Guest Author: Beth Kendrick

Beth Kendrick, author of The Bake-Off, has been kind enough to stop by Reading with Tequila talk about baking.

Beth Kendrick got her B.A. in English at Carleton College before earning her Ph.D. in child psychology and then pulling a professional U-turn to pursue her dream job of becoming a novelist. When she is not slavishly working on her next novel, she’s cheering on the Chicago Cubs, watching TV series of questionable intellectual value (“Real Housewives of Orange County,” we’re looking at you), going to the gym, or learning how to bake (those last two kind of cancel each other out). She lives in Arizona with her family and two unruly rescue dogs. You can visit her website at www.BethKendrick.com.

Piecrust: It Ain’t for Sissies

As a rule, authors dread the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” because they honestly don’t have an answer. But I know exactly where I got the idea for my new book, The Bake-Off: 2 a.m., the night before my toddler’s birthday party, while sweating and cursing and trying to pipe green icing onto a chocolate sheet cake so that I could add a tiny, to-scale lawn mower intended for a dollhouse (God bless eBay) and deliver unto the light of my life the “lawn mower cake” he so fervently desired.

The Cake Boss I am not, and I was tired and frustrated and thinking: I can’t do this—I quit. Kid won’t remember it anyway. But then I thought, You know, if someone offered me a million dollars, I would figure out a way to make this cake beautiful. And I was off and running with the idea of two estranged sisters who can’t bake at all, but are desperate for money and recognition. So they enter a family recipe and go for the gold at a national, high-stakes dessert championship, even though they’ve been feuding for years and can barely boil water.

When I came up with the premise for this story, I thought the writing would be a snap. My characters can’t bake, and neither can I, so we have lots in common. Woo hoo! Rule-breakers and rebels unite!

Except, by the end of the story, Amy and Linnie have learned how to bake. Specifically, they’re making apple pie from scratch, including the crust, which is the pastry equivalent of an ice skater executing a triple axel and sticking the landing at the Olympics.

The time had come to stop coasting on good intentions and brownies from a mix. Time to turn off Top Chef and The Food Network and get my hands dirty (or at least lightly dusted with flour). As part of my research, I interviewed a woman who’s spent decades on the competitive cooking circuit. She gave me the inside scoop on things like how to prepare for competition day and little things that can sway the judges in your favor (like choosing a sassy, catchy name for your recipe), but of course I wanted juicy gossip and tales of intrigue. She kept insisting that 99% of the people she’d met at competitions were charming and delightful.

So naturally I wrote my book all about the other 1%--the backstabbing, ruthless, sabotaging drama queens.

I also enrolled in a two-day “intensive baking workshop” at a local cooking school. This turned out to be a 48-hour crash course in humility. I was, to put it tactfully, the problem child in class. All the other students were showing off their superior knife skills and chatting knowledgably about things like “flavor profiles”, while I practically amputated my thumb with an apple peeler. I gave it my all, though. I sliced and sautéed and worked the food processor like a pro. I rolled my crust out into a perfect circle, wove strips of dough into a perfect lattice, and baked at 350 until bubbly and golden brown.

Then I stood back while the instructor sampled the finished product. She took a tiny bite, put down her fork, and cleared her throat.

“There are two types of pie,” she said. “And you were trying to make the other kind.”

As soon as she said it, I grabbed a pen—that line is totally going in the book.

I had so much fun writing The Bake-Off, and I hope you have fun reading it. There’s a little something for everybody: butter, sugar, sisterly love, a few misdemeanors, a lot of scandal, and recipes for vodka-butter cake and a killer apple pie. Bon appétit!

For more information about Beth and her books, please visit her website: www.BethKendrick.com and Facebook page: www.facebook.com/BethKendrickBooks

About the Book

Suburban soccer mom Amy has always wanted to stand out from the crowd. Former child prodigy Linnie just wants to fit in. The two sisters have been estranged for years, but thanks to a series of personal crises and their wily grandmother, they've teamed up to enter a national bake-off in the hopes of winning some serious cash. Armed with the top-secret recipe for Grammy's apple pie, they should be unstoppable. Sure, neither one of them has ever baked anything more complicated than brownie mix, but it's just pie-how hard could it be?