Author: Hall, Alexis
Book: Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

Need something sweet and fluffy, but with substance? Add this to your to-read shelf: Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall, out on May 18! Luckily, as librarians, Jenne and I were able to get advanced reader copies on Edelweiss+, and we both finished it within a day of starting. A rom-com starring a single mom who enters a televised baking contest, this book is obviously highly recommended for anyone who’s a Great British Baking Show fan. P.S. The extra materials for this book are great, so make sure to page through to the very end. There are excellent discussion questions (written by the author) and recipes in the characters’ voices that made us lol.

Rosaline Palmer is, of course, a perfect 36 Eggs book, with mouthwatering food scenes galore and any number of possible dishes to recreate (e.g. Harry’s Cheesy Bites, included at the end, sound pretty tempting.) But I thought it might be more in the story’s spirit if we came up with and attempted our own bakes alongside the characters.

Rosaline and her fellow contestants must create puddings for Week 5 of their Bake Expectations show — specifically, self-saucing puddings for the final baketacular challenge. We had never heard of self-saucing puddings before, but they sounded like magical chemistry experiments. To make a self-saucing pudding, you make a batter, sprinkle the top with a sugar + cornstarch mixture, and cover with hot water. As it bakes, the sugar + cornstarch sinks to the bottom, where it thickens into a sauce. Meanwhile, the batter on top turns into a cake! Jenne and I each selected the following flavors for our baketacular:

• Jenne’s Passionfruit Pudding
• Miko’s Browned ButterScotch Pudding

Recipes and notes to come, in celebration of the book’s release. In the meantime, pre-order a copy of the book at your local library or indie bookstore!

Hall, Alexis. Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake. New York: Forever, 2021.