scotland in 1990, guiding German tourists around the Trossachs while she searched for the supernatural. She now splits her time between South Wales and Andalucia where she writes about plane crashes and faeries, which have more in common than most people might imagine. Her short stories have been translated into over a dozen languages.
Author website
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads
Bready or Not: Maple Sugar Cake: A Clockwork Dagger recipe
Maple is one of my favorite flavors. It’s also a flavor that is often mentioned in my Clockwork Dagger books, especially in connection with the northern kingdom of Frengia.
My new Clockwork Dagger novella “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” follows an important minor character from Clockwork Crown: Rivka. Her mother was Frengian and a baker, and teenaged Rivka is also a baker when you meet her in the book.
“Wings of Sorrow and Bone” begins soon after the events in Clockwork Crown. Rivka now lives in Tamarania City with her grandmother. Instead of running a bakery, she is pursuing her dream of becoming a master mechanist… but maple-flavored goods are still a major subject of nostalgia. They make her think of her old home, and her mama.
I looked around online for recipes that I thought would suit the more rustic world of my books. I found a maple sugar cake recipe
at The Kitchy Kitchen and decided to make some adaptions. I wanted something that would work for gift-sized loaf cakes.
Maple sugar is the one extravagant ingredient, but it can now be bought for a decent price on Amazon.com–heck, you can even subscribe and get it cheaper! A little maple sugar goes a long way, too. It’s potent stuff.
The resulting cake is perfect for breakfast or a snack. You can sweeten it up to your preference. Make glaze with the recipe below, or eat it plain. Plus, it freezes and keeps for months! I used it as a handy breakfast loaf to thaw out for company.
This maple loaf cake has a role in the novella, too. Maybe you can go all meta and eat some cake as you read about the cake!
Bready or Not: Maple Sugar Cake: A Clockwork Dagger recipe
Ingredients
For the loaf cake:
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter half stick, softened
- 1 1/2 cups maple sugar
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon heaping
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour sifted
- 1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
- 1 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped
Glaze for ONE small loaf:
- 1 cup confectioners' sugar or powdered xylitol, sifted
- 1 1/2 Tablespoons milk or almond milk or other substitute, more as needed
- 1/2 teaspoon maple flavor or vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Prepare mini loaf pans (tin, stoneware, paper) by applying nonstick spray.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and gradually add the maple sugar. Beat until creamy; with a mixer, this takes about a minute. Add the beaten eggs and combine.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the salt, baking soda, spices, and flour. Alternately add applesauce and dry ingredients to butter mixture. Once they are blended, fold the nuts into the batter. Distribute the batter among the pans; they should be about half full.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minute, until a tester comes out clean. Let cakes cool completely. If they are in a tin or stoneware pan, remove them from the dish.
- At this point, you can freeze the loaves wrapped in wax paper and plastic wrap or in a gallon bag.
- If you want to eat them now, store at room temperature or in fridge. Serve with glaze (see recipe above) or topped with powdered sugar or even a small amount of maple syrup... or plain! Eat cold or warmed in microwave.
- A loaf keeps for days if wrapped in the fridge. In the freezer, keeps for upward of six months.
- OM NOM NOM!
Read More
Bready or Not: Shimmering Maple Crisps: a Clockwork Dagger recipe
My Clockwork Dagger novella “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” is out next week, so let’s delve into a maple-filled recipe that fits right into my books’ world!
This is an incredibly unique recipe. It includes yeast and a whole bunch of maple flavor. The end result is a cookie that tastes and looks like a maple cracker.
The secret to this is maple flavor in the dough and a healthy (okay, maybe not entirely HEALTHY) dose of maple sugar to create a crust on the top and bottom. On the base, this totally caramelizes kinda like maple syrup rendered into candy.
Which is what this is like, in a way.
In the Clockwork Dagger, the kingdom of Caskentia has many immigrant bakers from its northern neighbor, Frengia. They like to utilize maple. In The Clockwork Crown, you meet Rivka, a teenaged-baker who learned the trade from her mother. “Wings of Sorrow and Bone” continues Rivka’s adventure.
Maple is special for her. It’s the stuff of nostalgia. Also, it’s delicious.
These shimmering maple crisps play a brief but important role in the novella.
Next week’s recipe is also featured in “Wings of Sorrow and Bone.” Come back then to find out how to make maple sugar cake loaves!
Recipe greatly modified from The Monday Box
Bready or Not: Shimmering Maple Crisps: a Clockwork Dagger recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour plus more to smooth dough
- 1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon milk or almond milk
- 1 teaspoon maple flavor
- 1 teaspoon instant yeast
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 stick, room temperature
- 1/2 cup maple sugar or turbinado or decorating sugar, more or less as needed
Instructions
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the 1 1/2 cup flour, milk, maple flavoring, yeast, and salt. Add the softened butter split into several chunks, mixing well each time before adding the next. Dough will likely be sticky and shaggy.
