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All my life, I’ve loved cooking. My mother taught me to bake when I was a little girl, and I grew up experimenting with recipes– sometimes with success, and other times with disastrous results. Part of my joy in cooking was because I felt like I was serving up a dish of love to my family and friends. Seeing their enjoyment of luscious chocolate, hearty fruit pies, and sweet frosting, gave me a sense of accomplishment. (We won’t talk about the burned cookies or the banana bread experiment when I forgot the baking soda).
I’d always wanted to write a romance novel where the heroine adored cooking, because love and food, for me, are intertwined. It was more challenging in the era I selected, because ladies of the nobility in the Victorian era did not cook for the household. They hired servants to prepare and serve the food. The only way my heroine could do her own cooking was to make her completely destitute. And thus, the Cinderella figure of Emily Barrow was born.
I used two resources to inspire Emily’s recipes. One, the Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Mrs. D.A. Lincoln, gave me insights as to the types of recipes that might have been present in Victorian London. Though the cook book was a reprint of the 1884 edition, I chose recipes that could have been used 30 years earlier. The second resource was Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (http://www.mrsbeeton.com/), originally published in 1861. Both provided fun details about the household and cooking tips such as “a cook’s first duty should be to set her dough for the breakfast rolls, provided this has not been done on the previous night.” The cook must then “after having lighted her kitchen fire, carefully brushed the range, and cleaned the hearth, proceed to prepare for breakfast. She will thoroughly rinse the kettle, and, filling it with fresh water, will put it on the fire to boil. She will then go to the breakfast-room, or parlour, and there make all things ready for the breakfast of the family.”
I’ll confess that, although I love baking, more often than not my weekends begin with a toddler prying my eyelids open at 6:30 in the morning, demanding, “Mommy, food? Mommy, Cheerios?” The child is lucky if I pop open a can of store-bought cinnamon rolls. Getting up to knead homemade bread dough? Not happening. I tend to do more of my own cooking later in the afternoon or when I get a craving for something sweet. But if I had a scullery maid who wanted to get up at the crack of dawn and make the family breakfast? I would be all over that. 
My Victorian series begins when Emily Barrow elopes with the Earl of Whitmore after he rescues her from intense poverty in the novella “An Accidental Seduction.” Their story continues in my February book The Accidental Countess where Emily learns that being a Countess isn’t as easy as it looks. To make matters worse, her husband was the victim of a violent accident and doesn’t remember anything about their marriage. Frustrated and worried about her future, Emily finds sanctuary in her cooking, which scandalizes the family butler.
But despite being an unsuitable Countess, Emily fights to win back the love of her husband. And along the way, I found some perfect recipes to go along with the story. They’re included at the beginning of several chapters, and my favorite recipe is one for Molasses Cookies. The recipe can be found on my website a
t http://www.michellewillingham.com/books/the-accidental-countess/recipes/molasses-cookies . Originally, I modified the recipe because I thought it had few enough ingredients that my heroine might be able to make them for the Earl. But in the end, it became one of my favorite family recipes! I now make it every year at Christmas, because the basic recipe has enough ginger that it strongly resembles a delicious gingerbread cookie.
Today I’d like to celebrate historic recipes by giving away a signed copy of The Accidental Countess and a free download of “An Accidental 
Seduction” to two lucky winners. Just tell me the name of one of your favorite family recipes. Is there a recipe that’s been passed down over the generations in your family? Tell us about it!
Michelle Willingham is the author of eight novels for Harlequin Historical and three novellas with Harlequin Historical Undone. When she’s not reading, avoiding exercise, or chasing after her three children, she enjoys baking any and all products made with sugar. Look for her next book in the Accidental Series, The Accidental Princess, coming in March 2010. For more information about her books, visit her website at: www.michellewillingham.com .
Filed in: Jaunty Guests
Feb 12th
2010
6:46 am
Tonya Kappes Said:
We have the best cheesey rolls. The ingredients consist of tuna, mushrooms, peas, cream of mushroom soup, milk, homemade rolls (from scratch), cheese, onion and green pepper and a secret family ingredient. I REFUSE TO MAKE IT!! It takes so long and you wouldn’t think b/c there aren’t many ingredients. You have to boil each one for so long and add only this amount and boil for so long…the process takes about two hours. My DH makes it once a month and we have to double the recipe b/c my boys LOVE IT!! They have NO IDEA tuna is in it or they wouldn’t eat it. HAHAHAHA
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Feb 12th
2010
8:04 am
Emmanuelle Said:
Grrr I love blogs about food. Especially when I’m on a diet (like now). My mom is a mean cook and I mean a MEEEAAAN cook. She basicaly turns every new recipe into a triumph and makes me terribly jealous. You know what people say about husbands refering constantly to their mothers’ cooking. Well mine does just that, but with MY mom’s cooking so I can’t even get mad at him
.
AMong her many specialties, she makes the best stuffed mushroom I’ve ever tasted. The stuffing is a combination of pork and veal and some vegetables and seasoning. They’re yummy and cooked to perfection (you know with the caramelised bottoms). I’m making them too, unfortunatly not as well as she does but I’m only 31 so I have some good years to practice !
