Christmas News & Life Updates: Goodreads Awards and Jan. 2019 Blog Schedule

Posted December 22, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Blogging, Book Events and Tours, Holidays / 0 Comments

Merry Almost Christmas, everybody! Today I’m putting the finishing touches on gifts and getting ready to hunker down for the last remaining weeks before we bring the Little Miss into the world. In the meantime, I’ve got some exciting life updates to share with you guys:
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THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS

As many of you may remember, my cookbook A Literary Tea Party was nominated in the 2018 Goodreads Choice Awards. The winners were announced at the beginning of the month, and I’m thrilled to say I placed 4th in my category! 😀 There was some tough competition—including cookbooks from Ina Garten, Bobby Flay, and Giada De Laurentiis—so getting 4th place was really exciting for me. I flailed about it on social media quite a bit, but this is the first chance I’ve had to announce it on the blog. Thank you SO much to everyone who voted! 🙂

Pssst! If you’re looking for a last minute Christmas gift, you can still get my book before Christmas if you order through Amazon!
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NEXT YEAR’S BLOG SCHEDULE

In my pregnancy announcement post, I mentioned plans to approach next year in 3 phases: hiatus, 2 posts per month, then back to full schedule by the end of the year. I recently had a big blog-related project come up that I need to start working on ASAP, so the plan has changed some. I can’t give full details about the project yet since it’s not officially official, but I should be able to shower you all with the awesome news by early spring. 🙂

As for 2019 blog plans, I’ll still be on postpartum hiatus for January-March. I scheduled some past posts to republish on Thursdays so it won’t be a total dead zone around here, but I don’t know how often I’ll reply to comments and such. After March, my plan is to do 1 post per month for the rest of the year. With 2 kids under 3 years at home, I’m gonna need the extra time for Operation Super Secret Project! 😉

There’s a silver lining, though: you guys get to pick what I make for the monthly posts! If there’s a food you’ve always wanted to see featured on the blog, shoot me an email through the Chat with the Chef page! It can be a specific literary recipe (like, say, the Queen’s tarts from Alice in Wonderland), or if you want to see a certain book featured but don’t care which food I pick, you can tell me about that too.

And you can start sending your requests now! I want to build up as many ideas as possible before March so I have the option to work ahead (and time to read the book, if it’s one I haven’t read). So if you’ve already got something in mind, send it my way! 😀

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That’s all from me for now!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody!

Veruca’s Salted Dark Chocolate Caramels

Posted December 20, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

I LOVE chocolate caramels. I don’t mean caramels with chocolate on top (though those are good too). I’m talking about caramels that have had chocolate mixed into caramel itself as it heats, so you wind up with this dark brown, lusciously chocolaty confection. It’s a weakness of mine, so when I started brainstorming ideas for a Veruca Salt recipe for my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory menu, salted chocolate caramels stuck firmly in my brain.

However, my experience with making chewy caramels is limited…and by “limited,” I mean I’ve never actually done it. I accidentally made soft caramel while making honeycomb candy for the first time several years ago, but I don’t think even that counts, since I’ve never been able to replicate the result.

Rather than try to invent something on the fly, I found a recipe from Taste of Home that looked both simple and reliable. The only change I made was adding a little kosher salt to the top, and OH YOU GUYS IT WAS AMAZING. So chewy, rich, dark, and not-too-sweet. The salt turned out to be the perfect addition, adding just the right level of complexity.

I will DEFINITELY make these again. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Do I have baking chocolate…I do! I could make these now!

Now is good.

NOTE: This recipe needs to set for at least 5 hours.

Violet Beauregarde’s Blueberry Pie with Chocolate Crust

Posted December 13, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Today we’re continuing our all-chocolate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory menu with a tribute to Violet Beauregarde. As most of you will remember from the book/movie, Violet snatches up an experimental chewing gum from a research room in Wonka’s factory and discovers that it’s designed to taste like an entire meal: tomato soup, roast beef, and blueberry pie. Unfortunately, when the gum starts to taste like the dessert course, Violet starts turning into a giant blueberry! It’s one of the most memorable parts of the whole story, so I knew it had to be in my menu…and like any Wonka recipe, it had to feature chocolate! 😉

This luscious blueberry pie is a combo of two recipes: the filling from Pioneer Woman’s blueberry pie and a chocolate version of the pie crust from my cookbook. Since I knew blueberry pies can be especially liquidy, I added a little lemon juice to the filling to help it thicken better. I also added a bit of salt, just because it seemed odd to me that the recipe didn’t call for it (most fruit pies do). I loved the final flavors. The filling was sweet and juicy with just a hint of tartness, and the crust had a deep, dark chocolaty taste that grounded all the bright notes in the filling. I couldn’t help but decorate the crust (after last month’s decorative pie, I think I’ve found a new hobby), but you can keep it simple you like. Enjoy!

