BEFORE WE WERE YOURS: Lisa Wingate’s Apple Bread Pudding Recipe “Shantyboat families, such as the ones depicted in my novel Before We Were Yours, often gathered in small communities to share news and food, find companionship, trade goods, and play homemade instruments and sing. A rare sweet treat would have thrilled Rill and her siblings. Wingate […]
Tag Archives | dessert
THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS: Lisa Wingate’s Buttermilk Pie Recipe
THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS: Lisa Wingate’s Buttermilk Pie Here’s a recipe that’s a true time period delight from Hannie’s era —Hannie was a freed slave in Louisiana in 1875. It would also be a favorite in the cafe’s dessert case in present-day Augustine, Louisiana. It’s not a ‘pretty’ pie, but served as a […]
Emily Layden’s ALL GIRLS Apple Cider Doughnuts
Emily Layden’s Apple Cider Doughnuts Nestled in a hilly corner of rural Connecticut, The Atwater School in All Girls is a haven for progressive thinking and feminist intellectuals—and also a quintessential piece of the New England landscape. From Litchfield and the Berkshires to interior New Hampshire and coastal Maine, boarding schools pepper this wing of […]
Natalie Jenner’s Classic Victoria Sandwich Cake
Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society Classic Victoria Sandwich This is a very classic British cake recipe from the BBC Good Food Magazine (May, 2005) which is super easy and quick to make. If you prefer, you can skip the icing filling and just spread strawberry jam between the two sponge layers. In The Jane […]
Mary Kay Andrews’s Hello, Summer Lemon Bars
Mary Kay Andrews’s Hello, Summer Lemon Bars Hello, Summer is set in a small, sleepy Florida town. When people think of Florida, they think of bright, sunny skies, and delicious citrus and these lemon bars are the perfect way to celebrate that! As a native Floridian, my lust for lemons—indeed any citrus, is, excuse the pun, deep-rooted. […]
Alka Joshi: The Palace Recipe for Royal Rabri from The Henna Artist
In this scene from THE HENNA ARTIST, Lakshmi, a woman who paints henna on the bodies of Jaipur’s wealthy women, is asked to meet with the Dowager Maharani for the first time. Malik, Lakshmi’s eight-year-old helper, has been told to wait outside the Maharani’s drawing room, but can’t resist sticking his head inside when the […]
Heidi Diehl’s Hinterkopf Geburtstagskuchen (Birthday Cake)
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 […]
Jodi Picoult’s “A Spark of Light” Missisippi Mud Cake
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 […]