Category: Book of the Month Recipes

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.

Spicy Eel

Posted December 1, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

I don’t like fish, but I LOVE eel. I had it for the first time last year on sushi, and it blew my mind. If the idea of eating eel makes you squeamish, I’m begging you—please please PLEASE give it a try! It’s truly lovely. It has a delicacy similar to fish, but it has a meatier, heartier flavor that reminds me of chicken.

Spicy Eel is my favorite food from the game STARDEW VALLEY. When eaten in-game, it adds buffs to speed and luck, making it perfect for when you plan to spend the day racing all over the map collecting foragables or delving deep in the Mines.

Apart from eel, hot pepper is the only other ingredient listed in the in-game recipe for Spicy Eel. Judging by the dish’s thumbnail, it looks like the eel is brushed with a red sauce. I decided to make my sauce with gochujang (spicy chili paste) for my hot pepper element, taking my inspiration from tteokbokki. Basically I just played with the ingredients and consistency of the sauce until I was happy with it. It’s important to make sure eel is fully cooked (see the note in the Instructions below), so I consulted the cook temp/time in a Serious Eats recipe for whole eel and tweaked it to suit the size of my fillets.

As a self-professed spice wimp, this dish was a little too hot for me, but it was ultra flavorful. I’ll definitely make a milder version for myself in the future, but if you like your food to bring the heat, Spicy Eel is the dish for you! 🙂

Strange Bun

Posted November 17, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Say hello to the Strange Bun, my latest recipe from the game STARDEW VALLEY! In the game, this recipe is made from void mayonnaise and periwinkle, an appropriately strange combo to be sure. Literally everyone in the game hates them (even the villager who gives you the recipe). I was intrigued by this dish, so I decided to try my hand at making a delicious (but still weird) version.

The in-game recipe thumbnail shows a yellow spiral bun that rises in the center and has red filling, so I knew what my final bun needed to look like. I started with my go-to enriched dough recipe, but I swapped out the egg for mayonnaise. It may sound wild, but mayo has long been known to add fat and complexity to baked goods. In fact, you may have even come across cake recipes that call for mayo.

But what to do about the filling? I loved the idea of adding to the strangeness by making my buns spicy. I decided to make red pepper jam, and since this was my first time making it, I used a recipe by Inquiring Chef and tweaked it to suit my taste. To make the bun higher in the center, I cut the rolled dough into triangles and rolled them from the wide end, baking them in muffin tins to help them keep their shape.

The final product was savory and sweet with a touch of spice. A bit confusing to be sure, but delightfully so. I think if the villagers in STARDEW VALLEY got a chance to try this version, they might change their minds about Strange Buns!

Pepper Poppers

Posted November 3, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment

Today marks the beginning of a menu I’ve been looking forward to all year! Not only is this my first time making a menu for a computer game, but it’s for my all-time favorite game: STARDEW VALLEY!

For those who are unfamiliar, STARDEW VALLEY is a farming and life simulation role-playing game. There are loads of farming sims out there, but this one is special because it is just so perfectly balanced. It’s well-paced, relaxing but rewarding, easy to play in both short bursts and long hauls, and incorporates fun storytelling and lore. In fact, STARDEW VALLEY is the only computer game I’ve continued to play since having kids (sorry, Sims). On top of it all, the art style and music are beautiful in their simplicity…and the food looks AMAZING. Which is why we’re here today. 😉

Food plays a big roll in STARDEW VALLEY. Many of the recipes provide buffs to the player’s speed, energy, luck, attacks against monsters, and more. There are loads of iconic STARDEW VALLEY recipes so I had a hard time narrowing it down, but I knew from the beginning that today’s recipe needed to make the final cut. Let’s make Pepper Poppers! 😀

Pepper Poppers is probably the food I eat most early in the game. It provides buffs for both farming and speed, making it perfect for when I’m working on building my farm to max capacity. Judging by the recipe’s in-game thumbnail, Pepper Poppers consists of a mix of red and green breaded peppers, which the description states are spicy and filled with cheese.

