Novel Bakery

“I got him!” Elliot called, his footsteps crunching. The floor was covered in grains of sugar. And then Kane saw what Elliot meant. By the looks of it, Ursula was very stressed. Baked goods covered the entire kitchen. Cupcakes, cakes, pastries, cookies; they littered every surface of her kitchen in a sugary clutter, as though they’d washed up in the low tide of some mania. 
…
“I made apricot scones today,” [Ursula] said. “I don’t even like apricot. Does anyone want to try one? Oh, wait, actually try this batch instead.”

Reverie by Ryan La Sala

Reverie by Ryan La Sala is a YA paranormal, fantasy novel.

Kane Montgomery wakes up in the hospital with no clue how he got there. He’s told he crashed his car into the old mill and the building…exploded. Kane is lucky to be alive. Now Kane must piece together his life and memories which includes shadowed, scuttling creatures, out-of-control dreamscapes that can kill you, and newfound (re-found?) powers.

If you’ve been here a minute, you know I loooved The Honeys, also by Ryan La Sala. Reverie is a fantasy YA novel that has some similar imagery and themes to The Honeys but also stands on its own. I love how La Sala brings together misfits with the popular kids, subverting stereotypes and expectations for these characters. The mystery of Kane’s missing memory and the events that led to his lost memory gets revealed tiny slivers at a time. Each revelation brought new questions, which kept me on the edge of my seat, and constantly wanting to read more. And as you pass through this surreal story, you can never know who to trust. I was even suspicious of the narrator, Kane, since he was missing half his memories.

I had to recreate Urula’s stress-baking scene since…relatable. Thankfully, putting everything together for this post coincided with practicing making a wedding cake for my sister-in-law! With the number of guests, we wanted to make sure there was plenty of cake, so I made a sheet cake white cake and added chopped strawberries.

And I also made a two-tier chocolate cake with layers of ganache, peanut butter buttercream, and graham chocolate crumbles. This cake weighed a ton and spoiler–we had way too much cake for the wedding! For the cake design, I used palette knives, which is such a fun cake decorating method!

Using some of the extra white cake batter, I made a mini funfetti bundt cake with my mini bundt pans, I baked up my favorite chocolate chip cookies, and added some chopped apricots to my base scone recipe for Urusla’s apricot scones.

If you enjoy fantasy, paranormal reads I highly recommend Reverie. And it would be great to read around Halloween since that’s when the book takes place.

Check out my Instagram reel for Reverie!