Search Results for: secret

Secret Note French Bread

Posted August 3, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 5 Comments

       

Our new Book of the Month is The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas, and I can’t wait to get started! It took me forever to finish it (60 chapters, y’all. Dumas ain’t kidding around), but it was still a really fun read. It’s got everything you could ever want in a classic book: Intrigue! Adventure! Bishops on the run for trying to put the king’s displaced twin brother on the throne! Yaaay! 🙂

When I started reading, it didn’t take long for me to find my appetizer: early in the book, Aramis sneaks Prince Philippe a secret note in a loaf of bread.

“Fun!” I thought. “I can make french bread and hide a little note inside.”

In my hubris, I decided to make authentic french bread, because, y’know, historical accuracy. Then I saw that the Julia Child recipe takes seven hours. And most other “authentic” recipes take anywhere from two to four.

There are people out there who have hours and hours to devote to the refined art of traditional bread making. These people do not have 6-month-olds who are teething and mobile, which means I am not one of them. So instead we’re going a less historically accurate route and going a more fast-and-easy-but-still-french-bread-and-still-delicious route.

Enter Leigh Anne from Your Homebased Mom‘s recipe for Easy French Bread. It caught my attention because of the short rise time (40 minutes total), making the whole recipe just a little over an hour from start to finish. It’s not as porous inside as a traditional French baguette, but it’s delicious, with a beautiful crust and tender crumb.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Aramis didn’t give Philipe this EXACT loaf of bread…he probably would have eaten it all without even stopping to notice the note! 😉

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Secret Garden Bonus Post: Candied Flower Cookies

Posted July 30, 2015 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

Candied Flower Cookies from The Secret Garden

 Since July is extra long, we get to do a Secret Garden bonus post! Garden-themed menus leave so many great options for dessert, so I decided to make a companion dessert to go with our Lavender Lemon Eclairs. I’ve been DYING to make candied flowers for this menu, so sugar cookies with lemon icing and candied violets sounded ideal. Like most of our bonus recipes, I’m keeping this one simple, so we’ll mostly just cover how to make the candied flowers (in the ingredients list, I’ve included links to the cookie and icing recipes I used). You can make your own cookies and icing, but if time is of the essence you can totally go with store bought. That’s what I love about this recipe—it can be as involved or as easy as you want!

 

P.S. The recipe I use for candied flowers was originally published on Food.com.

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A Literary Picnic

Posted March 19, 2023 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in / 0 Comments

In A Literary Picnic, you’ll find 5 full menus of literary recipes designed with picnicking in mind. Each menu consists of five recipes: appetizer, entrée, side dish, dessert, and beverage. Designed with picnicking in mind, they’re all easy to prep ahead, transport, and enjoy on the go. Within these pages, you’ll find:

  • Honey Clementine Cupcakes inspired by Winnie-the-Pooh
  • Blackberry Almond Croissant Bake inspired by Peter Rabbit
  • color-changing Drink Me Potion inspired by Alice in Wonderland
  • Chocolate Raspberry Cream Puffs inspired by The Secret Garden
  • Fairy Bread inspired by “Thumbelina”
  • and so many more!

Get ready to grab a picnic basket, your favorite book, and a snack for the road—the summer sun is calling!

File Type: PDF

File Size: 92 MB

Big Announcement!

Posted December 16, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book Events and Tours / 0 Comments

 

 

A couple days ago I did an interview with the Well Seasoned Librarian Podcast, in which Dean Jones and I talk gingerbread, Hercule Poirot, and my struggles with Turkish Delight. You should definitely check it out! At the end of the interview, I revealed my latest big project. Those of you with amazing memories may recall I hinted at a super secret project several months ago on Instagram. Now I’m finally ready to announce it here on the blog!

My big news is . . .*drumroll *. . .

