A Table Tidbit

One of the events that marks the beginning of the holiday season for us is the somewhat unconventional Cookbook Social at Tom Douglas' Palace Ballroom. For the first time, Tom wasn't actually at the social this week, being busy elsewhere providing dinner at the national Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. A pretty good excuse, I'd say!

When we go to these events, there are usually several cookbook authors we know of - like Jennifer Shea of one of our favorite cupcake shops, Trophy Cupcakes. Oh did I fail to mention that each cookbook author offers samples for us from recipes in their books? We might have had a few tastes from Trophy Cupcakes and Parties.

 

There are also often a few other food-related (non-author) vendors there. One of my very favorite bites of the night was a Sweet Corn Macaron (really!) from ChefSteps, an online cooking school. Oh my goodness.

Meeting Jessie of CakeSpy was a treat in itself. She was pretty irresistible, as was her new book, The Secret Lives of Baked Goods: Sweet Stories & Recipes for America's Favorite Desserts. I hadn't realized she isn't living in Seattle any more, so it was fun to chat with her about that and our mutual love of baked goods.

We also had a really nice visit (and tastes!) with Autumn Martin who authored Malts and Milkshakes. She has a really interesting story food-wise - starting with selling her Take-n-Bake Molten Chocolate Cake in a Mason Jar in 2008 at a local farmer's market, up to the present time where she operates Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery, a place I definitely need to visit! It was a fun twist that hubby won a free copy of her book in one of the night's raffles. A bonus was to see that in addition to all sorts of yummy-sounding creamy beverages, the book also contains the recipe for those Hot Cakes and the unusual but delicious Smoked Chocolate Chips. Oh yeah. The good times have begun.