Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

One inescapable sign of autumn is the appearance of pumpkin-flavored everything on the market shelves. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin spice coffee… the list is seemingly endless! With all due respect to fans of the currently ubiquitous orange vegetable, I’ve always associated autumn with apples: tart, sweet, and spicy. Apple cider, apple dumplings, apple and walnut dressing, and, on weekend mornings, apple pancakes. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the baked apple pancake, sometimes called a Dutch baby, ever since trying one at a local pancake restaurant in San Diego during last summer’s RWA.   Now that fall weather is finally here—after a long and protracted summer—I’m delving into recipes, comparing and tweaking proportions and ingredients to come up with one that produces the most satisfying results: not too wet, not too dry, not too sweet, and loaded with tender spiced apples. So, straight from Casa Sherwood’s tes...

Baking was one of the first things I learned to do in the kitchen--a pan of brownies, a tray of chocolate chip cookies, muffins, quick breads. (When I went off to grad school in another town, my mother was convinced that I'd starve because she thought--mistakenly--that all I knew how to cook were blueberry muffins! Unbeknownst to her, I’d also mastered meatloaf, spaghetti with marinara sauce, and white-cut chicken). Transitioning from cookies to pies is a significant step, but not an impossible one. I usually turn out a couple of apple pies during the fall and winter, and a few peach pies (possibly my specialty) in the summer. In the last couple of years, I've added lemon meringue to the roster. Every pie presents its own challenge, but lemon meringue can be especially demanding because there are three separate layers to assemble, and if one of them is "off," the whole pie suffers. It could be a burned or still-doughy crust, lemon curd that's too runny or...

Hello, everyone! I'm Brooklyn Ann and boy I learned a lot this weekend! For my monthly RWA meeting author  Bonnie R. Paulson  and I put on a workshop about author marketing. And the first part of it was the most important: Learning your author brand. For authors who predominately write in one genre, like our fabulous historical romance author, Shana Galen , branding is easy. When you pick up one of her books you know you're going to get some awesome regency spies, sensual and touching chemistry, and maybe even some pirates and carriage races. Her website clearly depicts historical romance with eloquent pictures of a lady's fan, a horse & carriage, and a quill with a pot of ink. And I LOVE her color scheme. But with authors who write more than one genre, figuring out our brand, much less how to advertise it, can be tricky. Bonnie R. Paulson did a fantastic job with hers. Though she write apocalyptic fiction, Zombie YA, romantic suspense, AND western romance,...

That's right, I said "desserted." With the double-s that means something delicious is in the works. See, I'm getting close to a book deadline, which usually means I become less mentally present, unlikely to remember mealtimes, and prone to disappear into my office in the evenings. (Ok, I guess I mean "deserted" too.) My husband has become used to life with a writer, and my daughter is getting there. Still, I figured I owed them a cake. I love to bake, and I'm a sucker for recipes printed in the newspaper alongside pretty pictures. So when I saw a recipe for a cake made in a slow cooker , I had to try it. Look how pretty the picture! And cake! In a slow cooker! I didn't even know this was possible. It was easy to mix up the batter, and after four hours in the slow cooker, it had steamed into something that sort of looked like it might be done. When it failed to turn neatly out of its pot, a friend and I took a kitchen spoon to it. Nothing like...

Lemon Tree...and Feline Guardian! Just as there are certain colors and smells that you automatically associate with specific seasons, so are there particular flavors. So if autumn tastes like pumpkin, ginger, and cranberries, winter like peppermint and chocolate, and summer like strawberries and peaches, spring--at least to me--tastes like lemons. And right now, with the warmer weather coming in, Southern California's lemon trees are putting out bumper crops of sunny yellow fruit! And enthusiastic cooks like me eye the laden branches with mingled speculation--and acquisitiveness! Because lemons are among the most versatile of ingredients, finding their way into all kinds of dishes: hot, cold, savory, sweet, liquid or solid. Whether it's avgolemono soup or lemon cream pasta or lemon meringue pie, lemon enlivens any springtime menu. Today I'm sharing a recipe for madeleines, those pretty scallop-shaped cakes that you can now find as overpriced three-packs at your loca...

by Danielle Jackson Some of you may know this, but in addition to being a publicist at Sourcebooks, I’m an avid baker. I. LOVE. BAKING. Which is sort of a tough hobby to have when you have to fit in a wedding dress pretty soon… but oh well! I still love to bake, and I especially love to share baked goods with friends. I’ve gone as far as to schedule weekly “snack days” in the Sourcebooks PR department. We have a schedule and we all take it VERY seriously. And more often than not, we all make something homemade (though we do not judge store-bought items). The last few years I’ve alternated baking things for family and friends with making crafty items for them. It’s a lot of work, but I think these special handmade—and sometimes edible!—items are really fun. Here are three of my all-time favorite things to bake, and share with people! The photos below are my own :) Mini-Pecan Tarts (from our very own CAROLYN BROWN!) I love these for the Fall—and they are...

If any of you have read Demons Like It Hot , it's not hard to see that one of my other big hobbies is baking. I absolutely love anything that has to do with baking. I will admit though, the cleaning? Not so much. Tomorrow would have marked my grandmother's 100th birthday. I like to say that I got my baking genes from her. I still am trying to master her secret pie crust recipe though. I think I'm almost there. During the holidays I turn into a regular Betty Crocker wannabe. I think I'm trying to keep the baking tradition alive. A couple weeks back, I watched the Today show where blogger and author, Emily Schuman was a guest. She showed some fun and exciting ways to celebrate Thanksgiving, one of which were pumpkin pie pops. Although, she did mention you could use other fillings as well. One of my personal mottoes is "everything is better on a stick." So, with that in mind, I decided I'd give it a go. To make things a little easier, I bought prema...