- Switch to a bread hook and slowly add more flour, a few tablespoons at a time, and mix. Pause to scrape the sides of the bowl and add more flour. Keep this up until it becomes smooth, elastic, and less sticky.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and stash it in the fridge at least overnight.
- When it's time to bake, preheat the oven to 275-degrees. Place parchment paper on a large cookie sheet or two smaller sheets. Divide the dough if necessary, keeping the second in the fridge until you work with it.
- Sprinkle maple sugar on the parchment paper; you're using this instead of flour to create your nonstick surface. Sprinkle more sugar on top. Roll out the dough, adding more sugar beneath and on top, until you're able to get the dough out into a rough rectangle about the height of a cracker. You will have sugar embedded throughout the dough.
- Use a pizza wheel to slice the dough into 1 to 2 inch squares.
- Bake for 50 to 70 minutes, until the sugars have caramelized and the cookies have achieved desired crispness. Follow the old lines the slice the cookies again, then lift up the parchment paper to a rack to cool completely.
- Store in an airtight, room temperature container for a week or more. Use wax paper between the layers of cookies to prevent any sticking. The texture will change some as the days pass--depending on humidity--but they remain delicious.
- OM NOM NOM!
Read More
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Spice Chip Cookies
When life gives you a good sale on seasonal pumpkin spice chips, you create your own recipe in which to use those chips.
At least, that’s what I do, because my mind is weird like that.
Tollhouse Pumpkin Spice Chips are mildly spicy and smooth. They work really well with this ultra-smooth dough, that includes melted white chocolate mixed right in. I borrowed that foundation of the recipe from my White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie recipe.
These cookies gain enough crisp to be solid, but they are still chewy. The chopped pecans (or whatever nut you want to throw in) add nice flavor, but more than that, they add texture. They cut the sweetness some.
If you see these special chips on sale at Target or elsewhere, grab’em! You now have the perfect recipe to use them in.
Bready or Not: Pumpkin Spice Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- 2/3 cup white sugar
- 11 Tablespoons unsalted butter , room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 bag pumpkin spice chips
- 1 cup pecans chopped, or walnuts or other nuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325-degrees. Place 1 cup of white chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on 50% power in short increments, 20-30 seconds, and stop to stir between passes until the chips blend smoothly. Be careful--white chocolate can burn fast! Set aside to cool.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the sugar, butter, vanilla, and eggs until they're creamy. Mix in the melted chips. Stir in flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Add the pumpkin spice chips and the pecans.
- Use a cookie scoop or tablespoon to place dough in rounded lumps on cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges begin to turn very light golden brown. Cool on the sheet for several minutes, then move to a rack to cool.
- ON NOM NOM!
Bready or Not Guest Sherrida Pope with Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies
I’m happy to welcome author Sherrida Pope (who I know better as Nancy Fulda) to Bready or Not today! She has two darling new children’s books out, one for Halloween and one for Thanksgiving. Owls and cats, you can’t go wrong with that. Other things that can’t go wrong: anything combined with Nutella. Sherrida has a recipe for Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies that look absolutely delicious!
The Cat who Ruined Thanksgiving
I still remember the first time I tasted Nutella. It was during December in the 1980’s, surrounded by holiday trappings and a box of intriguing food items my sister had brought back from Germany. What was this strange substance, this… spreadable chocolate?
It was love at first bite. But you couldn’t find Nutella in California stores back then, or at least, we couldn’t, and so my newfound affinity had to wait on the back shelf until my own trip to Germany nearly a decade later. Happily, globalization has since rectified many of the gaps on my store shelves, and I’m pleased to report that I can now find Nutella in nearly every major supermarket in my area.
I hope you can, too, because the only thing better than Nutella is Nutella combined with something superbly delectable. Think about it: Nutella is yummy. Peanut butter is yummy. Both together is… well, around my house it’s a recipe for an empty plate and a lot of cookie crumbs.
Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies
½ cup margarine or butter
½ cup peanut butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp baking powder
Beat margarine and peanut butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add ½ cup of the flour, sugar, egg, and baking powder. Beat until thoroughly combined. Add remaining flour.
Form dough into 1-inch balls. (If dough is too sticky to shape easily, then add extra flour or refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.) If desired, use a spoon to create a small depression in the center of each cookie.
Bake at 375° for 7-9 minutes. Spread Nutella across the top of warm cookies.
Sherrida Pope, who also publishes as Nancy Fulda, lives and writes in the scenic area near Utah Lake. She has three children, a pet hedgehog, and a transient appreciation for classical music. Find her engaging chapter books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers.
The Cat who Ruined Thanksgiving
Read More