NOTE: This recipe needs to set for at least 4 hours.

Willy Wonka’s Hot Chocolate with Lavender Whipped Cream

Posted December 6, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 5 Comments

First, let’s just be real: hot chocolate is what fresh whipped cream was invented for. It’s the perfect fresh, bright, cool companion to a rich and steamy chocolate drink. So when I decided I was going to do an all-dessert, all-chocolate menu for my new book of the month—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—I knew I wanted my tribute to Willy Wonka’s hot chocolate river to feature fresh whipped cream.

Not just ANY whipped cream, though. This is Wonka we’re talking about. It needed some pizzazz, something creative and fun to set it apart from all the other whipped creams. Then I remembered Storeroom #54, which the children and their guardians pass during their tour of Wonka’s factory. It is labeled “ALL THE CREAMS” and lists several strange creams, including violet cream. I didn’t have any violet extract, but I DID have lavender buds, which got my brain ticking. I learned while making lavender lemon eclairs that lavender steeps beautifully in cream, so I used that technique to created a lavender whipped cream that had a distinctive but not overpowering flavor. After all, I wanted the hot chocolate to be the star of the show. On a whim, I added a little purple food coloring for whimsy…since you can never have too much whimsy in a Wonka recipe. 😉

The finished cream went on top of a homemade hot chocolate inspired by two of my favorites: the Witch’s Hot Chocolate from my Narnia menu and the Hundred Acre Hot Chocolate from my cookbook. I loved the way the rich, intense chocolate flavor paired with the floral whipped cream. So much so, in fact, that I started wondering what other flavors would make awesome infused creams (Earl Grey! Cinnamon! Mint!). I may just have to start experimenting!

Achoo! Sick Day Food

Posted November 29, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Teas, Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Here in the Midwest, we’re in the middle of sickness season. The flu is steadily making its rounds through most schools and businesses, and here in my family’s usually cozy hobbit hole, we’re battling a nasty cold. The Mister, as usual, has barely a tickle in his throat, but the Little Mister and myself have been suffering through some pretty crummy days and nights. So crummy, in fact, that even though I realized last weekend that I didn’t have a bonus recipe planned for today, I never really came up with a plan. Energy and brain power have not been on my list of strengths this week. Plus, I figured an extra trek through the snow to the grocery store wouldn’t be the healthiest thing ever.

Long story short: No bonus recipe today, BUT I didn’t want to leave you with nothing. The Mister suggested I make a post featuring some of my favorite sick day food. I loved the idea, so here are my top 5! 😀

Maple Apple Pie with Walnut Crust

Posted November 22, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Can you believe I’ve never written an apple pie post before? I’ve made loads of apple recipes for my classic lit menus (homemade apple sauce, apple rose tartlets, and apple cider crullers—just to name a few) but never pie. Of course, when I decided to make one for my Sleepy Hollow menu, I knew it needed to be more than your average apple pie. I wanted to kick it up a notch!

I started with seasonal flavors, bouncing a few flavor combo ideas off the Mister, and we both agreed that maple and walnut were great seasonal additions to an apple pie. I decided to swap maple syrup for the sugar usually found in fruit pie filling, and since I’m not a big fan of chopped nuts in my pie filling, I decided to grind the walnuts up and mix them in with the pie crust. I used a basic version of the pie crust recipe from my cookbook, and the filling is just a slight variation on my family’s favorite apple pie recipe: the one from “How to Make Apple Pie and See the World.”

The result was a glorious pie filled to bursting with the flavor of sweet-tart apples, rich maple syrup, and a hint of nuttiness from the crust. I brought mine to Thanksgiving, where it was a big hit!

NOTE: This recipe needs at least 4 hours to set.

