Gads – where to even start??? How about with brownie mix?
Do you have any idea how hard it is to photograph brownie mix and make it look delicious?
This could be a mud pie… it isn’t, but it doesn’t exactly look appetizing. Hats off to food photographers who can make you drool just by looking at a photo…
Why brownie mix you may ask? Well, the forthcoming Christmas book includes recipes and craft activities, so we’ve been testing… Which might be a fine, fun thing to be doing if I wasn’t also trying to get organized to go away next week. At times like this, the kitchen shouldn’t really look like a bomb went off…
This was actually after I had tidied up a bit… See the relevant manuscript pages on the counter?
This is what the Brownie Mix in a Jar craft/recipe is supposed to look like. Note the snowmen? They are deconstructed seasonal earrings, destined to make a return appearance in the snow globe I’ll make after I run to the store to get glitter. Turns out it’s very hard to find small Christmassy items suitable for snow globe insertion when the retail cycle is currently hyping Halloween. I was sorely tempted to do a spider-themed snowglobe.
Meanwhile, over on the coast, Dani is going through thousands of family photos in search of suitable images to include in the book. We are both pretty excited about the book – another in the Orca Origins series – (what’s not to love about Christmas?), but also completely stressed as our respective planes are departing very, very soon… (according to my countdown clock, I will be taxiing down the runway in 6 days, 20 hours and 48 minutes).
So far, the recipes and crafts are working out fine – with the exception, perhaps, of the homemade tree decorations made from the strangest mix of applesauce, white glue, and cinnamon. They smell great and look like cookies (you cut the shapes out with cookie cutters) and one was very nearly eaten by a hungry family member as the gooey batch was drying on the counter! This is why we test recipes… I will be adding a warning that kids should make a sign warning people not to test the ornaments while they are drying, no matter how tasty they look!
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Categories: Cooking, Middle Grades, Non-fiction, Orca Origins, Uncategorized, Works in Progress, Writing, Writing Life
Nikki Tate - Author 