Booklish #7: Through the Woods Tart

View Recipe: Through the Woods Tart

Emera first shared Emily Carroll’s horror webcomic “His Face All Red” with me several years ago. It’s an unsettling, inconclusive tale of two brothers who set out to kill a wolf that has been terrorizing their village, but nothing is what it seems. The story is a swirl of fearful trips to the forest, sloshing cheers in taverns, village gossip, paranoid insomnia, feral intentions, and inexplicably spilt blood. I wanted to create a confection that would evoke the comic’s vivid color palette and capture the flavors of bravado, fear, and death.

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Booklish #6: Cimorene’s Enchanted Earth Shortbread Cookies

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View Recipe: Cimorene’s Enchanted Earth Shortbread Cookies

I’ve been mulling the flavor profile of one of my most beloved fantasy heroines– Cimorene, the princess from Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles— for quite some time. I wanted to capture the essence of Cimorene traipsing through forests, starting and stumbling upon gritty and fantastical adventures, and all with plenty of spunk and temper to spare!

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Booklish #5: Matilda Honey Oatmeal Scones

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View Recipe: Matilda Honey Oatmeal Scones

In case you can’t tell from the title, giant slice of honeydew, or honeycomb in the picture, this Booklish is for a humble little children’s book, Matilda by Roald Dahl (1988). Specifically, Miss Honey and Matilda are at the center of this feature today and this Booklish is an imagined meal for the two.

The heart of Matilda lies in the scene in which Miss Honey invites Matilda to her cottage for some tea and bread. For the first time, Matilda experiences the security, comfort, and love that comes from having an adult care for her and treat her as a unique and intelligent human being. It is here in the cottage that Miss Honey and Matilda’s trust and relationship begins, and it begins simply and inquisitively.

The room was as small and square and bare as a prison cell. The pale daylight that entered came from a single tiny window in the front wall, but there were no curtains. The only objects in the entire room were two upturned wooden boxes to serve as chairs and a third box between them for a table.That was all. There were no pictures on the walls, no carpet on the floor, only rough unpolished wooden planks, and there were gaps between the planks were dust and bits of grime had gathered…

…Matilda was appalled. Was this really where her neat and trimly-dressed school teacher lived?

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Booklish #4: Gone With the Wind Tara Cake

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View Recipe: Gone With the Wind Tara Cake

I envisioned nothing less than a grand, massive tiered cake for Margaret Mitchell‘s sweeping 1936 romantic epic, Gone With the Wind.  This famous and controversial novel has all the good bits– war, betrayal, unrequited love, mis-timed requited love– and a spoiled southern belle forced to experience the worst of humanity who then seizes her life back though hard work, womanly charms, and sheer force of will. This recipe is meant to capture the full range of history, time and emotion in the novel, as well as convey an atmosphere of grandness throughout.

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Booklish #3: Rorschach Cheesecake

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Featured here is a gnarly wrought-chocolate cheesecake to commemorate Alan Moore’s vengeful vigilante, Rorschach. Pardon the craftsmanship– Rorschach blots are definitely supposed to be more symmetrical, but with only a wooden spoon and various other home tools, this was the best I could manage.

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Booklish #2: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Black Forest Raven Cake

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View Recipe: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Black Forest Raven Cake

Today we celebrate Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004), a fantastical alternate history of gentlemen and magic, and an utmost obsession of Kakaner and Emera. We decided to honor this richly wrought tale of fairies, otherworlds, and scholarly magic with an appropriately dense and complex confection filled with all sorts of surprises.

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Booklish Inauguration- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Lemon Brick Cake

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Introducing… Booklish! A new, biweekly feature showcasing culinary creations (with accompanying recipes) inspired by books or fictional characters. Read more about this feature here. This inaugural installment is devoted to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

View Recipe: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Lemon Brick Cake

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Today, we have brick-layered lemon yellow cake with lemon frosting “mortar”, an outside layer of whipped lime icing, sprinkled poppy seeds along the sides, and shards of lime emerald hard candy pieces scattered on top.

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