I chose jalapeños for my green peppers and mini sweet peppers for the red (since my store didn’t have any red chilis). For the filling, I used a mix of cream cheese and shredded Cheddar, then threw in some chopped pepperoni and chives to make it my own. Since this recipe is a favorite of the character Shane—and he’s the one who gives the player the recipe—I decided to create a batter than uses his favorite beverage, beer. My beer batter is loosely based on this Paula Deen recipe.

These were SO satisfying. Crisp on the outside, then a hit of spice, and ultra creamy in the center. I can see why they’re Shane’s favorite!

Cherry Almond Tart

Posted October 13, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments

Today marks the final recipe in my JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL menu. This is one of my favorite books so of course I’m sad to be done, but I’m also SO grateful that I have a job that lets me bring fictional food to life. Living the dream!

Today’s recipe is inspired by the cherry almond tart Jonathan Strange eats while in Spain helping the British army during the Peninsular War. In the book, Strange eats almond tart with dried cherries, which I interpreted to be cherry almond tart using army rations. For my recipe, I decided to make what I felt the army cook was trying to recreate: cherry frangipane tart.

Since I’m new to making frangipane, this recipe is a bit of a conglomeration. I started with my standard pie shell recipe and made changes based on cherry frangipane tart recipes by Fresh Hunger, The Sunday Baker, and Kitchen Trials. I also used a combo of those recipes to come up with my filling. This was a really fun experience! I especially appreciated Sunday Baker’s tip to turn the cherry halves cut-side-up to prevent extra liquid from leaking into the tart.

Since cherry and almond are two of my husband’s favorite foods, I don’t think he minded at all that I had to tweak this recipe 3-4 times before I was happy with it. I hope you enjoy the results at much as he did!

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! 🙂

Pie of Honeyed Hummingbirds: Honeyed Cornish Hen Pot Pie

Posted September 15, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

In JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL by Susanna Clarke, there is a scene in which the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair orders an array of fantastical dishes from a restaurant: roasted wyvern, salamander with pomegranate relish, a pie of honeyed hummingbirds, and more! I wanted to be sure to include one of these amazing dishes in my menu, so I chose the pie of honeyed hummingbirds.

There’s no description of the pie in the book beyond the name, though it was obviously a savory poultry pie, so I had lots of room to get creative! I decided to use Cornish hens as my “hummingbirds” (partridge or grouse would be even smaller, but I decided to stick with what people can easily find in a grocery store). I roasted the hens in honey-lemon glaze and used mead (honey wine) in the filling’s creamy broth. Since this is an autumn menu, I added seasonal flavors like pumpkin, leek, and sage to create a delicious, rich, just-slightly-sweet poultry pie. Garnish the crust with a sage leaf hummingbird for that added touch of whimsy, and you’re all set to feast with the malevolent Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair. . . if you dare! 😉

Old-Fashioned Wigg Buns with Orange Marmalade

Posted September 1, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

Today I’m thrilled to begin a menu for one of the best books I’ve read in a long time: JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL by Susanna Clarke. It is a historical fantasy that follows the story of two gentlemen magicians whose partnership and eventual rivalry change their world.

Despite the book’s unbelievable length (over a thousand pages!), I found myself wanting to read as slowly as possible, just so I could stay immersed in Clarke’s world. I love how she takes magical elements and seamlessly weaves them into a realistic 19th-century English setting. The aesthetic is reminiscent of gothic fantasy, making it a perfect autumn read, yet the book is narrated like a biography or piece of academic research, which grounds it. The merger of fantasy and reality is helped by footnotes that reference dark folklore and works of magical scholarship alongside historical figures like Napoleon and Lord Byron.

In keeping with this realistic setting, I wanted today’s recipe to be an authentic historical dish. In the book, Stephen Black, a butler who is more than he appears, is offered a wigg bun with marmalade. Wigg buns are lightly sweetened rolls that were popular in the late 18th century. They were traditionally spiced with caraway. I must confess to hating caraway, so I used other period appropriate spices: allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. The recipe below is an authentic late 18th-century recipe I found on Savoring the Past, which explores historical living (it’s a great source of culinary info from that era. I’ve use their collection of online historical cookbooks for past menus). This was really fun to try, and I especially enjoyed making “barm,” the historical alternative to modern dried yeast.

