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Scrumptious Cookbooks: Scone Queen Bakes and Baking Across America

24 Mar

Scone Queen Bakes: 100 Recipes for Scones, Muffins, Cookies, and More from the founder of The Hungry Gnome
by Danielle Sepsy
After watching Danielle Sepsy compete on the streaming series The Big Brunch, I was excited to try some of the sea salt chocolate chip and white chocolate toffee cookies that her Hungry Gnome supplied to a local delivery service. They were delicious so I was even more delighted to find out she had a cookbook, The Scone Queen Bakes, of 100 of her recipes for a variety of delightful baked treats. On the show Sepsy was dubbed the “Scone Queen” and If you enjoy tea and scones, like I do, then you will be excited; she has one for each month of the year. I am particularly interested in trying her red bean scones with sesame crust and butter pecan scones. She even lets us in on her secret recipe for her famous chocolate chip scones. I’m also a huge muffin fan and she has a variety of tasty muffins including raspberry ricotta muffins, chocolate chip pancake muffins, double chocolate muffins (that include a variation with a bit of cream cheese), and several more. I think people living here in the Hoboken area, with our large Italian American population, will be particularly excited by the family recipes she has from her Sicilian heritage like pignoli (pine nut) cookies. I found the autobiographical details about her childhood learning to bake through starting her own business charming.

Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip
by B. Dylan Hollis
My family is a fan of B.Dylan Hollis fun short streaming cooking videos online where one never knows if the quirky historic recipes he bakes will be hits or misses. His previous cookbook, Baking Yesteryear, featured recipes broken up by decades (1900’s-1980’s). We tried several of the cookies for Christmas and found some that will be regular on rotation in the future including the Anzac biscuits and the Potato chip cookies so we were excited to check out his newest work, Baking Across America. In this work the recipes are organized by regions that each one comes form. New Jersey is represented by a chocolate cake recipe that incorporates tomato soup! Another unusual ingredient recipe is the Hatch Chile and Cheddar Apple Pie from New Mexico. It includes some of my favorites like whoopie pies and beignets. Both those who are looking for nostalgic bakes as well as those who are adventurous eaters will find recipes to try.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Information and Digital Services Manager

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Bee’s Knee’s Fantasies: Wolf Worm and Butterfly Effects

17 Mar

Wolf Worm
by T. Kingfisher
Wolf Worm is the latest by T. Kingfisher. Sonia Wilson grew up assisting her botanist father with his research and as a talented illustrator, enjoyed creating beautiful art out of what many people would simply consider weeds. But after her father’s death she struggles to find work as a scientific illustrator until she is hired to paint a collection of parasitic insects for a reclusive entomologist. The strange happenings in the nearby woods filled with odd wildlife and rumors of “blood thieves” has her both fearful and curious.

This is an entrancing dark historic fantasy/gothic horror story that gave me the creeps in the best possible way. As someone who grew up with a biology teacher for a father who enjoyed photographing our backyard bugs, I appreciated the detailed way that Kingfisher handled the topic. Even predisposed to finding insects intriguing, Kingfisher’s description’s still were at times horrifying and I can only imagine how much dread they would inspire in entomophobics. The 1899 time period felt well researched including social issues of the time. Kingfisher’s experience as an artist, herself, brings Sonia’s passion to life. She masterfully builds dread and includes several unexpected twists. If you enjoy this story, also check out her excellent spin on Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, What Moves the Dead, and its sequel, What Feasts at Night.

Butterfly Effects
by Seanan McGuire
Butterfly Effects is the latest in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, which follows several generations of the Price family (both biological and found) on their adventures. Sarah Zellaby is one of the more unusual members of the family who was adopted as a young child. Sarah isn’t human, she is a Johrlac, a species that look like pale humans with dark hair, but are actually evolved from a species of psychic wasps on a world in another dimension. By those who are aware of them, her species is typically feared and reviled on earth for their powers and tendency to cause chaos. Despite all of her best efforts at being a good person, she has been kidnapped and brought to the Johrlac home world for crimes she did not even know existed.

McGuire gives enough of the backstory at the start so that you do not need to read the other books in the series to understand this one; this books follows events most closely with the stories in Imaginary Numbers and Calculated Risk which also focused on Sarah. Butterfly Effects is told from both Sarah’s perspective and that of one of her adopted cousins. Sarah is an interesting and complex character and I think readers who are neurodiverse will especially feel a kinship with her. The Johrlac world is vividly described from its giant bugs and beautiful flowers to its unique buildings; this story will appeal to Science Fiction as well as the series’s usual Fantasy fans.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Information and Digital Services Manager

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