Bake 7
Posted on 06. Apr, 2009 by admin in books i've been reading, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading, telly
I have no idea at what point the Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge turned into the Fabulous Bake-the-entire-cast-of-Blake’s-7 Challenge, but I suspect Heidi from GIRL MEETS CAKE would approve. And they are rather adorable…
Clockwise from the left: Cally, Avon, Vila, Jenna, Servalan, Gan, with Blake in the middle. Before hordes of fellow nerds beat me over the head – yes, I know Servalan isn’t actually one of the 7, but Gingerbread Orac was beyond even my skills. Vila is a bit rubbish, alas, but I am terribly proud of Blake – and Gan was sort of accidental, but actually the resemblance is uncanny. (Here’s the real Team Blake demonstrating what sleeves will be like in The Future: personally, I can’t wait.) I still have a few distressingly naked gingerbread men left in the kitchen, so I may have to make Tarrant and Dayna and Soolin. Or possibly a nice crickety Fifth Doctor…?
And yes, this is a perfectly sensible way to spend one’s time. Ahem. Feel free to join in, anyway: the Bake-a-Boy gallery needs more gingerbready lovemuppets!
I’ve just finished Luisa Plaja’s brand-spanking-new Extreme Kissing, which I’m happy to report is every bit as sweet, funny and clever as Split By A Kiss. Bethany and Carlota are best friends, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have secrets from each other. Bets is terrified she might be pregnant, while Carlota’s not quite the girl everyone assumes – and their day of ‘Extreme Travelling’ (every move dictated by the random pages of a magazine) isn’t the escape from their troubles they’d hoped for. The story whizzes along, alternately narrated by ‘good girl’ Bets and ‘wild child’ Lots, and even if you have a sneaking suspicion you’ve worked out Carlota’s secret, there might just be another one underneath… This is Plaja’s real gift: there’s a sense of absolute authenticity about her characters, whose lives (family, school, friends, boyfriends, past relationships, future hopes and fears) are so convincingly fleshed out that you really do end up caring about their multiple worries – and their triumphs too. And of course, the whole thing feels effortlessly witty: Carlota’s ‘Reverse Goth’ fashion crusade, her tendency to knit under stress, the numerous moments where the girls completely misunderstand one another. Perfect for Louise Rennison fans who like a little angst in with their teenage escapades!
It’s publication day! Girl Meets Cake is properly out in UK shops. I’m celebrating by eating leftover cake from yesterday’s tea party while writing notes for The Becky Book (which isn’t called The Becky Book at all, obviously, but it’ll do for the minute). Nom nom *pause for typing* nom.
baking, baking, looking at pictures of Blake’s 7 costumes, baking… :D
The Fabulous Bake-A-Boy Challenge!
Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, films, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading, other writers, telly
In honour of Heidi’s imaginary boyfriend in GIRL MEETS CAKE, here’s a challenge for you: why not make your own yummy gingerbread boyfriend? (Or girlfriend, or entirely platonic buddy who you might have a bit of a crush on…) Bake yourself a boy, decorate him in suitably delicious fashion, and send me a photo of the results – I’ll be putting up a gallery of your tastiest creations! Personally, I’m planning to make a Gingerbread Avon at my Publication Day tea party this weekend. Silver balls and black food colouring at the ready! Although now I think of it, a gingerbread Tenth Doctor might be quite cute…
Here’s my favourite Gingerbread Men recipe to get you started: they’re soft and bready, so cook them for a few extra minutes if you like them super-crunchy!
