The dessert from Lady Wynwood’s Spies, Vol 4: Betrayer I hadn’t really intended to have so many meal scenes in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 4: Betrayer . However, at the time I was writing it, I was suffering from my IBS issues, and my diet had been (and still is) terribly bland, so I put every kind of delicious thing into the book that I could. There was a scene later in the book when Laura kind of forces Sol to eat. He’s come to see her looking rather haggard, after he’s been dealing with some enemies trying to undermine him. I didn’t intend to do it, but I ended up having them eat a full meal (rather than just tea and sweets). And since there’s something kind of cute about a manly-man enjoying a sweet dessert, I wrote a Floating Island dessert into the scene. The Floating Island recipe was one I’d seen a few weeks earlier when I was looking through the PDF scans of some old cookbooks from the Regency era. The Floating Island stuck out to me because it was nothing like th...

When I first wrote the prologue scene between Laura and Sol in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 1: Archer , I threw in that bit about Sol’s favorite seed cakes just on a whim. I had looked up different pastries in an old 1800 cookbook and chose those at random. However, I got a lot of mileage out of those seed cakes. Sol mentioned his fondness for seed cakes in The Gentleman Thief , and the seed cakes showed up again for a team meeting in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 3: Aggressor . I found a Regency-era recipe for Pound Seed Cakes , which I thought were exactly like the cakes that Laura’s cook makes for the team meeting in book 3 of my series. But I also wanted to find a recipe that was unusual enough that my character Sol would consider it his favorite, and so I tried the Rich Seed Cake recipe from the same book. The recipe is on page 114 of a book published in 1800, The Complete Confectioner; or, Housekeeper’s Guide by Mrs. H. Glass and Maria Wilson. If you click on the link, you...

  I blogged before about how my character Sol from Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 1: Archer loves Lady Wynwood’s cook’s seed cakes, and how I decided to try some seed cake recipes using a cook book published in 1800. The first seed cake recipe I tried, Pound Seed Cake , turned out really well, but after tasting them, my husband requested lemon poppy seed flavor. Making the seed cakes with sourdough discard turned out exactly the same as when I made a sourdough levain, so I thought that making these tea cakes would be a GREAT way to use up sourdough discard, since I always keep a jar for my discard in the fridge. The lemon poppy seed version turned out fantastic! I admit that the first time I made them, I accidentally forgot to check them at 25 minutes, so I took them out at 30 minutes and they were a little brown. But they still tasted wonderful and were great with tea. The sour tang of the discard paired perfectly with the lemon zest. I made them again and took them out at 25...

Have you ever wondered what Regency-era cake might have tasted like at an elegant tea or a covert spy meeting? In my historical novels, I often mention traditional treats enjoyed by my characters—and sometimes, the temptation to try them in real life is just too strong to resist. Today, I’m diving into an antique recipe for seed cake, a favorite of one of my Regency characters, and adapting it for modern kitchens—including a sourdough version for those with sensitive stomachs or IBS like mine. If you’re a fan of historical fiction, curious about baking from vintage cookbooks, or simply love a moist, buttery slice of something delicious, you’ll enjoy this behind-the-scenes peek into both my baking experiments and my books. Let’s bring a little bit of the past to your plate. 🍰 When I wrote in Sourdough Treacle Buns in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, Volume 2: Berserker , I felt a hankering to eat them and ended up figuring out a recipe using sourdough. After my success with the treacle...

The best part about writing novels is that I get to include little personal things in my books. I absolutely love food, so I always include one or two foods in my books that are special to me. In my romantic suspense, Deadly Intent , the heroine’s family is having a get-together with friends and family. At get-togethers with my family, my mom will usually make Chinese chicken salad. It’s a really yummy dish that’s surprisingly easy to make. It’s also not too exotic (unlike some other Asian food I grew up with). As kids, we loved it, and my mom was happy since we were eating our veggies. :) Chinese chicken salad 1-2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded 1 head iceberg lettuce 1/4 c. cilantro, coarsely chopped (optional) 1 package won ton skins (optional) DRESSING: 1-2 teaspoons sesame oil 1/2 cup salad oil 2 Tablespoons sugar 3 Tablespoons rice vinegar 1/2 teaspoon salt freshly ground black pepper finely shredded celery (optional) Whisk together dressing, adding or sub...

