The Mudlavia Project: Testing Recipes

Some of my favorite books are the ones that make you feel like you can almost taste and smell the food. I can't read anything by Beverly Lewis without feeling like I need a warm cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll. Harry Potter wouldn't be the same without its famous butterbeer, pumpkin pasties, and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans! And of course, we can't forget the hobbits who love all food and eat at least six meals a day; breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, and afternoon tea just to name a few!

When I write stories, it's really important to me to make the food come to life, and one of the best ways to do this is to test recipes. Not only is it a fun bonus to find a recipe from the story tucked in at the end of a book, but as an author is also helps me to make my story more real.

I have a special chef in my novel, who is based off a story told to me about a chef who used to work there. I have yet to find any information about this particular chef or any other chefs that were employed there, so its up to my imagination to determine what happens in the Mudlavia kitchen.

This is where testing recipes comes in. Not only can a I dream up some of the food they serve in my story, but by testing it, I get an idea of what problems they would have faced as they were trying to cook for so many guests! There were 250 guestrooms at Mudlavia, as well as day visitors, and the staff (in 1903, they had around 90 staff members working there), so there were a lot of mouths to feed!

I was testing a fancy apple recipe that is not pictured because it bombed. There was a very specific way to cut the apple and I cannot tell you how frustrated I was trying to get it just right. James even tried to help me and we had slippery apples flying all over our kitchen. As frustrated as I was with our apple fiasco, I realized later on how funny it would be to have the kitchen staff in my story going through bushels of apples and trying to get them just right for the evening dessert.

 I've come across a few different menus from Mudlavia that gave me a place to start, and I've been researching old-time recipes from the turn of the century. One recipe I found was a Lemon Pepper Cake recipe. Since lemons and pepper are cheap, it gave me a good place to start creating recipes!

Don't let those dark specks fool you! They look like flecks of vanilla bean, but they are actually specks of black pepper for an old fashioned style lemon pepper scone. I was wary of trying to put lemon and pepper in something sweet, but they turned out surprisingly good. The black pepper gives the sweet lemony scones a subtle note of heat.

While it was hard to wrap my mind around lemon pepper anything in something sweet, it was easier to pair the two in something more savory, like a biscuit. I found an old fashioned recipe for a cream biscuit, and since Mudlavia had their own creamery, it seemed very fitting to use a biscuit recipe with butter and cream! I then tinkered with it by adjusting the liquids and adding lemon and pepper to give it a distinct flavor.

This last recipe doesn't have anything to do with lemon or pepper (thank goodness- we were getting a little tired of that combination)! I came across an old cookie recipe that was similar to one my grandma and mom always made around Christmas time. Pictured above is the original recipe, but it has been the base for many other ideas, including the Old Fashioned Lemonade cookies I wrote about in my last post.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy!

Mudlavia Project Update

I haven't posted any Mudlavia posts lately because I had deadlines for two contests this week. I started getting everything ready for them two weeks ago, and they took up a lot of my time.

The first one was to win a scholarship to attend a writing conference this summer. I had to submit the first five pages of my manuscript. I spent several hours editing those few pages, as well as double checking all my research to make sure it was right!

The second one was for a baking contest. You are probably wondering what this has to do with Mudlavia! For this book, I've had to research everything; clothes, trains, cars, medicine, and yes, food! I am fascinated by old Mudlavia menus, and anything I can learn about the kitchen and gardens there. The old menus have inspired me to recreate old recipes from the turn of the century.

Food Network had an ad for a baking contest, and I thought it would be fun to enter one of the recipes I made up. Pictured below are what I am calling Old Fashioned Lemonade Cookies. They were inspired by an old time recipe that was similar to a pecan cookie recipe my grandma and mom used to make at Christmas time. Once I had that recipe down, I turned it into a lemon cookie; partly because I've found several recipes from the turn of the century featuring lemon, and partly because of my dad, who adores anything with lemon in it.

You would never believe the complications with changing a few ingredients around in a recipe. People aren't joking when they say baking is a science- it took two to get the frosting right and five tries to get the dough right!

My book is coming along well. I have about 90,000 words written and I have started editing my first draft. My goal is to have it edited by the end of May before my girls are out of school. I still have a long way to go with the research to help fill in gaps in my story, but am really excited about how it is coming along. More posts to come soon! Thanks for reading!