As for the marmalade that accompanied Stephen’s buns, I used a slightly tweaked version of a recipe I found on Mon Petit Four, since I’d never made marmalade before. I love this recipe because it’s super easy to follow, doesn’t use a lot of ingredients, and successfully avoids the bitterness that can happen in homemade marmalade. It takes a couple hours, but a lot of that time is spent waiting for things to boil. Plus, it’s easy to scale up without much added cook time. It was super delicious, I’ll definitely make it again. Enjoy! 😀

Almond Pancakes with Blueberry Jam

Posted August 18, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

As summer shifts to autumn around us, my current menu is coming to a close. Cooking food from MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN by Jean Craighead George has drawn me out of my comfort zone in the best way possible. I seared fish wrapped in leaves on an open fire, made salad with dandelion greens, and simmered stew made from venison my dad hunted himself. I really got to capture the outdoors with this menu, and I truly enjoyed it. I’m sad to see it end, but I’m also excited to dive into my autumn menu. Let’s finish off the summer with one last delicious recipe, shall we? 😀

In MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, one of the most common foods Sam makes is acorn pancakes topped with his friend Bando’s blueberry jam. “But wait,” I hear you say, “this post is a recipe for ALMOND pancakes!” And you’re right. Since I work on these menus a couple months ahead, acorns weren’t ripe yet when it came time to make this (and since I don’t have an oak tree, I’m not sure I could have scrounged enough acorns to make enough flour anyway). Almonds were an easily sourceable substitute, and I knew they’d pair beautifully with blueberry jam. And I was right! 😀

They turned out delicious, though I’ll admit the almond flavor isn’t super strong. The almond flour itself doesn’t carry a lot of flavor in this preparation, instead contributing more to the texture of the pancake, making it more moist and just a touch chewier. I added some optional almond extract to the ingredients if you want more almond flavor. You can also increase the amount of almond flour to 1/2 cup (and reduce the all-purpose flour to 1 1/2 cups). However, that will make the batter more finicky. It’s thinner and spreads a lot, so you’ll want to pour less batter per pancake (approx. 3 Tbsp). I also had to increase the burner temperature to just below medium. I found all that to be bit too tedious, but it’s an option if you want to try it.

The blueberry jam was a really fun pairing and a perfect way to take advantage of summer fruit. I’m not big into syrup on my pancakes, so I appreciated the change of pace. Add some fresh whipped cream and sliced almonds on top, and you’ve got yourself the perfect recipe to finish off a menu for MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN. See you all again in September!

Venison Stew

Posted August 4, 2022 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Today we’re making another recipe from MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN by Jean Craighead George! One of my favorite things about this book is that it actually includes simplified recipes for a lot of the foods the main character, Sam, eats over the course of the story. I wanted to make sure to include one of these recipes in my menu, so today we’re making Sam’s venison stew. When explaining how to make one of his meals, he says, “brown puffballs in deer fat with a little wild garlic, fill pot with water, put venison in, boil.” Granted, he doesn’t call it “stew,” but pretty much the only difference between soup and stew is how long you cook it and if/how you thicken it. Venison can be a tough, lean cut of meat, so I think it’s more likely Sam cooked it for quite a while to tenderize it, like you would for stew. Plus, we know he had acorn flour on hand, so he could have used that as a thickener later if he wanted.

I used Sam’s instructions as a jumping off point, but my recipe below has a few more ingredients, ensuring a rich, deep flavor. I used a venison hindquarter roast I got from my dad (my mom says venison steaks would work well too), white button mushrooms (since puffball mushrooms weren’t in season), carrots and potatoes (because what’s a stew without some hearty root veg?), and a whole mess of herbs and spices. It turned out tender, rich, and hearty—just what Sam would want after a long day of hunting in the Catskill Mountains.