Latest / Reality Writes / Fake It Till You Bake It—Answering Your Biggest Mystery Recipe Questions

Transcript

Fake It Till You Bake It—Answering Your Biggest Mystery Recipe Questions · Reality Writes

0:04
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
0:10
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander.
0:11
Ellie Alexander: This is the podcast where we talk about all things bookish, writer-ish, and this week bakish.
0:17
Ellie Alexander: And I'm here with the Tech Guy.
0:20
Tech Guy: Yeah, that's right.
0:21
Tech Guy: I'm excited about today's subject.
0:23
Tech Guy: We've been off for a couple of weeks, so um it's great to get back to it.
0:27
Tech Guy: Um but before we get started here, I just want to remind all the darlings out there that uh of a new feature we have with the Reality Writes Podcast.
0:37
Tech Guy: And you've always been able to leave us comments on YouTube and Spotify and channels like that, which we totally appreciate.
0:44
Tech Guy: But now for everybody else who consumes this show on your favorite podcasting app, um, whether that be Apple Podcasts or Outcast or any of the any of the podcast apps out there, if you look in the show notes, you'll see a send us a message link.
0:58
Tech Guy: If you tap that link, you can send us a text message.
1:01
Tech Guy: But you can also, if you like, you can send us a voice message.
1:05
Tech Guy: And who knows, maybe you'll just hear your own voice on a future episode of Reality Rights.
1:11
Tech Guy: Uh, we've already had a few uh darlings out there write in and with some great questions, and we've shared those on the the show here in past episodes.
1:20
Tech Guy: Um, but keep them coming, uh, especially if you got any burning questions out there, because I I love putting Ellie on the spot.
1:27
Tech Guy: So I would love to share them in a future segment.
1:29
Ellie Alexander: Great.
1:30
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, bring them on.
1:31
Ellie Alexander: Thanks a lot, darlings.
1:33
Tech Guy: Yeah, totally, totally.
1:35
Tech Guy: But uh yeah, so we are back at it.
1:38
Tech Guy: We've been off for a couple of weeks because there's been a lot going on.
1:42
Tech Guy: Um, we've had a lot of travel uh life for both your job and my job.
1:47
Tech Guy: Um and uh but it wasn't all work.
1:51
Tech Guy: We got to do some fun stuff too.
1:53
Tech Guy: Um we we spent uh Star Wars Day, for those who don't know, May the 4th um and 5th, actually, at uh Disneyland.
2:03
Tech Guy: And we got to go to Star Wars night at Disneyland, Disney After Dark.
2:07
Tech Guy: If you've never had a chance to go to a Disney After Dark um uh event, they have so many.
2:17
Tech Guy: Um, there are a half dozen or more, maybe uh probably more than that, throughout the year, and they it's phenomenal.
2:24
Tech Guy: Um, I mean Star Wars Night is best by far, but um, you know, that's goes without saying.
2:30
Tech Guy: But I I think regardless of of the event and all of the the fun that goes with it, one of the coolest things that we found was that there's just no line for any of the rides.
2:43
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
2:44
Ellie Alexander: It was so empty.
2:45
Ellie Alexander: It was great, but let's be real, I was there for the food.
2:49
Tech Guy: That's true.
2:50
Tech Guy: You were there for the food, and that's that is one of the reasons that I brought it up because of the this particular episode uh uh topic this week.
2:58
Tech Guy: You love the food options there.
3:01
Tech Guy: Uh and they have all sorts of special stuff, and you had it mapped out.
3:05
Tech Guy: I mean, it was like first we have to go here, then we've got to order this while we're waiting for that.
3:09
Tech Guy: And it was just like all these plans, and it did not disappoint.
3:15
Ellie Alexander: I am still dreaming about the um cherry cold brew that was like the special for the spring.
3:24
Ellie Alexander: I I'm definitely gonna put that in a future bake shop mystery because it was so good.
3:28
Ellie Alexander: No notes, like not too sweet, this touch of cherry, the cold brew, like a little hint of like a chocolate in there.
3:35
Ellie Alexander: Oh, I think we had those both days because I was like, I'm going back for another.
3:39
Ellie Alexander: You also, I think, tried every cold brew in the park because I had a list of all the special spring, like banana, and then there was a special Star Wars milk, the blue milk.
3:51
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, so it was it was a lot of food.
3:54
Tech Guy: Yeah, I was awake.
3:55
Tech Guy: That that is that is absolutely true.
3:57
Tech Guy: I did not have any trouble staying awake until midnight or whenever we ended up leaving the park.
4:04
Tech Guy: Um, it was incredible.
4:05
Tech Guy: So um uh, but I did sleep, so that's good.
4:09
Tech Guy: I was a little worried there.
4:11
Tech Guy: I did try a lot of different cold brews that day.
4:14
Ellie Alexander: It's true.
4:15
Ellie Alexander: And then on this note of food, because we're gonna do a whole episode about uh fake it till you bake it today.
4:21
Ellie Alexander: Uh yesterday we raped Costco at like two o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, which in my book is not.
4:30
Ellie Alexander: I mean, that's that's murder worthy on its own.
