Review: 101 Cupcake, Cookie & Brownie Recipes

101 Cupcake, Cookie & Brownie Recipes by Gooseberry Patch
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Melissa's Musings:

I have to say, this book is pretty disappointing. It's got nice photography, and a few interesting flavor combinations, but I was really disappointed that several of the recipes feature cake/brownie mix as the first ingredient. It might be an okay book for young kids who want to create something on the easier side, but it's definitely not for people who have more advanced baking skills.

One of the only recipes that looked interesting to me was the recipe for Brown Sugar Apple Cookies.

What's one of your favorite baked treats?

Review: Taste of Home Baking with Bake Sale Bonus: Fresh-Cooked Fun! 125 Bake-Sale Favorites!

Taste of Home Baking with Bake Sale Bonus: Fresh-Cooked Fun! 125 Bake-Sale Favorites! by Taste of Home
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Melissa's Musings:

My sister bought me this book about 5 years ago for my birthday. I decided I should finally read it all the way through.

It's got a lot of excellent recipes. I love that it's sectioned off into type of baking item. At the beginning of each section, there are tips on how to deal with issues for each kind of item that you're making.

This has pictures that accompany almost every recipe, and small anecdotes from the people who submitted them.

I also love that this is in a binder, so I could easily remove a recipe if I wanted to use it rather than lugging the whole book to the kitchen. I made a list of recipes I really want to try as I was going through this so I see some baking in my immediate future.


I love to bake. Ironically, I hate cooking. I don't remember when I got into it, but at some point in my 20's I realized that I liked baking, and was often creating recipes to bring to work and share with my family. I don't bake quite so much now, as the oven in our current apartment is very finicky and things often end up with burned edges and bottoms.

I  also love my kitchenaid mixer that my former coworkers got me as a bridal shower gift about 4 years ago. It's a godsend when baking.

Do you bake? What's your favorite treat to make or to eat?

Guest Post: Addison Westlake, Author of Christmas in Wine Country

Hello fellow readers!

Today Addison Westlake, author of Christmas in Wine Country is stopping by to share her thoughts on holiday baking. I'll be reviewing Christmas in Wine Country in a few weeks. Currently Christmas in Wine Country is #30 in the Single Women's Fiction category and 41 in the Humor category on Amazon! Check out some more information and see if you might like to read it, then be sure to read on to see what Addison has to say about holiday treats!

About the Book:

Published: November 18, 2012

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Pages: 400

Format: E-book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Visit the Author's Website: http://addisonwestlake.blogspot.com/ 

Goodreads synopsis:

It's Lila's big debut as an event planner and the company holiday party is going to be her chance to shine. At a Tuscan-style vineyard near the Northern California coast in the perfect little black dress she's sure to impress commitment-phobe Phillip. What could go wrong?

Seventy-two hours later with no job and no boyfriend, Lila finds herself with all kinds of answers to that question. Like mistaking the glowering Jake Endicott of Endicott Vineyards for the groundskeeper. Or a new video on YouTube featuring Lila pawing her way through drunken karaoke of "Hungry Like the Wolf."

Solo on the romantic holiday getaway she'd booked for her and Phillip near the vineyard, Lila at least gets to visit with her old friend Annie who lives nearby in the coastal town of Redwood Cove. Drawn into the local bookstore with gleaming wooden floors and welcoming armchairs, Lila chats with the owner and impulsively accepts a job offer.

Sleepy, misty Redwood Cove is the perfect place for Lila to take a break from her horrible track record with guys. The only one she finds even remotely attractive knows her as the holiday party crazy lady. Ranked in Bay Area magazine's 10 hottest bachelors, Jake Endicott is just the type Old Lila would have wasted years pining after.

