Blogtober Day Four: Books & Baking – House of Salt and Sorrows

Hi, lovelies! Today I am here to share my first post of the newest blog feature here at Classy x Book Reviews! We’ve titled it Books & Baking. Basically what this new feature is baking (or cooking sometimes) things that are inspired by the books we read. For this first post, I have baked something that was directly mentioned in the story, but sometimes we will just make things that are inspired by the story. Not all books mention food and we don’t want to limit ourselves to books that directly mention or talk about food. So, now that we have the business out of the way, let’s get down to the first part of this post.

Book: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Read my full review here!

I had so much fun buddy reading this book with my fellow Capricorn moon signs for Zodiacathon. I love the setting, the world, and the characters. It was such an atmospheric experience. The perfect read for the spooky season. It was creepy and mysterious, there was suspense on every page. I highly recommend this book for so many reasons. I’m going to share a few of my favorite quotes before getting into the baking half of this post.

“We are born of salt and starlight.”

“We’re not going anywhere. We’re the People of the Salt. We’re tied to this land, to these seas. Fire cannot force us to retreat.”

“The High Mariner says Pontus created our islands and the people on them. He scooped salt from the ocean tides for strength. Into that was mixed the cunning of a bull shark and the beauty of the moon jellyfish. He added the seahorse’s fidelity and the curiosity of a porpoise. When his creation was molded just so-two arms, two legs, a head, and a heart-Pontus breathed some of his own life into it, making the first People of the Salt. So when we die, we can’t be buried in the ground. We slip back into the water and are home.”

Baking: Glazed Almond Cookies

Now, these cookies were a part of the many delicious sounding treats that Annaleigh sampled at the Churning festival. These were the most realistic for me to bake, also some of the other things don’t exist.

“We stuffed ourselves with treats from street vendors. Spun sugar sea glass, glazed almond cookies shaped like sand dollars, roasted corn, and bowls of thick clam chowder were offered on every corner, along with more exotic fare: red frog crabs and whelks, jellyfish jerky and sea urchins.”

If you feel like you want to make these delicious cookies too, here’s the link to the recipe I  used!

Ingredients:

Softened, salted butter
Granulated sugar
Egg
Almond extract
All-purpose flour
Baking Powder
Salt
Chopped sliced almonds
Orange zest

Icing Ingredients:

Confectioners’ sugar
Milk
Almond extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the butter, sugar, egg, and almond extract until the mixture is creamy with no lumps. Next, in a new bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually mix the butter-sugar into the new bowl. Then stir in the chopped almonds and orange zest. Place on parchment paper over a cookie sheet in tablespoons. Bake for ten minutes then cool.

Icing Instructions:

Combine all three ingredients until smooth.

Assembly

Drizzle icing over cookies once cool and top with a dash of orange zest. Then enjoy!

 I love baking, so trying something new like these almond cookies was super fun! And now my family has dessert for the next few days! I think they turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I’ve added a photo so you can all take a look at my final product!

What did you think of the first installment of our new Books & Baking feature? Let me know if you decide to make these too. Feel free to give me any feedback you might have to make this new blog feature the best it can be! Thoughts and opinions are entirely welcome.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

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