125g butter
100g brown sugar
125ml (half a cup) golden syrup (or half syrup, half black treacle)
1 egg yolk
375g plain flour
1-2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Also needed: gingerbread man cookie cutter (or other shapes), rolling pin (I use a wine bottle!), baking sheets, wire rack for cooling – and whatever you’d like to use for decoration: icing, chocolate buttons, etc
- preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F
- beat butter and sugar together until pale and creamy
- add the syrup and the egg yolk, and beat together
- with a wooden spoon, stir in the flour, ginger, spice, and bicarb: then turn it onto a floured surface and knead until smooth
- roll out until about 7mm thick, then place on a greased baking tray
- cook for 7 minutes for soft gingerbread men, 10 minutes for dunk-them-in-tea-or-they’ll-break-your-teeth ones
- cool on a wire rack
- decorate! and don’t forget to snap a photo before he disappears! Email your photos to me here: susie at susieday.com
I’m actually re-reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando at the moment, which is covered in my studenty scribbles – but I didn’t get the chance to babble about MG Harris’ second Joshua Files book Ice Shock when I read the proof, and now it’s out! If you’ve been blinded by a neon yellow book cover lately, that’ll be the one – and the inside is every bit as striking. The first book, Invisible City, threw Josh into some uncomfy situations, but this time the sense of peril is relentless. After some very hairy moments locked in a cellar, Josh ends up hiding out back in Mexico with the magnificently unimpressable Ixchel, where he discovers that he might not just be in danger from the present, but the past as well. From night-time pursuits through freezing Oxford rivers to Lara Croft-style rock-hopping in a Mayan temple, all the way to the heartstopping ‘ice shock’ at the end, this is a top-notch thriller that is absolutely impossible to put down. Loved it!
Girl Meets Cake is officially out on Monday, wheee! So I’ve been rather busy giving susieday.com a cakey makeover (look! innit pretty!), and adding some new stuff for you lovely readery people. You’ll also see interviews with me popping up on a few YA sites soon (or you will, if I can whittle my answer to ‘What is your favourite cake?’ down to just the one paragraph). And in the meantime, I’m feeling increasingly gleeful about New Book, which is still just some ideas on a few bits of paper, but, you know, I think they might be good ideas…
watching Blake’s 7 (only the final episode to go, oh no!); inventing a new sandwich by accident (blue cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel: somehow both disgusting and nice at the same time); loving In Bruges much more than I expected, and hating Watchmen much more than I expected; missing people who are far away.
3 weeks till Cake!
Posted on 16. Mar, 2009 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, girl meets cake, kids' books i've been reading, telly, the rugby isn't it
I’ve less than no idea how it got to be March, but apparently time does this ‘moving forwards’ thing while you aren’t looking. Who knew? I’ve also heard it rumoured that if you just sit completely still all through March, this thing called ‘April’ (like the girls’ name: crazy, huh?) rocks up to replace it, and with April comes the publication day of GIRL MEETS CAKE! (And probably some rain and stuff too. Sorry about that. Still, GIRL MEETS CAKE! Eeeee! Woooo! Noises!)
It’s your average everyday story of love, lies, and gingerbread boyfriends – and I hope it makes you giggle. Coo, it’s so pretty. Every time I look at it, I want to snap off a chunk and eat it. (Don’t consider that an author-recommended tactic, by the way: reading is definitely the way to go with this baby.) And it’s going to be in actual shops from April 6th, so please begin making fluttery eyes at whoever buys the books in your house ASAP.
New book means you’ll be seeing a few changes around the site over the next few weeks, so do check back to see www.susieday.com after her makeover. If you’d like to lay your hands on a free copy of Girl Meets Cake (not to mention a yummy basket of cupcakes!), then hurry on over to this fab Scholastic competition. UK girlies, keep an eye out for Mizz magazine, for another competition with a rather exciting prize (for me as well as you!)…
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer: classic kidlit which I intended to reread for The Book That Never Was. I recall adoring it when I was 11 or so: partly because I knew I was supposed to like this sort of thing (it’s all a bit Blue Peter), partly because the heroine’s last name is Makepeace, like her in Dempsey & Makepeace, which I loved with a flamey burny love. To grown-up-me, it’s both brilliant and maddening: a clever tale of a time-slip, where two girls switch places between 1918 and 1960 and cope with fabulous phlegm – but also a missed opportunity, since the 1960s girl seems so Edwardian to the modern reader that the contrast in the two girls’ lives gets lost. Sigh. Still, the nostalgia made me giddy: a round bedpost that unscrews to reveal a hidden hiding place, monkey puzzle trees, ’snubs to you and utterly squash’… *flails* Also: Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Framed, a tale of thrilling juvenile art theft in North Wales which is beguiling, hilarious, and adorable all at once and should be read as soon as you can plausibly find a bookshop. Oh, and at last I can blether about M.G. Harris’s Ice Shock, the second in her Joshua Files series, which manages to take everything you liked about the first one and then turn it up to 11…proper review next time, I promise!