4:32
Ellie Alexander: But I scored the viral raspberry cookies from Costco.
4:38
Ellie Alexander: So, darlings, if you are a fan of a buttery sugar cookie with raspberry in the middle, this is my problem.
4:45
Ellie Alexander: On social, because I write a bake shop mystery, my entire feed and algorithm shows me, of course, like all the Disney food or all of the incredible bakers, or we were just talking about like cake trends and what's on trend for weddings and cake designs right now.
5:03
Ellie Alexander: And then any kind of like Trader Joe's, Costco, regional, local shops that are doing interesting things.
5:09
Ellie Alexander: So my entire feed for the last few days has been these raspberry cookies that apparently you can't find.
5:15
Ellie Alexander: And I found them.
5:17
Tech Guy: Yeah, and I will say, uh, they're worth the hype.
5:21
Tech Guy: I I think so anyway.
5:22
Tech Guy: They they're delicious.
5:24
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
5:25
Tech Guy: That's true.
5:26
Tech Guy: Yeah.
5:28
Tech Guy: Well, so today we're gonna talk about food and baking.
5:33
Tech Guy: And um, we're gonna keep talking about food because we've that's all we've been doing thus far in this episode.
5:39
Tech Guy: But but we're gonna talk about it in relation to your writing.
5:43
Tech Guy: And uh, this is a topic I think we've covered here on reality rides before, but the thing, and the darlings out there who are longtime listeners, uh, have been longtime followers of Ellie, will understand this that it doesn't matter how many times we cover a topic, how many times you give a book talk, how many times you post on social media about a certain topic, not everyone sees it.
6:09
Tech Guy: Not everyone hears about it, not everyone knows about it.
6:12
Tech Guy: And even though those who do still have more questions.
6:15
Tech Guy: So you get questions every week, every week about baking and specifically about the bake shop mysteries, but also you've had recipes in other series too.
6:27
Tech Guy: So um I but this is in particular, this one series has generated more questions about baking than I think most people get in their entire lives.
6:39
Tech Guy: Uh, you know, in a month, you get more questions than most people get in their entire lives.
6:43
Ellie Alexander: I know, and it would be really curious to speak to a professional baker about this.
6:47
Ellie Alexander: In fact, I should because I have so many relationships with professional bakers.
6:50
Ellie Alexander: Like, do they get this many questions about baking?
6:53
Ellie Alexander: I wonder.
6:53
Ellie Alexander: Like, it's fascinating.
6:54
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, we thought it would be fun to um comb through my some of my most recent email messages and uh just share some of the baking questions, lore, et cetera, that uh come through.
7:05
Ellie Alexander: But it's a lot, yeah.
7:07
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
7:08
Tech Guy: So I I say I have some reader questions here.
7:11
Tech Guy: Um, and I'm just going to ask them.
7:13
Tech Guy: And we're gonna start out with a basic one uh that you get asked all the time.
7:17
Tech Guy: Why do you include recipes in the books?
7:20
Ellie Alexander: Right.
7:20
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I know.
7:22
Tech Guy: Right.
7:24
Ellie Alexander: I'm always surprised at this question.
7:26
Ellie Alexander: This happens in email.
7:28
Ellie Alexander: Um, this is also something that happens a lot if I'm doing some sort of a public appearance.
7:34
Ellie Alexander: Let's say I'm doing a book signing.
7:36
Ellie Alexander: In fact, this just happened when I was doing book events up in Portland a few weekends ago, uh, where I was I was signing for other readers and somebody else that's in the store might come over because they're curious.
7:45
Ellie Alexander: They're like, oh, there's an author here, they're signing books.
7:48
Ellie Alexander: And they'll be like, wait a minute, it's murder and baking?
7:52
Ellie Alexander: Like, I don't understand.
7:53
Ellie Alexander: Um, because you know, I don't think necessarily in every genre it's something that you always find that you have recipes in the back of the book.
8:02
Ellie Alexander: Although we'll get to, I think, some questions about that maybe later too, because this comes through.
8:06
Ellie Alexander: Um, the cozy culinary mystery is its own thing, right?
8:11
Ellie Alexander: Uh so the recipes are just sort of like bonus content for you, darlings, for readers.
8:19
Ellie Alexander: I you're not under any obligation to obviously bake from the books, but I love it when you do and you send me pictures of your bakes and what you've made.
8:28
Ellie Alexander: Um, but they're just really that added bonus because the stories are so centered on food.
8:33
Ellie Alexander: And so it's just this way that the publishing houses then get to offer you this little bonus incentive at the end to check out the recipes.
8:44
Tech Guy: Yeah.
8:44
Tech Guy: And and many recipes there have been over the course of yeah, because you, and we've talked about this before, but you have included recipes in every book in the Bake Shop mystery series.
8:58
Tech Guy: But in addition to that, there have been so many more recipes that you have shared and that are out there um on your blog, um, on the website, you know, the 31 Days of Pie uh event that that you did.
9:15
Tech Guy: Um, all the all the all the things.
9:17
Tech Guy: So uh another reader wrote in and asked, are you a professional chef?
9:23
Tech Guy: Are you a professional baker?