Join Lila on her year of comedy, adventure and self-discovery on the Northern California coast, with all kinds of ups, downs and misadventures and a full cast of small-town wine country characters. Thankfully, even the greatest misunderstandings can all be worked out with a little Frank Sinatra and mistletoe

Sounds great right?
Now lets see what Addison has to say about Holiday baking:

Holiday Baking: Why Somebody Needs to Stop Me From Doing It

This holiday season I’m planning to bake small loves of sweet potato bread for lots of people.

It’s a bad idea for many reasons. For one, my ideal version of the bread involves fresh sweet potato. But, in reality, I neither have the skill nor the time to do this. During my test run I produced an ungodly mess in the kitchen—peels flying everywhere—and took about an hour to produce just a cup of mashed potato. My extraction process involved the microwave and fork-mashing; I’ll spare you the details.  

But the main reason that my holiday baking is bad idea is because I can’t bake.

I’ll start by issuing a public apology for Halloween circa the mid-90s. I finally had my First Real Job in an Office! It was a Big Deal, as you can tell by my Capital Letters. I was so excited to share my excitement with my coworkers in the form of home-baked goodness.

The pumpkin cookies I put out on a plate in the break room were little better than the Wicked Queen’s poisoned apple in Snow White. They looked good; they were deadly. At best, these raw cookies sat in my coworkers’ stomachs like lead bullets. At worst, well, I won’t go into detail on that either. Let’s just say I was encouraged (and by ‘encouraged’ I mean told in no uncertain terms) to never bring in baked goods ever again.

Since then, I have continued to produce dry and crumbly cakes, burned pies, and brownies that are somehow both too tough on the perimeter and uncooked in the middle. Bet you didn’t know that was possible?

But wisdom does come from experience, even as we continue to make (mostly) the same mistakes. Just last week I attempted to do a good deed once again. A friend was put on bed rest with her third child. She and her family still all need to eat so I made them some chili which turned out…OK.  But then I also made some corn bread. From a box mix, I figured what could go wrong? You basically just add eggs, oil and water.

What I did was I pulled the bread out too soon and didn’t realize it until I was packing everything up to go. I had to throw out all but the cooked part on the sides. The result? I delivered enough food to provide about 8 hearty bowls of chili, each with its own single teeny-tiny bite of corn bread.

But at least I knew enough to throw out the uncooked part! See, progress!

And so, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, this holiday season I bake! Wish me luck!

And hopefully I’ll come to my senses and buy everyone Starbucks gift cards instead.

As a person who loves to bake I say, practice makes perfect! Good luck baking this season Addison! And thank you so much for stopping by Melissa's Midnight Musings today.

How about you guys, have you had any baking mishaps you'd like to share, or any baking successes?

Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft is Awesome

Title: Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft (Audrey's Guides #1)

Author: Jody Gehrman

Publisher: Magic Genie Books

Published: June 30 2012

Format: E-book/Kindle

Pages: 306

Source: Received from the author

in exchange for an honest review

Read: September 9-14 2012

In A Few Words:  Vivid, colorful, sensory experience

My Rating: 5  stars!

Goodreads:   Add this to your TBR shelf

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Falling in Love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her twenty-one-year-old witchy cousin shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.

Melissa's Musings:

I absolutely LOVED this book! It was already a highly anticipated read on my list, so when Jody contacted me about reviewing it, I immediately said yes. I'm so glad I did! This book combines two of my favorite subjects to read about, witches and baking. 

Audrey is a regular girl, who has a bit of a self esteem issue (what high schoolers don't??) Her sister is the social butterfly, who always attracts all the guys. As a result, Audrey is a little down on herself, and has lower self esteem. But not when it comes to her friends. Audrey is fiercely loyal and protective of her best friend Bridget, who is teased by the queen bee of the school Dallas. I loved reading the interactions between Audrey and Dallas because I envied the boldness that Audrey had when fighting with her.  I wish that I could have stuck up for myself the way that Audrey sticks up for Bridget. The friendship between these two characters is real and fun. I love how Bridget is always coining new words and phrases. And Audrey is sarcastic at times.

