Giveaway: Confections of a Closet Master Baker

Having this blog is rewarding in so many different ways. There are you guys, the best and most wonderful readers ever. You guys make me so happy! There's the way that I can just pull up some of my snappiest dinner ideas from myself... a little weird, but still happy. There's also the fact that I sometimes get books for free. Books! For free!!! I can imagine very few gifts better than that. Certainly, it was a fantastic gift to receive Confections of a Closet Master Baker for a virtual book club event hosted by the lovely Cath from A Blithe Palate.

I tore into my book impatiently and it was, indeed, a fun and lovely treat. Which is why I'm sharing it with you, the readers that make me so happy. See how it comes full circle there? All you have to do is leave a comment on this post and I will use a random number generator (or maybe the number of red chocolate M&Ms in my bag) to determine a winner, to whom I will send my copy of this book.

In lieu of a book review, we were all asked to bake something inspired by the book (very cool), and hooo boy, did I ever! I'll share that a few days from now, but meanwhile, the author of the book, Gesine Bullock-Prado, graciously consented to give a small interview about her book. I was thrilled to be able to "chat" with her. Thank you, Gesine, for letting us read your book and thank you, Cath, for including me in this great event!

Here's my interview with Gesine:

What inspired you to write about your transition from working as a Hollywood exec to opening your own bakery and cafe?

I moved to Vermont to write as much as bake. Once the shop opened and took every last vestige of energy I had, I stopped writing. But I missed that outlet, so much so that I nudged a customer/friend/fellow writer to start a writing group with me to force me back to the page. I'd also been asked through email, letter, phone calls and personal visits at the store the same question every day, many times a day: "How did you manage to start over and pursue your dream?" So when our small group met in the shop after hours, I'd have pages. I already had what I felt was a compelling story to tell, I just had to structure time to tell it.

I was particularly touched by your description of a baker as someone who brings out the little, impish kid in all of us and who makes the masks of adulthood melt away into the genuineness of a smile. I've definitely experienced that, on both sides of the table. What are some of the other things you find rewarding about baking for others?

Baking is a universal celebration. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries. We share cake to mark these occasions. We break bread with our neighbors. We save room for dessert. We dodge traffic and break at least 9 state laws in pursuit of the Good Humour truck. Food memories linger. Being in charge of not only feeding someone but feeding someone a creation whose very purpose is to symbolize an event is huge. It's an honor and a burden both.

In the book, you talk a lot about your close relationship with your sister and your memories of your mom. I really enjoyed reading about it and I found myself chuckling over several scenarios and conversations that I could really see happen within my own family. When you think about your family, is there a certain food that you associate with them or are inspired to make? What food-related or food-inspired memories would you want to pass down to the next generation in your family?

There's something about ritual that stays with me. Those times when my mother would declare that we'd have kaffee und kuchen at 3pm was a rare treat. And often we'd go to the local patisserie and choose a few things to share. We weren't marking a specific occassion but that's what made it magical. We sat together sharing a few beautiful morsels, drinking fresh brewed coffee from the good china, and enjoying each other's company. Strangely, it's the coffee that plays the most prominent role in these memories. Fresh ground beans, carefully brewed and savored in bone china. That I'd happily pass along.

What is the one thing about your job that makes getting up in the morning worth it?

Baking.

When writing, it's always extremely difficult to skate that line between being personal and revealing too much - how did you decide which memories and which recipes to release into the wild?

I'm a private woman from a very private family. But there are universal truths that we all share and one of them is our common search for meaning and fulfillment. When an experience related to my journey, I wove it into the narrative. Originally, I wrote the book without recipes. When I was convinced to add them, I made sure to choose a concoction that was relevant to the chapter and to the story as a whole. I also thought about my customers who'd really dig getting their hands on, say, Starry Starry Nights or Golden Eggs.

What is your favorite dessert to eat? To bake?

Changes with my mood, my location and the season.

Do you come back to Los Angeles, and also now that you're out of the Hollywood microcosm, do you enjoy any other aspects of the city? And to follow up on that, what is your favorite city and why?

I genuinely like Los Angeles, I just don't like the Hollywood Industrial Complex. I'm in awe of the kind and stable souls who play well in it's confines without losing their minds. There are lovely people who work in the industry, enjoy it and don't let the pervasive douchebaggery get them down. I'm not made of that mettle, so I wasn't able to enjoy the great things the city had to offer because I was seething most of the time. I can visit now and enjoy the place. And whether I like it or not, I did a lot of growing up there and I'm inescapably part LA girl.