9:24
Tech Guy: Um they they want to know.
9:29
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I hate to burst some bubbles here.
9:31
Ellie Alexander: We might be, you know, like I am not a professional baker.
9:36
Ellie Alexander: The joke that I always say is I play one on the pages of the big shot mysteries.
9:41
Ellie Alexander: I know enough these days to be dangerous because I've been writing this series.
9:44
Ellie Alexander: Well, the series has been published for 15 years.
9:46
Ellie Alexander: I was writing it before that when I was first working and on developing the series.
9:50
Ellie Alexander: So I have nearly 20 years of experience writing about baking, working, interviewing real pastry chefs, being in real commercial kitchens.
10:02
Ellie Alexander: And then, as I was speaking about at the beginning of this episode, my entire algorithm on social media is just deep dives into baking.
10:10
Ellie Alexander: So I definitely know enough to be dangerous.
10:12
Ellie Alexander: I really try to make sure that I get the baking right because that is something that will pull a reader out of the story.
10:21
Ellie Alexander: And I don't want that to happen.
10:22
Ellie Alexander: And um, a many, like all of the tips that I share that are peppered in throughout all 22 books in the series thus far, are all real tips, you know?
10:34
Ellie Alexander: And it's funny, it's things like at the beginning, and I get this message a lot from readers still.
10:38
Ellie Alexander: So I think in Meet Your Baker, one of the very first books in the series, Jules takes her coffee cup because she's she has a real ritual when it comes to coffee, which I do as well.
10:49
Ellie Alexander: Um, when we're traveling, like I need my coffee pretty much first thing, or I'm pretty crabby.
10:55
Ellie Alexander: Like, we gotta hit that cold through right away.
10:59
Tech Guy: It's true.
10:59
Tech Guy: It is a hundred percent true.
11:01
Tech Guy: Yeah, I can attest.
11:04
Ellie Alexander: And it's not even so much, I mean, it is the coffee, but it is also the ritual.
11:08
Ellie Alexander: Like I have this like morning routine.
11:10
Ellie Alexander: I have my cup of coffee and I do um my daily important work, which is like wortle and strands and connections.
11:19
Ellie Alexander: And um, I just enjoy kind of this leisurely morning with my coffee.
11:22
Ellie Alexander: So I digress.
11:23
Ellie Alexander: In one of the early books, I don't know for sure if it was Meet Your Baker, because I've written so many now that I'm not sure where things land in which book.
11:30
Ellie Alexander: Jules warms up her coffee cup in the microwave first, so that she has a very warm coffee cup to keep her coffee warm.
11:39
Ellie Alexander: Well, this was long before the days of things like Ember, the coffee cup that you gave me many years ago, that now is electronic, so it keeps your coffee cup warm.
11:49
Ellie Alexander: But I hear from readers all the time, like even just minor things like that that I forget even exist in Jewel's world that um that have weed their way in.
11:57
Ellie Alexander: So yeah.
11:59
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
12:00
Tech Guy: Uh no, um, it is definitely like I've been impressed over the years, just when because I like to cook a lot too, and I'll be in the kitchen and I'll be flustered because I'm like, oh, we don't have this.
12:15
Tech Guy: And you're like, oh, just substitute with that.
12:17
Tech Guy: And I'll I'm like, what?
12:19
Tech Guy: You know, so you have picked up a ton of stuff over the years, which has been very impressive.
12:25
Tech Guy: Um uh that leads me into the next question that you get from readers all the time.
12:30
Tech Guy: And you actually just got one of these last week.
12:34
Tech Guy: Um, and I can absolutely answer this question, but uh, but I'll let you do it first, which is do you test all of the recipes?
12:45
Ellie Alexander: I do.
12:46
Ellie Alexander: I do.
12:46
Ellie Alexander: For better and for worse, if you live for me with me, right?
12:52
Tech Guy: Well, I I was just gonna say from a from my own personal standpoint, I know that you do.
12:58
Tech Guy: Uh, and that is why I've developed a love-hate relationship with running, uh, because there's been a lot of testing over the years, darlings.
13:07
Tech Guy: There's a lot of testing.
13:09
Tech Guy: Um, and not all this stuff is locale.
13:12
Tech Guy: Let's just say, No, a lot of it is not.
13:16
Ellie Alexander: It's a bake shop.
13:16
Ellie Alexander: I know.
13:17
Ellie Alexander: That's the problem.
13:17
Ellie Alexander: It's not like Jules has got to work some more salads into the right, totally.
13:23
Tech Guy: There's there needs to be some veg.
13:24
Tech Guy: Yeah.
13:27
unknown: Yeah.
13:28
Ellie Alexander: As you know too, a lot of the recipes don't always turn out the way that I anticipate they're going to in my mind, especially the first time.
13:36
Ellie Alexander: Right.
13:36
Ellie Alexander: I just baked something last week.
13:38
Ellie Alexander: Oh, the these, like, this kind of like, I wanted a soft, kind of almost brownie like, gooey, dense chocolate cookie.
13:48
Ellie Alexander: And they were great the first night.
13:50
Ellie Alexander: And then the next day, they were totally dried out.