Sleepy Hollow Smashed Pumpkin Soup

Posted November 15, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Since this is a Sleepy Hollow recipe, I had a grand scheme to serve this soup in roasted pumpkin bowls. It would be a perfect nod to the headless horseman’s jack-o-lantern; plus, it would look seriously cool in the photos! Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Every single grocery store I visited in a 20-minute radius of my house sold out of pie pumpkins two weeks ago and won’t be getting any more this season. Ergh!!! So I shelved my dreams for the perfect Pinterest photo and bought a ceramic pumpkin bowl instead. Pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself…but I’m still considering retaking the photos next year when I can get real pumpkins again!

Dashed hopes of inspired plating aside, this recipe actually turned out really well. It’s a variation on the Milady de Winter Soup I made for my Three Musketeers menu. This time, I swapped the butternut squash for pumpkin, the red pepper for carrot and parsnip, the thyme for rosemary, and the store bought chicken stock for homemade. I liked it so much, I’m making another batch to freeze for after the baby is born in January!

Goodreads Choice Awards and Cookbook Events: Latest Updates

Posted November 14, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Blogging, Book Events and Tours / 0 Comments

Hi, everybody! I’m back again with more updates regarding my cookbook, A Literary Tea Party!

The final round of the Goodreads Choice Awards started yesterday…and I’m thrilled to say I MADE IT!!! 😀 😀 😀 Many thanks to those of you who have voted so far, and thanks again for your continued support. Since this is the final round, voting is open a little longer this time: until Nov. 26th. Goodreads will announce the winners on Dec. 4th. You can cast your vote for my book, A LITERARY TEA PARTY, in the Food & Cookbooks category here. Here’s hoping for a win, but no matter what happens, I’m just excited to have made it this far! 🙂
I also have an update on the book signing scheduled for this weekend. Prairie Fox Books in Ottawa, IL, the store that planned to host the event, unfortunately had to cancel due to store renovations being behind schedule. Normally I’d just reschedule for a bit later, but with my baby due January 3rd, that wasn’t really an option for me. I’m really bummed, guys! 🙁 I was SO looking forward to meeting lots of you at the event and bringing treats to share…but don’t worry, all is not lost! My late spring/early summer cooking demo at the same location is set to proceed on schedule. Yay for silver linings!

See you all back here tomorrow for our next recipe!
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a Goodreads win! 😉

Bacon-Wrapped Stuffed Turkey Breasts with Cranberry Pear Filling

Posted November 8, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 0 Comments

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and with all the preparations ahead, it’s no surprise I’ve had turkey on the brain…though this may also have something to do with the fact that our neighborhood wild turkeys have been out in full force lately. One strolled through the backyard just as I was about to sit down to type this! 🙂

Since this Sleepy Hollow menu is very Thanksgiving-centric, I wanted to be sure to include a turkey recipe. A whole turkey was out of the question (I’ve got an 8-month pregnant belly, an almost-2-year-old, Friendsgiving to host this weekend, and an author event next weekend. Cliche as it sounds, my plate is kinda full.). In short, I needed something simpler and faster than cooking a whole bird. I considered a turkey roulade, but I already made one for my Little Women menu. Then stuffed turkey breasts sprang to mind. They’re a great way to get all the traditional Thanksgiving flavors into a standard-size meal, and the process it quite similar to a roulade, though easier.

Using the roulade recipe as inspiration, I made some key changes to make this recipe unique: wrapping the turkey in bacon, swapping apples for pears and pecans for walnuts, changing bread cubes to Panko crumbs, and adding onion. Plus, I swapped out the seasonings for the thyme and rosemary you’d typically find in stuffing.

By the time all was said and done, it was practically its own recipe—a delicious one at that! The flavors were perfect for the season. They had me wishing Thanksgiving was tomorrow! 🙂

The Goodreads Choice Awards: Voting Continues!

Posted November 7, 2018 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Blogging, Book Events and Tours / 1 Comment

Hi, everybody! I took the Little Mister with me to vote in the midterms yesterday, and I gotta say he was a total champ (the free baggies of candy they were giving out to “future voters” helped too 😉 ). But now I’m ready for some FUN voting. Luckily for me, the second round of the Goodreads Choice Awards has officially begun! And my book, A LITERARY TEA PARTY, is in the semifinals! ???

Many thanks to those who voted in the opening round, and thanks again for your continued support. Voting for this round is open until November 11th. You can cast your vote here. Ten books will be eliminated in this round, so competition is fierce!