As for my favorite cities, honestly I'm a mountain and lakes sort. Give me a steep hill to climb with a body of water to fish and swim. As long as there's a beautiful boîte tucked away where I can have a beer and cake, I'm very happy. But if I had to choose a favorite city, Fez and Paris. Fez for magic of the souk and Paris for being Paris.

And finally, what is the one question you wish someone had asked you about the book, and how would you have answered it?

I'd hope that instead of having questions, people are compelled to bake something with love after reading the book. But you have to share.

Continued after the jump...

The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

I think the trouble was that I had set my expectations too high. There has been so much written about this book, about its biting wit, its fine nuance, its subtle characterizations and its underlying sweetness. The author comes from a family of curiosities, to say the least -- two of her sisters were Nazi sympathizers (one even married Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists), one of her sisters ran away from home and became a writer, and she herself also wrote books that were described as "maliciously witty." I had expected something akin to Waugh with undertones of Gogol. I know -- it's best never to expect anything when entering a book, but I couldn't help it. I was a victim of too much information.

Needless to say, I didn't like it. Oh, I had so wanted to like it, and I tried to like it, and I read all of it just in case there was a hidden nugget in the end that will tie everything together in such a way that will warm my heart. I hated David Copperfield and Brothers Karamazov for the first 300 or so pages, after all, but then I loved them, and, as a famous authoress said, it came on so gradually that I was in the middle before I knew it had begun. Unfortunately, no such revelation happened here.

I won't spoil the book, just in case someone wants to read it, but in general terms, I never felt for the characters what the narrator clearly felt for them, and what I think the author meant for us to feel. I lukewarmly enjoyed the portrayal of the British aristocratic society that went a little mad when faced with a foreign and changing world during the two World Wars. There are layers, and it is written cleverly and well, but there was too much sarcasm for me, too much bitterness, and I never found the sweetness that everyone was talking about. Perhaps it is because I don't belong to the class of people that Nancy Mitford describes and I cannot feel nostalgic about them; the book is never quite atmospheric enough, never quite warm enough, never quite that something that makes you like even the saddest and bitterest of narratives. Whatever it is, I felt as an outsider looking in -- my attention was engaged but my emotions never touched.

If any of you have read either of these two books, please please let me know what you thought about it. I felt very alone in my antipathy. What am I missing here?

Continued after the jump...

Catherine de' Medici

If you are only interested in cooking, sorry, guys, I have a smashing cake recipe coming up later on this week, but it's just a quickie today and you will have to anticipate in mystery a little longer.

I'm reading a new book that I have sort of dual conflicting feelings towards (ha! I'm a Gemini!). It's called Catherine de Medici, Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda. It's a wonderful book, really fast paced and dynamic and well written. I can tell that the author did a great deal of research -- it shows in a great many ways, in small details such as the cost of Catherine's jewels upon her marriage and the clothes she wore to the coronation, the tender letters to her daughter and the complex portrayal of relationships. All the brilliant personages of 16th century France make their mark in the pages of this book, and they are alive, oh so alive! Much is explained, many myths de-mystified. Believe it or not, I had gone through at least 150 pages before I could put the book down.

But the more I read, the more I feel like there is too much indulgence, that the biographer has done the unforgivable and fallen ever so slightly in love with her subject. It's an understandable thing. Catherine was an entirely fascinating woman, brave and tenacious in the face of many disasters, loving and loyal to her children. In common parlance, girlfriend was a fighter. It's easy to ascribe the highest motives to someone like that, it's easy to say she loved France with all her heart and did what she did for the country. It's easy to say that circumstances were such, and there was no other choice, and she was left in an untenable situation by her spendthrift jerk of a husband, and I get it. However, what emerges despite the indulgence is that she did what she did to survive, to simply survive, and she liked power and wished greatly to keep it for herself and for her children. Which is not a thing to disprespect, but I can't just brush aside all the bad decisions as easily as Leonie Frieda does in her book. We all know the thing about "good intentions."

I would highly recommend this book. There is a multifaceted portrait here to be discovered, and it's just damn good reading. What's next on my list? Peter the Great, and just wait until I get to the Tudors (mwahahaha). :)

Continued after the jump...