13:53
Ellie Alexander: So like I gotta rework that.
13:56
Tech Guy: Yeah.
13:57
Tech Guy: Yeah, that was weird.
13:58
Tech Guy: They they started out really, really moist and delicious.
14:01
Tech Guy: And the next day it was as though they had been like left out in the sun for a week.
14:06
Tech Guy: Just they were crispy.
14:09
Tech Guy: So yeah.
14:10
Ellie Alexander: You know, a first test, especially of maybe like a savory recipe too, like the flavor won't be intense enough.
14:16
Ellie Alexander: I just was testing recipes um a couple weeks ago for something that's gonna be in the pumpkin vice cafe.
14:22
Ellie Alexander: And like the first round was fine, but it was sort of like eh, we had it for dinner and we were all like, okay.
14:28
Ellie Alexander: Um, so yeah, it's a lot of trial and error for sure.
14:32
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
14:32
Tech Guy: And neighbors know about the testing as well.
14:36
Tech Guy: Um, because they've they've been the beneficiary, uh, whether or not they wanted to be um for from many a delivery uh when we just can't eat any more cookies or pastries or pies or whatever it is.
14:52
Tech Guy: Yeah.
14:53
Tech Guy: Yeah.
14:54
Ellie Alexander: Neighbors, family, friends, the cross-country team back when Sky Guy was in high school, where I'm like, oh, you're having a party?
15:00
Ellie Alexander: I'll bring cookies.
15:01
Ellie Alexander: Uh, please give me feedback on all of these.
15:03
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
15:03
Tech Guy: Yeah, absolutely.
15:05
Tech Guy: Okay, so that uh that leads me into um another topic that that comes up.
15:13
Tech Guy: And I think you just got another email uh question about this from a darling out there the other day.
15:19
Tech Guy: But it's uh, hey Ellie, how many eggs does insert name of recipe uh have in it?
15:27
Ellie Alexander: I know, I know.
15:29
Ellie Alexander: This is so hard.
15:30
Ellie Alexander: And a lot of times, um I would say most times these kinds of emails come without context in terms of like what book it's from.
15:37
Ellie Alexander: And again, you know, I'm I'm already working on book 25 in this series.
15:42
Ellie Alexander: Every book in the series has a minimum of six to seven recipes.
15:46
Ellie Alexander: Some have even more than that.
15:48
Ellie Alexander: So I mean, that's just I don't know that off the top of my head.
15:51
Ellie Alexander: Like you have to find that in in the copy of the book.
15:56
Ellie Alexander: Um, so that's always hard because I I don't, I'm not always able to answer that off the cuff.
16:01
Ellie Alexander: It's not that I don't want to, darlings.
16:03
Ellie Alexander: It's just that um my mind does not retain all of the recipes from every book um in the series.
16:12
Tech Guy: Well, and throughout the books, Jules and team at tort are constantly working on things or baking things for events or just for the the um bakery itself and and everything.
16:25
Tech Guy: But just because they they happen to be working with something within the book, that does not mean that that's going to be a recipe in the back of the book, right?
16:34
Ellie Alexander: Correct.
16:34
Ellie Alexander: And that's something that gets brought up a lot by readers.
16:37
Ellie Alexander: Well, it's like on you know, page 232, Jules references a, you know, I don't know, raspberry souffle with a like chocolate sauce.
16:45
Ellie Alexander: Where's that recipe?
16:46
Ellie Alexander: I'm like, I don't, I don't, I probably didn't make it because there's so much more food that actually ends up in that recipe section in the back, too, in in every single book.
16:56
Tech Guy: Yeah.
16:56
Tech Guy: So for the darlings out there, just know that, you know, if there's a recipe in the back, it was intentional.
17:03
Tech Guy: And if Jules and team are doing something throughout the book and there's no recipe for it in the back, that is also intentional.
17:10
Tech Guy: Um, if it's just it it is part of the book and it's it's not necessarily a recipe that was forgotten or left out or whatever it is.
17:19
Tech Guy: Um but this leads me, and I know I'm I'm smiling because I know that this is this is by far one of your favorite topics.
17:30
Tech Guy: Um, and you are not alone in this because we know from over the years of actually meeting professional bakers and chefs and and working with them on various projects, they get um a lot of these questions too.
17:44
Tech Guy: And that is can you tell me if I can swap almond milk for regular milk in this recipe?
17:52
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah, I know.
17:53
Ellie Alexander: Again, and this tracks back to the fact that I'm not a professional chef.
17:57
Ellie Alexander: And the recipe that I have tried and tested, maybe two or three times here at home, that ends up in the final version of the book is the recipe as I made it.
18:07
Ellie Alexander: To the letter, which is not actually, as you know, the way that I like to bake or cook.
18:12
Ellie Alexander: I'm much more of an experimental, like dump stuff in.
18:15
Ellie Alexander: But when I'm working on a recipe, I have my notebook in the kitchen and I'm taking copious notes to make sure like that was exactly one and a half teaspoons.
18:23
Ellie Alexander: As far as substitutions go, I don't, I don't know.
18:26
Ellie Alexander: I just literally don't know.
18:27
Ellie Alexander: You could try it, you should try it.
