In August 2004, Gesine Bullock-Prado left behind a high-powered life in Hollywood, where she had run a production company with her sister, actress Sandra Bullock. Celebrating a long held wish, Gesine started her own bakery, Gesine Confectionary, in the small town of Montpelier,Vermont. Confections of a Closet Master Baker is Gesine's witty story of choosing the simpler life after living the high life in Hollywood.

".... In subtly compelling prose, the master baker conveys her touching sense of responsibility for the "emotional needs of [her] patrons," and offers mouthwatering recipes."—Publishers Weekly

A recipe for Reading Group Choices!

Gesine writes about the "good ole days" snack vs the mature sophisticated snack. She has created the Reading Group Whoopie for us as a sweet treat for your group's holiday party, or, anytime. It is Yummy!  ENJOY and thanks Gesine!

Reading Group Whoopie!
by Gesine Bullock-Prado 

"At 10:45, just as George Michael’s “Sports Machine” was finishing up on Virginia’s channel five, members of a clandestine society would filter into my college living room, students of Mr. Jefferson’s University all and each bearing an offering of Moon Pies and a bumper of Colt 45.  At 11pm, when the strains of the Star Trek:  Next Generation theme song squeezed themselves from the mono speaker of my crappy t.v., a hush fell over the room as we nibbled, sipped and fell under the spell of Captain Picard and his travails with the Borg or poor Data struggling under the influence of human emotion.  These were heady things, made more memorable with the inclusion of our ritual treats.

I’ll be honest with you.  I don’t know what spurred on the specifics of our ritual meal.  I’m hard pressed to tell you what’s tasty about a Moon Pie.  I’d never gone out of my way to eat one on any other occasion.  And the Colt 45, forget about it.  I want to. But the combination of elements, the Star Trek, the cardboard sandwich cookie and the malt liquor, made for a beloved communion of friends that we’ll cherish forever.

Now an adult, a professional baker with access to a better selection of alcoholic beverages, I’ve reimagined my youthful gathering:  A book that brings friends together instead of Roddenberry, a generous glass of juicy Pinot Noir in place of the Colt 45 and a luscious, spongy, fluff filled homemade chocolate Whoopie Pie in the shrink-wrapped Moon Pie’s stead.

So I’d like to share this recipe with fellow book lovers so that your next literary gathering may be infused with Whoopie goodness.  Enjoy!"

Chocolate Whoopie Reading Group Pies
(makes 2 dozen sandwiches or 6 sandwiches and 1 large whoopie)

For Chocolate Whoopies:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¼ cups non-fat buttermilk
¾ cup hot coffee
½ a bar (or 2 ounces) of Ghirardelli 4 oz bittersweet premium baking bar, cut into small pieces and melted in the coffee

 Preheat oven to 350 (convection) or 375 (traditional)
Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
Add chocolate to coffee and set aside for it to melt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 
Scrape down bowl and add eggs one at a time.  Mixing until fully incorporated.
Combine buttermilk and coffee and alternate this mixture with the flour mixture until all elements are incorporated.  Whisk quickly on high to insure perfect distribution.
On a parchment lined cookie sheet and using a large ice cream or cookie scoop, place cookies onto parchment lined baking pans, 12 per pan. 
Bake for 15 minutes or until the cake springs back when gently touched.
Pipe a generous dollop of Marshmallow Fluff or Seven-Minute Icing (recipe to follow) onto half the Whoopies and sandwich with the remaining cookies. 
These will keep up to 2 days in an airtight container.

For Seven Minute Frosting:

1 ¾ cups sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup
¼ cup water
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 egg whites

In a heavy saucepan, combine 1 ½ cups sugar, corn syrup and water and heat over medium until (1) sugar has melted and (2) reaches 230 degrees on a candy thermometer.  This can take from 5 to 10 minutes.

In a mixing bowl with the whisk attachment, whisk egg whites with the salt and vanilla until you reach soft peak stage.  Slowly add the remaining ¼ cup sugar.  Add the molten sugar mixture the instant it has reached temperature while the mixer is on medium speed.  Make sure to pour the syrup down the side of the bowl so that it doesn’t splatter and it’s incorporated more gently (i.e. doesn’t scramble your eggs).  Beat until the fluff is cool, thick, very stiff and shiny.   This can take up to 10 minutes.  Sometimes more!

Visit Reading Group Choices Wine by the Book! for Pinot Noir suggestions to accompany your Reading Group Whoopie!

Visit with Gesine Bullock-Prado in her 1-On-One.

Classics are Back! yea! I love the classics -- Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Twain, Shakespeare, Sinclair, Melville, Steinbeck, Bronte's sisters, Stegner, Dostoyevsky, Stoker, Wilkes. I could go on -- so many are my faves. Many reading groups read only classics or pick a classic once a year to discuss.

Now, there is a great way to enhance your reading and discussion of the classics. Penguin Classics on Air, a half-hour radio series devoted to some of the more than 1,500 classics titles, makes its debut this week on Sirius XM Book Radio (Sirius #117, XM #163). The series airs twice a week, on Mondays at 3 p.m. and Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. The shows include in-depth conversations with scholars and experts.

The first show, called "Why We Love Jane Austen," explores what it means to be a Janeite, how etiquette was different in Austen's time and why spoofs like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are so popular right now.

What a great idea! Bone up on the classics and be an expert at your next classic book discussion!

What is your favorite classic?

My 12/8 Tuesday Teaser!.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (February 2010)

"The dark was full of women's voices, keening in a language he did not know, so that at first he thought he was back in the war. The thought sucked the air from his lungs and left him choking."

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Anne Tyler's new novel is coming out in January! This is her eighteenth.

Noah's Compass is a story about Liam Pennywell, a schoolteacher, who is forced to retire at sixty-one and has to come to terms with the final phase of his life. His early retirement doesn't bother him so much -- didn't like the job at the run-down private school, anyway.

Liam is bothered by the fact that he has lost the memory of what happened the night he moved into his new condominium. All he knows when he wakes up in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.

His attempts to recover his moments of his life that was stolen from him leads him on a unexpected detour. All he needs is someone to remember for him. Well, he gets something quite different that he was counting on!

Tyler lives in Baltimore and all of her stories are set in Baltimore. I live near Baltimore so I enjoy the regional character of her books. Along with, of course, her excellent writing.

All of her books are great reading group choices. Can't wait to read Noah's Compass.