I also like Audrey because she loves to bake, and she's good at it. Baking is something that I've begun doing in the last couple of years and I really love it, so it was a point that I could really identify with her on. Especially since she makes her own alterations/ additions to recipes, I do that all the time.

The romance between her and Julian is really nice. It's not insta-love, but there's a real connection between them which is quite obvious and almost literal. I don't want to give too much away, so lets just say that it's electric. The great thing about the dynamic between Julian and Audrey is that he knows that there's something going on with her, but he doesn't push, and he's not weirded out by the strange things that happen to her. He forces her (in a good way) to be as honest as she can with him, and he accepts that there are things she's not able to tell him (specifically about her magic) They even come up with a code word for when she can't tell him something, which is cute. I really appreciated the fact that Audrey's magic was dealt with directly by Julian.

"Try looking at it from my point of view, though, Audrey. I really like you. Am I going to get totally hammered here because your life is complicated and you can’t explain just how complicated? Am I always going to be an outsider looking in?"

Jody Gehrman. Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft (Kindle Locations 4027-4028). Jody Gehrman. 

A lot of times in books about witchcraft when there's a witch and a mortal involved, there's a lot of lying to cover up the fact of the magic, and it's never really addressed by the character who's having things kept from them. The fact that Julian brings it up is a really nice change from the usual here.

In the same token, there are a few classic lines that you see often in books about witchcraft too, like "Sometimes we have to risk one, for the good of the many." All in all, it's a good mix of classic and modern elements.

One thing that grated on me a little bit was the dialogue. At times it was okay, but then at other times it got totally "teenager" maybe by a bit too much. But, the fact that Bridget coined her own terms made up for this.

One really amazing thing about this book is that it's so descriptive, and involves your other senses too, making it easier to imagine the scenes. There's amazing use of color in this book. I don't know why, but when authors write vivid, descriptive scenes with colors, they always stick out as I'm reading. There are so many here, it's wonderful. Uses of color happen every few pages. You might think that it would get old, but it doesn't. The author doesn't repeat color sequences, and it's not just "oh his eyes are blue" kind of stuff. Here are a couple sections where she talks about color that really stuck out.

The sun had set, but enough light remained to stain the splotchy clouds a beautiful orange, as if a neon tangerine had been smeared across the sky carelessly.

Jody Gehrman. Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft (Kindle Locations 2405-2406). Jody Gehrman. 

I felt my skull bust open like a magnolia on speed. Colors raced inside my body—a riot of blues, purples, greens, reds and golds—all of them ricocheting off one another before gushing through the fresh opening in my head. I felt like a kaleidoscope heated up until it explodes, sending a thousand glowing shards of color spinning wildly into the air.

Jody Gehrman. Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft (Kindle Locations 2226-2228). Jody Gehrman. 

Those are just a few examples but there are lots more in the book. In addition to the colors, I like how Gerhman incorporated smell into the story too. Audrey and Sadie's magic each has it's own specific scent. The dark magic has a stench, and it's easy to imagine from the descriptive reactions that Audrey has to it. One of the battles is particularly gruesome because of Gerhman's ability to set the scenes with such vivid imagery. It definitely had me cringing.

Both Bridget and Audrey really grow into their own, which is really nice. There's one sticking point with this for me though. You can see Bridget's growth (I won't say how) in some of her actions toward the end of the book, but the impact is lessened somewhat as Audrey explains the meaning behind the actions to Sadie. It would have been more powerfully shown if there hadn't been additional explanation.

Overall, this is an absolutely amazing book, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves books about witchcraft. A little heads up for Harry Potter fans, there is an HP reference! I can't wait to see what happens next in this series.

The Sunday Post 18th Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly Meme hosted by

Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer. 