18:29
Ellie Alexander: That's always my response back.
18:31
Ellie Alexander: Um, because things don't translate.
18:34
Ellie Alexander: And I know this from writing the series and doing so much research into the world of baking.
18:38
Ellie Alexander: Almond milk doesn't always translate in a recipe to say like full fat whole milk, especially if you're making some kind of a cream or a pudding or, you know, it's a lot thinner.
18:50
Ellie Alexander: The properties don't stack up.
18:52
Ellie Alexander: The same is true for flours or alternative oils or butter.
18:55
Ellie Alexander: So the the short answer is always just, I don't know, but please go try and experiment.
19:02
Ellie Alexander: But then don't hate me, don't murder me if it doesn't work.
19:05
Ellie Alexander: Right.
19:06
Ellie Alexander: I had a reader once, yeah, email that was like, I tried this with gluten-free f flour and it didn't work at all.
19:12
Ellie Alexander: I'm like, I sorry, I don't, yeah.
19:15
Tech Guy: Right, right.
19:16
Tech Guy: Well, and that's a good, that's a good point that gluten-free flour is a good point because you've gotten over the years, I would say hundreds, hundreds of these types of questions, either via email or posts on videos, you know, recipe videos that you've made and everything.
19:31
Tech Guy: And and it's not, it's not just can almond milk substitute for regular milk.
19:35
Tech Guy: It's it's any ingredient, any ingredient you can imagine.
19:38
Tech Guy: One of my favorites, all-time favorites, was you had somebody ask you if they could substitute mayonnaise for like if they could or sorry, if they could substitute Greek yogurt with mayonnaise.
19:50
Tech Guy: And it was like, uh I mean go for it.
19:54
Tech Guy: Sure.
19:55
Tech Guy: Yeah, it's like that sounds terrible, but um sure.
20:01
Tech Guy: I don't know.
20:02
Ellie Alexander: Fuck yourself out.
20:03
Tech Guy: The it would be, first of all, the cost involved in testing all of the variables in a recipe would be astronomical.
20:11
Tech Guy: Second, going back to the previous question that we were talking about and my love-hate relationship with running, darlings, there aren't enough marathons in the world to handle the amount of calories that I would be taking in if Ellie were to bake every single iteration of every recipe.
20:30
Tech Guy: This one with 2%, and now we're gonna use 1%, and now we're gonna use non-fat, and now we're gonna use whole milk, and you know, we just couldn't do it.
20:38
Tech Guy: And time.
20:38
Tech Guy: I mean, you do right for a living.
20:40
Tech Guy: Yeah, exactly.
20:42
Ellie Alexander: There's that, right?
20:42
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
20:43
Tech Guy: Yeah.
20:44
Ellie Alexander: And the recipes are, like I said at the beginning, they're just really a bonus.
20:47
Ellie Alexander: They're like a little special thing that you get at the end of the book.
20:50
Ellie Alexander: So, not that I don't want to spend time on them, but I don't spend the same amount of time on the recipes as I do with creating the actual book because that's hopefully what you darlings are taking away.
21:00
Ellie Alexander: Like you're in Jules War World, you're you're swept away into the fiction, you're trying to figure out who done it.
21:06
Ellie Alexander: And then when you get to the end, you get some bonus recipes.
21:08
Ellie Alexander: So, yes, I'm not spending months and months developing recipes the way that I'm spending actually writing the book.
21:16
Tech Guy: Totally.
21:16
Tech Guy: But the one thing I will say is that we do eat the recipes.
21:20
Tech Guy: I mean, we like not just from your testing, but these are recipes that we make continually, you know, throughout the year.
21:27
Tech Guy: Um, so it is that that part I've always found is really nice because it it's authentic, right?
21:35
Tech Guy: We we actually eat the food that you're that you're publishing in the books.
21:39
Tech Guy: Okay.
21:40
Tech Guy: Um here's another one that comes up a lot.
21:43
Tech Guy: Um, you know, hi Ellie.
21:46
Tech Guy: I read the audiobooks.
21:47
Tech Guy: Can you send me a printout of the recipes?
21:50
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, right.
21:52
Ellie Alexander: This this does come up a lot.
21:53
Ellie Alexander: Um I can't.
21:55
Ellie Alexander: I just I don't have that's not how I don't have like a whole Recipe list stored somewhere.
22:01
Ellie Alexander: They're all attached to each individual book.
22:04
Ellie Alexander: Um, there are copyright issues because they are in each book.
22:08
Ellie Alexander: So um there it's just not logistically possible for me to do that.
22:14
Ellie Alexander: Um, and it's a bummer because I know if you're reading an audiobook, then you know, it might be harder to listen to somebody telling you how to bake the recipes.
22:24
Ellie Alexander: But I guess you could jot it down as you go.
22:26
Ellie Alexander: We just had this happen with you and um the dungeon crawler coral series, where like there's this special story in the back that's only in the print version.
22:35
Ellie Alexander: So that happens with recipes sometimes too.
22:38
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
22:40
Tech Guy: Um yeah, I mean, logistically and you know, again, going back to just time, um, it it it's just it's that's that's not something that that uh that we have time for at this point anyway.