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Pink Cake

Posted December 15, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

 

 

Pink Cake may sound basic, but this dainty dessert hides a secret ingredient: melon! In STARDEW VALLEY, Pink Cake is a favorite of several villagers. The in-game thumbnail shows a cute pink tube cake topped with red heart sprinkles. The ingredients are listed as flour, sugar, egg, and pink melon (a fruit unique to the game, which looks like a pink cantaloupe). I was intrigued by the idea of a melon-based baked good, so I chose this cake for my STARDEW VALLEY dessert!

For my sponge, I used a variation on a recipe for melon chiffon cake I found on Singapore Shiok. My favorite part about this recipe is that, in addition to melon flavoring, it also uses real cantaloupe. I topped it with my go-to vanilla buttercream, since I felt like adding melon flavor to the frosting would make the recipe too “one note.” And how lucky was I to find these jumbo pixelated heart sprinkles from Nerdy Nummies for my decorations? They’re just the right size, and the 8-bit look is just right for a recipe based on a computer game.

This was my first time making chiffon, and it took me two tries to get it right. Chiffon can be finicky—the key to success is to fully incorporate the flour without over mixing. Doing too much or too little can lead to a deflated cake. Keep folding until you really don’t see any more bits of flour. The final result is worth it: fluffy, delicately sweet, and packed with melon flavor.

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Salad of Beet Root

Posted September 29, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

 

 

I’m a sucker for a good autumn salad. I’ll take hearty greens, roasted root veg, spiced nuts, soft cheese over a tomato-and-cucumber situation any day. Yet I’ve never had a chance to make one for the blog, so when I saw one mentioned in JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, I knew my time had come. Plus, I knew a beet salad would go perfectly with the other dishes I had planned for my Strange & Norrell menu—wigg buns with orange marmalade, a honeyed Cornish hen pot pie, and an opulent dessert I’m keeping secret for now. 😉

I added honey to my roasted beets to tie them in with both the pot pie entree and the vinaigrette I drizzled over the salad at the end (a honey Dijon variation on my go-to vinaigrette recipe). I wanted robust, earthy greens that would hold up to the deep flavor of the beets, so I used some kale and beet greens (never pass up a chance to use edible root veg greens in your salad—turnip greens are amazing too!). For salt and crunch, I included some bacon and toasted pine nuts.

An autumn salad craves soft cheese, so I went with goat cheese since it’s appropriate for the English countryside setting. Stilton would be even more appropriate, but I couldn’t get any. Up to this point, my salad is pretty much a standard beet salad, so I wanted something unusual to set it apart. Apricots were the answer to my prayer—sweet enough to brighten up all the other flavors, while rich enough not to get overpowered.

I ate this with my sister after I finished taking pictures, and we absolutely devoured it! In fact, she normally doesn’t like goat cheese, but she loved it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! 🙂

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Carrot Crescent Horns with Chicken Salad

Posted March 31, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

 

 

Even though Peter Rabbit doesn’t eat any carrots in his story, I feel like a rabbit-centered menu needs a carrot recipe, y’know? However, I suppose it’s rather fitting that this recipe doesn’t have carrots in it either—just crescent roll horns disguised as carrots! 😉 This super cute idea for crescent roll carrots was originally developed by Beth at Hungry Happenings, though I did change it a bit. The idea is super adorable, and Beth also uses an amazing shortcut for diy pastry cones if you don’t have cream horn molds. The secret? Ice cream cones! I used waffle cones for mine. Since they’re bigger, than means more room for filling!

For the filling, I used my favorite chicken salad recipe, which uses poppy seed dressing from my Petunia Bowl Salad instead of mayo. It’s a bit healthier than regular chicken salad, and it’s great alternative if you have an egg allergy (like my daughter).

