In Lifelines, Louise falls in love with German drummer Dieter Hinterkopf when she travels from  Oregon to Düsseldorf to study art in 1971. The Hinterkopf Geburtstagskuchen is Dieter’s family‘s traditional birthday cake. Louise’s mother-in-law, Hannelore, instructs Louise to make the cake for her Dieter, part of the complicated family history that Hannelore shares. The […] Read More

  One of the amazing things about creating the menu for The Lost Family was reconnecting with my own. I knew I wanted the book’s restaurant, Masha’s, to be a fusion of Jewish and German food—Peter and his first wife Masha’s culinary heritages, respectively—and, since we’re introduced to Masha’s in 1965, the menu items  would also […] Read More

In The Kinship of Secrets, kimchi is featured in both Inja’s Korean story and Miran’s American story (the two young sisters at the heart of the novel). In Seoul, Inja’s aunt makes terrible kimchi that worsens as it ferments over the winter. As a way to earn money, Miran’s mother makes gallons of fresh kimchi and […] Read More

  Marilla is renowned for her Plum Puffs in both Anne of Green Gables and in Marilla of Green Gables. In Marilla of Green Gables, readers discover how Marilla comes to learn the recipe and the special people she bakes with and for.     From the recipe collection of author Sarah McCoy, borrowed from Aunt Maud’s Recipe Book: […]

In What We Owe by Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde, while living as an Iranian refugee in Sweden, Nahid looks back on growing up in Iran and her life as a “young person with great potential.” She reminisces about the summer nights cooking in the kitchen with her mom and her six sisters when they were preparing food […] Read More

        Jodi Picoult chose a Mississippi Mud Cake to pair with a book club discussion of her novel A Spark of Light, set in Mississippi. Mississippi mud cakes and pies are thought to be named for the rich dark mud lining the banks of the Mississippi River. This cake recipe, adapted from Down Home: Treasured […] Read More

    In Chapter 23 of Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit, Constance and Geraldine go to visit John Ward, a real-life attorney who did actually continue to turn up in the Kopps’ lives over the years. He was, I suspect, a bit of a playboy, and I definitely play up that part of his personality in my version […] Read More