22:55
Tech Guy: So um this is a related question.
22:59
Tech Guy: Uh but a reader wrote in and said, I get your books from the library and I can't find the recipes on your website.
23:07
Tech Guy: Can you help me out?
23:09
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I get a lot of feedback from Darlings asking it, you know, like why aren't all of the recipes on the website?
23:15
Ellie Alexander: It's the same thing because we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of recipes, and not only well, not hundreds and I guess, yeah, over a hundred now.
23:23
Ellie Alexander: Um not only would I have to publish those all, but I would have we would have to bake them and take pictures and the time.
23:31
Ellie Alexander: And then again, they're bonus content for readers in the book.
23:36
Ellie Alexander: So there's just, yeah, there's so many issues with that.
23:38
Ellie Alexander: Um, that the website does not have every single recipe from my books on it.
23:45
Ellie Alexander: And I don't think that's true for any author in this genre.
23:48
Ellie Alexander: You just you no one has we're writers first and foremost.
23:52
Ellie Alexander: So that's that's what our focus is on.
23:54
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
23:55
Tech Guy: Right.
23:56
Tech Guy: But uh as the webmaster of LAalexander.co, I can tell the darlings out there that the website does have a lot of recipes on it.
24:05
Tech Guy: Um I know because I've put them all there.
24:07
Tech Guy: Um and there are a ton of recipes that do not appear in the books.
24:13
Tech Guy: Um so you know, there I I would challenge somebody to tell me that they have baked and cooked every recipe that's on your website.
24:22
Tech Guy: Um, I don't think it's been done yet by a single person.
24:25
Tech Guy: I could be wrong.
24:27
Tech Guy: Like, use that, send a message, uh send us a message link and tell us that you have done it.
24:31
Tech Guy: I'd love to hear.
24:33
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, and if you have you, you definitely get a prize.
24:35
Tech Guy: Like, yeah, definitely.
24:37
Ellie Alexander: That's impressive.
24:37
Ellie Alexander: No, and I that's what I was gonna say.
24:39
Ellie Alexander: And that's what I always direct somebody who, like, if somebody sends me a question like that, I direct them to the website because we have over the years shared so many recipes, especially early on when I was working on the series.
24:51
Ellie Alexander: We were doing a lot of tortest kitchen baking videos.
24:54
Ellie Alexander: So there are so many videos of recipes on YouTube and on the blog.
24:59
Ellie Alexander: And a lot of times then I will pull stuff that doesn't make that final cut and share those too.
25:05
Ellie Alexander: So there, there's no shortage of baking options for sure.
25:10
Ellie Alexander: But no, there is not a like direct here's book one, all the recipes, book two.
25:16
Ellie Alexander: Um yeah.
25:18
Tech Guy: Yeah.
25:19
Tech Guy: Uh quick pro tip, actually, that now that I'm thinking about it, going back a couple of questions to dealing with substitutions.
25:27
Tech Guy: I would tell the darlings out there who are interested in that to be sure to read the comments of a recipe.
25:33
Tech Guy: And I'm not just talking about Ellie's recipes, I'm talking about on any baking or cooking website.
25:38
Tech Guy: Make sure you read the comments because a lot of people do comment and say, I substituted this for that, and it turned out great.
25:45
Tech Guy: And there you've got your answer, you know, without without asking the person who created the recipe, because chances are good that they didn't actually try it themselves.
25:54
Tech Guy: So um, you know, rely on uh everyone else out there who is uh helping out in the in that regard.
26:00
Tech Guy: Um that's right.
26:02
Ellie Alexander: Crowdsource it.
26:04
Tech Guy: Uh another thing you get asked a lot, um, a particular uh question that comes up is whether or not you can recommend other foodie mysteries um out there.
26:15
Tech Guy: Do you have any good ones?
26:17
Ellie Alexander: I love recommending other foodie mysteries.
26:19
Ellie Alexander: I mean, the problem is I I you literally like pick a niche of food.
26:25
Ellie Alexander: Do you want a pizza mystery?
26:26
Ellie Alexander: Do you want a cheese mystery?
26:27
Ellie Alexander: Do you want a wine mystery?
26:28
Ellie Alexander: Like they all exist.
26:30
Ellie Alexander: Do you want like Asian food?
26:33
Ellie Alexander: Do you want Italian food?
26:35
Ellie Alexander: Do you want Mexican food?
26:36
Ellie Alexander: They all exist.
26:37
Ellie Alexander: Um, but so first of all, like just do a search of culinary cozy mysteries and you will have enough reading material to keep your heart content for a while, darlings, which is so cool and exciting.
26:50
Ellie Alexander: But the one series that I always recommend is going back to my OG, the start, which is Diane Mott Davidson's series, because that was my gateway drug into the cozy culinary.
27:03
Ellie Alexander: I think it still stands the test of time.
27:05
Ellie Alexander: They're just they're lovely.
27:07
Ellie Alexander: Uh, the recipes are great, the food is fantastic.
27:12
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I think that's always a fun one to go back to.
27:15
Ellie Alexander: Um, but yes, there are so many.