My kids LOVED this. And talk about a perfect Easter recipe! 😀

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Mrs. Arable’s Canned Peaches: Learn to Can with Me

Posted February 3, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

 

 

One of my favorite things about food blogging is it pushes me out of my comfort zone on the regular. For example, even though I found eclairs super intimidating when I first learned to cook, I made lavender lemon eclairs after only a year of blogging because they were perfect for my Secret Garden menu. I used to be terrified of cooking big birds, but now my cookbook, A LITERARY HOLIDAY COOKBOOK, has recipes for turkey AND goose. Over time, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable pushing my culinary boundaries, and just this past month, I tried something I’ve had my eye on for years: canning.

In CHARLOTTE’S WEB, Mrs. Arable serves canned peaches to the farmers. Peaches are a great intro to canning because they are high in acid (making them a pretty safe option) and easy to process. Here was my perfect opportunity to take canning for a test drive to see if I like it! I don’t have any special tools (canner, jar rack, jar lifter, etc.), so I used tips from a few different sources to help me learn to can with the tools I already have. Here are the sources I consulted:

Canning is an exact science, so I highly recommend researching before you begin. This will help the whole process go smoothly and safely. Plus, I’m a novice myself, so the recipe below isn’t the be-all and end-all of canning advice. It’s a description of my experience, which worked well for me, but I’ll probably change my methods a bit as I learn more.

Overall, I had a good experience. I think it’s a bit too much work for small batches, but it’s a great option if you have a lot of fruit, jam, sauce, etc. and don’t want to waste any. I don’t think I’ll buy any canning tools quite yet, but I have lots of young berry bushes started in the backyard. Once those are fully established, I could definitely see myself having enough berry jam for big-batch canning. I’m glad I gave it a whirl!

NOTE: Just to reiterate, I am not an expert. Fully research canning before you begin and use recipes that have been approved for canning. This post is not a comprehensive guide and does not address every variable that can affect the canning process (such as elevation or lower acid foods). Consuming improperly processed canned goods can result in botulism. Be safe out there!

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Cinnamon Butterscotch Chocolate Cake with Candied Spiced Walnuts

Posted October 21, 2021 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

 

 

Lately, I’ve been having hard core cravings for cozy autumn flavors. We’re talking nuts, cinnamon, caramel, pumpkin, apple, and all manner of Halloween-y teas (Hellooooo, spiced apple chai!). And of course I’m always craving chocolate. So I was thrilled when, while reading the Nancy Drew book THE SECRET OF SHADOW RANCH, I noticed that Nancy makes a chocolate walnut cake. I immediately said, “This! But make it autumn.”

As befits the Halloween season, this beautiful chocolate cake is a Frankenstein of different recipes I’ve developed over the years. The sponge and frosting recipes are slight variations on those used in the Delicious Death cake in my cookbook, A LITERARY TEA PARTY. I candied and spiced the walnuts, using a recipe from my latest cookbook, A LITERARY HOLIDAY COOKBOOK. Then I topped it off with a cinnamon butterscotch drip top, a twist on the butterscotch sauce I made to fill Mr. Rochester’s Bonbons earlier this year.

Here are a few cake decorating tools I found super helpful (though they’re not required):

  • Turntable. This makes it a lot easier to get a smooth finish on the sides, and it allows you to focus on the timing of your butterscotch drips instead of trying to turn a heavy plate smoothly at the same time. I took a detachable one from underneath a rotating serving plate my grandma gave me, and it worked great!
  • Large frosting knife. If you have a bench scraper, use that to get a smooth finish on your frosting, but if not, a big frosting knife will do. It also helps smooth the caramel.
  • Tall enough fridge space for a 3-tier cake. I’m lucky enough to have a basement fridge with one shelf removed. If you’ll be storing this in your main fridge, plan accordingly.
  • Squeeze bottle. You can add your drip top with a spoon, but if you’re new to the method (like me) a squeeze bottle gives you lots more control.

The finished cake was chocolaty, decadent, and scratched that fall flavor itch. It’s definitely the perfect end to my Nancy Drew menu…and a perfect reward for volunteering to stay home and hand out candy on Halloween!

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