It's a chance to share news, 

a post to recap the past week on your blog,

 showcase books

and things we have received and

 share news about what is coming up 

on our blog for the week ahead

Last Week on Melissa's Midnight Musings:

(Click Links to be taken directly to the posts)

• I wished my readers and everyone else I know who lives there, a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving
• I reviewed A Whisper to A Scream as part of the Women on Writing Blog Tour for Karen Wojcik Berner
• I featured an Interview Plus Giveaway with author Lauren Grimley
• I had a second stop on the WOW blog tour where I reviewed Until My Soul Gets It Right and Karen posted a guest post entitled "Masquerade"
• I turned 27 I'll be sharing some of my birthday gifts as part of this week's haul.
• For Behind the Blog  I explained how It's All in the Numbers
• I brought you all some information about For Keeps by Aaron Lazar as part of the books' virtual blog tour. 
• I reviewed The Twelve Days to Christmas by Michele Gorman

It's been another super busy week on the blog and the upcoming week is just as busy!

Coming Up This Week:

• Review of Phoebe Who? by Emma Harrison
• I'll announce the winners of the giveaway for Rick and Wylie's Fantastical, Magical Adventure by Andi Katsina
• Review of Dream Magic: Awakenings by Dawn Harshaw
• Review of Fire Baptized by Kenya Wright
• Dr. Lesley Phillips, author of The Midas Tree will be stopping by to share her thoughts on past lives.
• The theme for Behind the Blog this week is Siblings: Every family is different. This week we’re asking you about yours. Do you have any siblings? If you do, can you tell us anything about them? If you don’t, did you have any friends who felt like siblings to you? How has the ideas surrounding brothers and sisters shaped your life?
  In relation to media; are there any sibblings in books or films that you truly love? Any that you wish were your own?

So, as you can see, it's going to be another jam packed week here at Melissa's Midnight Musings. I hope you'll all stop by and check out these great posts I have lined up.

Also, don't forget to enter my It's All in the Numbers Birthday Giveaway which is open INTERNATIONALLY

Search Terms:

I'm only going to do the top three this week

"happy thanksgiving" There were 7 different people who found this blog using that search term.

"dirk danger loves life" This is really funny book. You can find my review of it HERE

"Canadian thanksgiving memes" That one is pretty self explanatory.

Now onto the books! This week will also include some other media as well since I got a few pretty cool gifts for my birthday that I wanted to share.

This Week's Book Haul:

Clicking the links will take you to Goodreads' descriptions
*all book cover photos and links credited to Goodreads unless otherwise noted

Won:



Torched by Andrea Lynn Colt
I won this in a blog giveaway over at Lost in Literature


All Things Different by Shawn Underhill
I won this in a giveaway over at Getting Your Read On



The Wedding Cake Girl by Anne Pfeffer
I also won this in another giveaway over at Getting Your Read On

I won Last Chance Christmas by Hope Ramsay in a contest that I saw on Facebook. I wasn't notified that I won beforehand, so this was an awesome surprise. This actually came wrapped in red tissue paper inside the envelope and it came with that card in the corner as well as the angel ornament. This came in the mail on my birthday so it was like an extra present to open.

From Author:

Frank Nappi was kind enough to have his assistant send me an early copy of his newest novel called "Nobody Has to Know" The cover info and links for it aren't available yet but it is supposed to be released this coming Tuesday.

From the Library:

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and in Business by Charles Duhigg

Both of these were on hold for me at the library after waiting several months for them.

Media and Books From My Birthday:

I have some awesome presents to show you guys. Some of it is book related, some of it is more on the media side.

This is the  Charmed: Deluxe Limited Edition Set 

My awesome, amazing, wonderful boyfriend bought this for me because he knows I've wanted it for a long time. It's full of replicated pages from the "Book of Shadows" and has the whole show on DVD (I already have the whole show and will eventually be getting rid of individually boxed seasons)

He also got me:

Dirty Dancing: The Ultimate Edition

This is a classic movie.

He got me lots of other things too, he really spoiled me, but those are the only media related items. I'm lucky to have such a fantastic boyfriend.