Surreally enough, I’m currently rewriting bits of Girl Meets Cake for the US edition – which will be called My Invisible Boyfriend, and available sometime in 2010. Not Americanifying it: just tinkering with a thing or two to make the whole thing even more delicious (I hope!). It’s a bit odd, being able to check different drafts against an actual proper book-shaped version, but I’m having fun dipping a toe back into Finchworld and reacquainting myself with geeky Heidi, and Mysterious E, and the endless references to cake…
Baking blueberry muffins; eating scones with chestnut jam (yummy!) while watching Wales playing atrocious rugby; marvelling at how epically late 70s/early 80s telly fails even when it’s trying really hard to be feminist (Blake’s 7, I’m looking at you).
Pshhhht’cooff
Posted on 09. Dec, 2008 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, girl meets cake, other writers, telly
Oliver Postgate has died. Like every Brit of a certain age, his was the voice of my childhood. Smallfilms (Postgate, animator Peter Firmin, and various handy people who were good at knitting) made telly out of bits of string in a shed at the bottom of the garden, with such obvious love and care that I feel teary just thinking about it. His imagination contributed every bit as much of my kidly fondness for stories as Blyton and Kipling and Dahl.
So, for your nostalgic viewing pleasure, here are the singing mice from Bagpuss, the Welshest episode of Ivor the Engine ever, soup (and the soup dragon) with The Clangers (spillage at 6.40!), a glimpse of Nogbad from Noggin the Nog, and some magnificently scary-looking pictures from Tottie (which we used to mock mercilessly, but secretly I adored it). Oh, I am a tiny person all over again, just listening to him… Farewell, Post, you’ll not be forgot.
I’ve mostly been reading unpublished things, which is fun except you can’t talk about them. :) Am now on Andrea Levy’s Small Island, though, which is masterful.
Proof-correction time for Girl Meets Cake! I love this bit: it’s so nearly a book, and those final little tweaks and checks are amusing. Though I’m dithering over a section where my girls greet each other with the always-friendly catalogue of insults (tart, whore, that kind of thing). I know why I wrote it like that: there are legitimate, meaningful, textual reasons for those words to be there. But Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls bellows
Visiting Narnia (well, nearly: sooo pretty), nearly killing myself with undercooked chicken (I knew there was a reason I used to be veggie), continuing my helpless obsession with Gilmore Girls, despite it being all twee and goofy.
I’ll have a P please, Bob
Posted on 19. Nov, 2008 by susie in books i've been reading, cooking, kids' books i've been reading, music, other writers, telly
Best thing about being a children’s writer? Meeting readers – enthused, informed, very-probably-taller-than-me readers. Second best thing? Meeting fellow writers. (They’re usually taller than me too.) So the Oxford heat of the UK Kids’ Lit Quiz last week was a peachy way to spend an evening. I got to join M.G. Harris, Linda Newbery, Dennis Hamley, Meg Harper, Mark Robson and Rachael Wing (who turns out to still be at school, doing her A2s: blimey, I bet she’s fed up of people mentioning that – but still, blimey!) on the Authors Team, up against 30 local schools. Despite me apparently not knowing my Spiderwicks from my Snickets (oh, the shame), we managed to top the scoreboard. But we did have 2 extra people and a combined age of, er, lots – so props to the true winners from Oxford High, and everyone who took part. You all did scarily well, and I would like to have your brains, please.
I’m whizzing gleefully through a sneaky preview copy of Ice Shock (gosh! ooh! no I’m not telling!), but I confess much of my week has been occupied with the Starksy & Hutch Annual 1979, which may be the best book I’ve ever read. And I’ve read Ulysses. Well, some of it. If only Joyce had thought to brighten Bloomsday with bodgy drawings of men in cardigans, tips on keeping house plants, and the fact that Hutch is an Aries, I’m sure I’d have got all the way to the end.
Lazy writer is lazy. I’m sure all these pictures of Starsky wearing very short shorts will inspire me somehow, though. Beloved British Editor has floated an interesting idea my way, though, which I’m quite excited about. I shall reveal more when there is some actual ‘more’ to reveal…
Returning to my old college for a Women’s Dinner, to gossip with old friends and tutors, and delight in the fact that there are now enough women students to make such a thing possible (think there were 14 of us in my academic year?); cooking fajitas to Joe Cornish’s European Supermarket (cheers, Mr Smith); wishing the iPlayer could watch things for you, so as to save time.
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