27:17
Ellie Alexander: So once you've come to the cozy side, you won't go back.
27:22
Tech Guy: Yeah, well, and that is something that readers, I think, are all your darlings are always um, you know, surprised.
27:29
Tech Guy: Not not all of them, but but a lot of people are surprised to hear is that you are a prolific reader yourself.
27:35
Tech Guy: And you were before you be, you know, became a writer.
27:38
Tech Guy: And so uh Sky Guy and I would always buy you stacks of books for your birthday and Christmas and everything.
27:44
Tech Guy: And so I got to learn well before you started writing your mysteries that you not only are there a lot of food, foodie type mysteries, cozy mysteries specifically, but there's subgenres within that.
27:59
Tech Guy: So if you've got a particular style of food you like, you can probably find a mystery series that is based just around that style of food and likely has recipes in the back.
28:09
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
28:10
Tech Guy: Yeah.
28:11
Tech Guy: Um, okay, so another thing that that uh darlings write in and ask about is um whether or not cozy mysteries are the only genre of books that have good writing and good recipes.
28:27
Tech Guy: What do you have to say about that?
28:30
Ellie Alexander: Absolutely not.
28:31
Ellie Alexander: No.
28:32
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I always uh when I get this question, I kind of have my go-to list of recommended reads because a lot of these books are what really, even subconsciously, that I probably didn't realize at the time, sent me down this path.
28:44
Ellie Alexander: So I think of like Water for Chocolate, Under the Tuscan Sun, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, um, Julia or Julian Julia, um, Nora Efron's Heartburn.
29:00
Ellie Alexander: There are so many memoirs that have food writing.
29:05
Ellie Alexander: Food finds its way into so many stories.
29:08
Ellie Alexander: And I think, you know, obviously there's this niche with the cozy culinary, but um, it's in so many things.
29:13
Ellie Alexander: There's a lovely book called Um Love and Saffron that I highly recommended a few years ago that came out by um a writer in LA.
29:24
Ellie Alexander: Like just you, if you do a search for food in writing, you're gonna find a lot, a lot, a lot of options.
29:31
Tech Guy: That's so great.
29:32
Tech Guy: Yeah.
29:33
Tech Guy: Uh food finds a way.
29:34
Tech Guy: Uh I like it.
29:36
Ellie Alexander: Food finds a way.
29:38
Ellie Alexander: It does.
29:40
Tech Guy: Okay.
29:40
Tech Guy: I have uh just a couple more here uh to wrap up the episode.
29:44
Tech Guy: One is related to process.
29:47
Tech Guy: Um, and you get this question a lot.
29:49
Tech Guy: And this particular reader wrote in and asked, Do you do you know before you write the book or before uh before you bake?
30:00
Tech Guy: Like, are you do you have an idea in mind about what food is going to be involved before you write the book or before you start baking?
30:09
Tech Guy: Or does that happen as part of the process of writing the mystery itself?
30:14
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I get this question a lot, and it's a good one.
30:17
Ellie Alexander: And the answer varies.
30:18
Ellie Alexander: Like it sort of depends.
30:20
Ellie Alexander: Sometimes I will go into a story with a particular recipe or food in mind.
30:25
Ellie Alexander: Usually that's based on seasonality.
30:28
Ellie Alexander: You know, maybe it's winter and I know that I want like this cozy soup that we love.
30:32
Ellie Alexander: Like when we were living in Portland, elephants delicatescent, which is this great little boutique sandwich shop that was right down by your office, had this tomato orange soup.
30:44
Ellie Alexander: And so, like, I recreated that.
30:45
Ellie Alexander: I know.
30:46
Ellie Alexander: So good, so good.
30:48
Ellie Alexander: We would have that for New Year's Eve, like almost every year for years.
30:51
Ellie Alexander: Um, so you know, like something like that, or especially in the earlier books in the series, I have recipes from my mom, my dad, my sister, my aunts, like things like that would weave into the books.
31:04
Ellie Alexander: But a lot of times, especially now being this deep into the series, it is literally just whatever is top of mind as I'm writing.
31:12
Ellie Alexander: And whenever I'm writing, I have a journal next to me where I'm taking notes.
31:16
Ellie Alexander: And I don't worry so much about the recipes in the first draft.
31:21
Ellie Alexander: But when I go back to do layers the second or third time I touch a manuscript, that's when I'm going through and I'm really highlighting.
31:27
Ellie Alexander: Okay, she said she made an orange cardamom coffee cake.
31:32
Ellie Alexander: Like, okay, what would that really look like?
31:34
Ellie Alexander: And so that's when then I'll go like try to put something like that together.
31:38
Ellie Alexander: Maybe it works, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna test it one more time.
31:42
Ellie Alexander: Maybe it's a total fail.
31:43
Ellie Alexander: Then I'm gonna come back to the book and maybe retweet that and it changes to a banana nut muffin or something.
31:49
Ellie Alexander: Like, I don't I'm just speaking off the cuff, but yeah, it works both ways.
31:55
Tech Guy: It works both ways, and I ate both things.
31:57
Tech Guy: I'll tell you that right now.
31:59
Tech Guy: So all right.