My family got me:

The Big Bang Theory Trivia Game 

I love TBBT and can't wait to play this game

The Artisan Soda Workshop. 

 I love soda and now that we have a sodastream I'll love trying out the recipes in this book to make homemade soda.

My family knows how much I love to bake so they got me this awesome baking cookbook full of delicious recipes 

They also got me a great case for my Kindle so now it'll be protected. I got a bunch more stuff, because my family is awesome and really spoiled me, but that's all the book/media related gear. I'm very lucky to have such a wonderful family who knows me so well.

So, that's all the books and other great stuff I got this week! What did you get in your book hauls this week? Leave links and I'll be sure to stop by!

Behind the Blog: A Sweet New Skill

Behind The Blog is a meme to help bloggers connect their life and interests to the content showcased on their blog. The co-hosts Faye Kathe and Melissa will provide a different topic, idea, or question every week that bloggers can relate to themselves and the books, films, or media they find interesting!

This week, because we want you to have a little freedom with this, we’re having a FREE CHOICE week. This means that you may write about whichever topic you want to! Want to talk about a topic you missed? Go ahead! Want to discuss a topic you’ve been waiting to appear? Get on it!. Be free with it.
Also, if this works well, we will have more free choice weeks in the future and would love your feedback, so please e-mail us any thoughts or questions you have

I had a hard time thinking of a topic for today's post. I don't want to ruin any possible future topics, so I sat here ruling out things that I wanted to save for future weeks for a long time. But, then I decided that even if I write about something that ends up becoming a topic later I can always just write about a different aspect of it.


The topic that I wanted to talk about today is baking. Specifically about my (semi) new passion for it. There aren't a whole lot of domestic/crafty things that I think of myself as being really good at, but somehow baking has become one of those.


I don't even remember what started me on baking, though the more that I think about it a big factor may have been reading the Friday Night Knitting Club series.


Sometime about two years ago, I started baking. Mainly just different types of muffins at first. Since then I've done a couple of cakes, cookies,  biscuits, cornbread (Dearran's favorite of the things I make)  and cheesecake.


I'm by no means a master, I'm just glad when whatever I make comes out tasting good. My favorite item to bake is still muffins, because they're relatively easy to make in general and also easy to experiment with. The most unusual combination I've done was probably strawberry peanut butter muffins. They came out okay but they were quite dense just because peanut butter is a bit heavy to work with.


I really enjoy the process of baking. Even though in baking you're really supposed to follow the recipes to the letter so you don't mess up the chemistry between the ingredients, I am almost always adding things, or making substitutions. 


I love trying new combinations and trying to make something with what I've got on hand.


It's actually a bit funny/ironic that I enjoy baking so much because I don't like cooking. They're practically the same activity, but ask me to cook and I'll not want to. Ask me to bake something and I'm all for it. Weird huh?


Not all of my baking attempts have been successful though. I'm not all that good at making cookies, because shaping them is really difficult for me. I think it's just that I haven't found the right recipe for them yet. My worst baking blunder actually involved cookies.


For some reason I decided that I wanted to use up a big heart shaped block of chocolate that I'd had sitting around for too long. I cut it all up and decided that I wanted to try to make some sort of double chocolate cookies with it. Well, silly me, I figured I could just melt the chocolate and use it in the recipe instead of cocoa powder. Well, no, you can't do that.


Needless to say, the cookies came out as flat, semi chocolate tasting, brittle cookies. But hey, you live and learn right?


What about you, do you like to bake? Cook? What's your favorite baked good?

Books that deal with baking:

• The Friday Night Knitting Club series by Kate Jacobs: The main character's daughter starts out making treats for the club meetings and having the members be her taste testers.
• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: This was a very unusual book. It has to do with food more than baking but one of the main events deals with a birthday cake.

I know that there are probably some really good films that deal with baking too, I just can't think of them right now. 

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