every day should be a susie day

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.

Paris, je t’aime

Posted on 14. Jan, 2009 by susie in biscuits and lies, books i've been reading, films, girl meets cake, holidays, other writers, telly

Surefire way to avoid the post-Christmas blues: go on holiday. OK, so the part where it was -7°C wasn't entirely part of the plan, but Paris in the snow turns out to be absurdly lovely. And it gives one an excellent excuse to drink the utterly decadent hot chocolate at Angelina while thawing...

  Georgette Heyer, wheeee! And Russell T. Davies' A Writer's Tale, which (being about both writing and Doctor Who) was clearly cooked up in the 'things which exist purely to please Susie' cauldron. TARDISes aside, Davies has been responsible for some of the most cheerfully thought-provoking telly of the last 10 years – and he's every bit as entertaining and insightful on the page as you'd hope. I'm finding his reluctant commitment to prevarication until utter terror forces him to start working deeply reassuring, though he's emphatically wary about assuming any writer's method as a template. Always have an ending in mind! Only write in the mornings! In pencil, on the backs of envelopes, while drinking nothing but squid ink! He's right: we all want to have our hands held, to believe there's a secret trick to it, but sometimes the best advice really is to ignore whatever anyone tells you and just get on with it. Though of course you'll have to take my word for that...

  Next Book* is at the vertiginous decision-making stage. There are so many ways to write this story: whether it works depends entirely on me picking the right one. Actually, that's rubbish. No decisions are final: sometimes you have to write it 'wrong' before you can see how to write it 'right'. (If you're me, anyway.) It does help if you can spot the 'right' early on, though: Girl Meets Cake got to 55,000 words of Mostly Wrong, which was a bit wearing to sort out. Speaking of which: look! OK, so you still can't have it until April – but magnificent cover, no?

* Next Book (ie not the Next Book for you lot, the one I haven't written yet but hopefully might come out in 2010) needs a 'Biscuits & Lies'-style working title.  It's got a working working title, but that tells you the whole plot in one go, so we can't have that.  Hmm...bear with me?

  Drinking gallons of tea from my Christmas Blake's 7 mug; seeing in the New Year with Spaniards and grapes (twelve of 'em); pondering the many ways in which The Other Boleyn Girl is terrible; plotting a Prisoner marathon in honour of the *sniffles* late, great McGoohan.

Never was a story of more woe…

Posted on 02. Oct, 2007 by susie in Uncategorized

I’ve been dumped, dear reader. Cruelly and unceremoniously dumped. It’s been 7 years since the relationship began and we’ve been inseparable ever since, curled up together night after night. Friends used to come over not just to see me, but to see us both. Sometimes I’d turn down a night out with them so we could have a little quality time, just the two of us. But I get home tonight and boom! It’s over.

No one should be abandoned like that. There should be some build-up, some subtle hint that things are drawing to an end: a furtive eyeroll at my efforts to channel-hop so efficiently I can watch two programs at once; a dismissive sigh as Buffy S4 goes in the dvd player again. True, there was that nagging problem with the right-hand speaker that would go off in a sulk every now and then. But I thought we were working through that! I compromised! I waggled that bloody SCART cable and twiddled the aerial and ignored how there wasn’t a second SCART socket so I had to stand on my head and perform spaghetti-unravelling every time I wanted to watch a video! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT, EH?

I do have a confession to make. Lately, I have been thinking of, well, ‘trading up’. I’ve been looking at other televisions: sleeker, slimmer televisions, with ‘on’ buttons that work first time. I felt guilty at first, but now? When that first advance cheque comes through, mister, expect to find yourself well and truly replaced. And don’t think I’ll be pining for you, either, because my new honey is going to be widescreen. Size matters, k?

Inappropriately attached to my telly? Moi?

Naturally, this happens after I spend a weekend chained to the laptop getting the (hopefully?) final draft of the book done and dusted, and thus at the precise moment where all I want to do is loll slack-jawed in front of due South repeats. But I’m less distraught than I was when my laptop performed the same trick back in May, which was frankly so upsetting that I almost considered buying one of Siralan’s Emailer phones. (I said almost.) I am suffering from the usual ‘there’s been a power cut’ goldfish mentality: can’t watch Neighbours, bugger, ah well, Friends is probably on E4 instead…oh, hang on… But between the laptop dvd player and the likes of TV Links, I have a pretend telly of sorts. Does this make me a desk potato?

Missing Flight of the Conchords and Charlie Brooker again, though. Second week in a row. I shall be making sure not to walk underneath any grand pianos next Tuesday…

Richard Morrison’s daft scaremongering in The Times: I knew this bloke who died in his 30s, therefore universities are evil.

More My So-Called Life on dvd. Why the hell was there only one season of this?