32:02
Tech Guy: Uh I am going to wrap up the this episode with your favorite question of all when it comes to writing for this mysteries.
32:12
Tech Guy: I already know what I'm saying.
32:13
Tech Guy: And you must get this question at least half a dozen times a week.
32:19
Ellie Alexander: A week.
32:19
Tech Guy: At least.
32:20
Tech Guy: At least.
32:21
Tech Guy: Ellie.
32:23
Tech Guy: Will you make a cookbook?
32:29
Ellie Alexander: I know, I know.
32:30
Ellie Alexander: I okay, so what makes my heart so happy is I so appreciate, like, I do.
32:35
Ellie Alexander: I'm so deeply, deeply grateful, darlings, that you want a cookbook.
32:40
Ellie Alexander: I mean, no joke, like I am.
32:42
Ellie Alexander: I would love to do a cookbook, is the short answer.
32:45
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I would absolutely love to.
32:47
Ellie Alexander: And I've talked about this here before, but like my cookbook, we would be in Ashland with jewels.
32:53
Ellie Alexander: I would want like a gorgeous photo display of a picnic at Lithia Park.
32:58
Ellie Alexander: I want the interior of Tort and Auntie's coffee.
33:02
Ellie Alexander: I want like, I want the spread at mom and the professor's house.
33:06
Ellie Alexander: Like, I want it to be visually stunning.
33:09
Ellie Alexander: I want it to be a storytelling kind of book.
33:13
Ellie Alexander: All of those things would be incredible.
33:15
Ellie Alexander: But that undertaking is just massive.
33:18
Ellie Alexander: And the way that it works in publishing is like if if my publisher came to me and said, hey, we want to support you in putting this cookbook together, a thousand percent, I'd be in in a heartbeat.
33:28
Ellie Alexander: But for us to try to take something like that on, I mean, we're talking you need like food stylists and professional chefs and professional photographers.
33:36
Ellie Alexander: And I mean, like, it's just, it would be a massive undertaking.
33:40
Ellie Alexander: So I'm not saying no, like I'm putting it out there.
33:42
Ellie Alexander: Put it, let's manifest it together.
33:44
Ellie Alexander: But um, in the short term, the answer is not right now.
33:49
Tech Guy: Right.
33:49
Tech Guy: And I and I'm going to add to that to say, because uh the comeback you get a lot of the times is like, well, you could just print it like a cozy mystery.
33:56
Tech Guy: It could just be all the recipes on the book and everything.
33:58
Tech Guy: And to those, the to those people, I always say, I understand that because they want the cookbook, but this is the culmination of like a good chunk of your lifetime of work that you've put into this, and you have this vision.
34:15
Tech Guy: And when you get a vision, and for those of you who know Ellie, when she gets a vision, it's going to happen.
34:22
Tech Guy: It might not happen right away, but it's going to happen, and it's going to happen according to her vision.
34:27
Tech Guy: And so she has a vision of how this cookbook needs to look for you to feel proud of it, to like for it to be the creation that you want it to be.
34:36
Tech Guy: And that's just, it's going to take time.
34:39
Tech Guy: It's going to take time.
34:40
Ellie Alexander: And the thing is, I get it, because there are some other cozy mystery authors in this field that have put together just like, you know, like a mass market version of recipes, uh, a couple of which I've purchased over the years.
34:50
Ellie Alexander: It's great, but that like it's not the same.
34:53
Ellie Alexander: Like, I yeah.
34:53
Ellie Alexander: So that's true.
34:55
Tech Guy: Right.
34:56
Tech Guy: Right.
34:57
Tech Guy: Well, that's all the time we have for questions.
35:00
Tech Guy: I do sorry.
35:02
Ellie Alexander: I can't say any more on it.
35:04
Tech Guy: I had I had to I had to pull that that one for the or save it for last because I know it's your favorite.
35:10
Tech Guy: I know you want it, it's something you want to do, but um it's just it's not working on the timeline.
35:16
Tech Guy: I think most darlings out there would like it to.
35:19
Ellie Alexander: So I know.
35:20
Ellie Alexander: I'm sorry, darlings.
35:21
Ellie Alexander: I'm sorry.
35:22
Ellie Alexander: But okay.
35:23
Tech Guy: What do you want?
35:23
Tech Guy: What do you want?
35:24
Tech Guy: 25 mysteries?
35:25
Tech Guy: You want a cookbook?
35:26
Tech Guy: Like what?
35:26
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
35:29
Tech Guy: So all right, all right.
35:31
Tech Guy: Well, that is it for this episode of Reality Rights.
35:34
Tech Guy: Again, uh, a quick reminder about that.
35:36
Tech Guy: Send us a message link.
35:37
Tech Guy: We really do want to hear from you.
35:39
Tech Guy: Uh, we love doing this podcast and really truly appreciate everyone who listens and everybody who engages with us.
35:46
Tech Guy: We love building this bookish, writer-ish community, baker-ish community now.
35:51
Tech Guy: Um uh, and uh look forward each week to getting to spend some time with you.
35:56
Tech Guy: So let us know what you thought.
35:58
Tech Guy: Until next time.
36:00
Ellie Alexander: Until next time.