If you read my Christian Regency Romantic Suspense novel, Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 2: Berserker , you will have noticed that Miss Tolberton brings humble treacle buns to eat with tea at the church. Not only that, but the treacle bun appears in a surprising way in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, volume 3: Aggressor . I got the idea for treacle buns from looking through old cookbooks from the 1800s. Commercial dry yeast cakes for making breads were not available until 1825, which is 15 years after the date of my book, so most breads during the Regency period were made with sourdough starters. “Black treacle” is the same thing as molasses, and was mentioned in cookbooks published during the Regency period, but in those books, I couldn’t find a recipe for treacle bread or treacle buns or brown bread. This seemed a bit strange to me since brown bread (made with whole wheat and black treacle) has been around since before the Regency period, but I am guessing that it was such a common food, m...

At first I thought this was a stupid recipe to post, but then I thought I’d just post it in case someone hadn’t thought of this and was interested in it. Captain Caffeine has been known to remark that I’m very picky about my tea, although I don’t consider myself a real connoisseur. I don’t like tea that’s been made in a coffee carafe because I can taste the old coffee and it’s nasty, but I will not scoff at using a Lipton tea bag if there’s nothing else available. However, as the weather has gotten hotter I’ve been searching for the perfect fruit iced tea to drink. I love those fruit flavored black teas like mango or peach or strawberry. However, I notice that in restaurants, especially, many times the tea is bitter because they oversleep it. However, I’ve found that in order to get a strong fruit flavor, especially when steeping real dried fruit as opposed to just artificial fruit-flavored tea, I need to use hot water and a long steep time. It’s also generally recommended that y...

I made Regency-era White Soup again, this time an easier way than the original 1811 recipe . It is almost nothing like the elegant cream soup Mr. Darcy would have been used to—it turned out more like a hearty blonde stew. However, I thought it was very tasty. 1 package of beef neck (1 pound) and 1 (cooked) chicken carcass or equivalent (cooked) chicken bones OR 1 quart beef stock and 1 quart chicken stock 2.5 pounds raw chicken (I used thighs) 1/2 pound bacon, chopped 1/4 - 1/2 pound rice (the original recipe called for 1/4 pound, but I added extra rice to make it more hearty) 2 anchovy fillets, minced 5-6 peppercorns 2 Tb minced fresh basil 1 teaspoon of dried thyme 1 large onion, diced 1 bunch of celery, chopped (Optional) 2-3 cups of chopped veggies, whatever you have in the fridge. I added 2 cups of chopped kale 1/4 - 1/2 pound raw almonds, pounded fine (I used a Ziplock bag and my meat pounder, and I ended up putting 1/2 pound in, but the original recipe only had 1...

There is a line in Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Bingley is talking about the ball he plans to host at Netherfield: “If you mean Darcy," cried her brother, "he may go to bed, if he chooses, before it begins—but as for the ball, it is quite a settled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send round my cards.” I then found these two fascinating articles on white soup from the Jane Austen Centre and the Austenonly blog . I decided to try making it! I followed the recipe from the book by John Farley, published in 1811, The London Art of Cookery and Domestic Housekeepers' Complete Assistant : uniting the principles of elegance, taste, and economy : and adapted to the use of servants, and families of every description . You can download the scan of the original book from the link. Here’s the original recipe: White Soup. PUT a knuckle of veal into six quarts of water, with a large fowl, a pound of lean bacon, half a pound of rice, two ...

I had a really bad allergy attack yesterday (so did Captain Caffeine) and so I did some internet searching and found this article on cayenne pepper tea to clear sinuses from allergies or colds . However, being a wimp about pepper and also knowing that my stomach is rather sensitive to it, I knew I couldn’t take a tea like that straight even with food, so I came up with this recipe to disguise the pepper in Chai Tea, soften it with milk, and adding extra honey. Also adding the cayenne in twice the amount of hot water (from the original recipe in the article) helped make it less painful. The article also warns about this, but drink this tea with food. I ate some Snyder’s pretzels in between sips and that helped to keep my stomach from getting upset by the pepper. What also helped was drinking some baking soda in a glass of water. If you have problems with acid reflux, I wouldn’t suggest you try this recipe. Also my lips were burning pretty badly from the pepper, but my throat and t...