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Feb 12th
2010
8:04 am
kristan higgins Said:
Michelle, welcome! What an absolutely stunning cover! Funny…I love to write about cooking, but actually doing it fails to thrill my soul. Baking–different story. As for family recipes, there’s galucska, which is a cabbage-butter-noodle dish that takes eons to cook and is deadly in fat content…and very worth it! Real Hungarian peasant food.
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Feb 12th
2010
8:07 am
Emmanuelle Said:
Kristan, I actually had a dream about this raisin cinnamon bread pudding with the whiskey sauce !
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Feb 12th
2010
8:19 am
Michelle Willingham Said:
Tonya–that sounds like a fascinating recipe. Doesn’t it always seem that the really good recipes take extra time?
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Feb 12th
2010
8:25 am
Michelle Willingham Said:
Emmanuelle–what kind of mushrooms does the recipe use? Shitake or…? And that raisin cinnamon bread pudding sounds heavenly.
Kristan–when I was growing up, I didn’t taste cabbage until I was ten years old. My mother hated it and refused to cook it. She was shocked to find out that I actually liked it! One of our “comfort meals” is I’ll do a corned beef in the crock pot with cabbage, potatoes, and carrots. You can make it a one pot meal if you add the vegetables about an hour before you’re ready to serve it. Yum! Your recipe sounds great.
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Feb 12th
2010
8:35 am
Emmanuelle Said:
Michelle – I don’t know the english name for those mushroom. They’re like regular white mushrooms but bigger (like portobello mushrooms but white).
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Feb 12th
2010
9:02 am
Deb Said:
Hi, Michelle! Beverley Kendall recommended you as an author on The Season blog. I look forward to reading your books.
My maternal grandmother was an exceptionally good cook. She could bake a pie that would melt in your mouth; her cherry was my favorite. Gram seldom used recipes.
One of our many fave family recipes is orange rolls. It’s a basic bread dough, but rolled out, add oj concentrate and grated orange peel, roll up in a log, cut,and bake in cupcake pans. It’s traditional for us to have them on Thanksgiving Day.
One story I’d like to share about my Gram is that I was making a recipe of hers and came to the directions, “Add 2 glubs of oil.” I called her and asked what a glub was and she said, “You know, when the oil comes out of the bottle it goes glub, glub.” I kid you not. That’s how she cooked!
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Feb 12th
2010
9:24 am
Michelle Willingham Said:
Deb–oh, I love that! I can just picture her saying it. My grandmother gave me a photocopy of a handwritten cook book that her mother had made. It’s full of priceless bits of advice like that. One of my favorites was when she said to make sure you choose a chicken with white fat instead of yellow fat, because the yellow fat meant the bird was older with tougher meat. I never knew that!
Cherry pie is one of my absolute favorites, too. And tell Beverley thanks for the recommendation!
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Feb 12th
2010
9:47 am
Kirsten Said:
One of my favorite recipes was always Grandmothers Chicken-salad. I’ve become a vegetarian and so chicken is no longer an option. I have adapted her recipe and changed the chicken for baked tofu. Recipes don’t always need to be followed, I believe they are there to inspire us. Honesty permits me to tell you that it does not taste the same, but I do love my version of Grandma’s” salad. I make it often for special Sundays with family.
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Feb 12th
2010
9:55 am
Kathryn Said:
Christmas is just not Chrismas without my great grandmother’s recipe for butter tarts. Her pastry recipe is simple and bombproof (I could never understand why people have trouble making pastry) and so is the buttertart filling mixture.
My mother in law also has two easy from scratch cake recipes that show up weekly in my baking and they date at least from WWII England… hot milk white cake (which you can add just about anything to and it’s fabulous) and a sour milk chocolate cake.
I also have a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook… I think it was bought because my father’s family name is Beaton — it belonged to my grandmother Beaton. I have a couple of her cookbooks/household management books, dated in teh 1920′s and 1930′s. They are so much fun to read!
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Feb 12th
2010
9:56 am
Catherine Kean Said:
Michelle, it’s great to have you here today. I really enjoyed your post! I love to cook and bake, too, and am always trying new recipes I find in magazines (especially Bon Appetit) or new cookbooks I’ve bought because I simply couldn’t resist!
One of my favorite family recipes is Hasty Pudding, a recipe passed down from my grandmother. It’s a rich, dense pudding with a sugary-caramel sauce that’s very quick to make, has few ingredients, and is delicious. I get requests for the recipe all the time, but I have yet to give it out.
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Feb 12th
2010
10:18 am
Rebekah E. Said:
One of my favorite recipes that has been in my family and probably most pennslyvania dutch families is we call Hog Mal. It actually has a different name, but I am not sure what that is. Basically you take a clean pigs stomach and stuff it with sausage, potatoes, carrots, and seasonings. It is so yummy.
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Feb 12th
2010
10:24 am
Michelle Willingham Said:
Kirsten–I think that’s a great way of keeping the recipe in the family, but adapting it to your own needs.
Kathryn–I wonder if the sour milk in the chocolate cake is similar to a buttermilk. I usually substitute milk and lemon juice instead of buttermilk when I have to have it, because we just don’t use enough of it otherwise.
Catherine–I wonder if it’s the same Hasty Pudding as in Yankee Doodle?
Is it a dense pudding or a soft one?
Rebekah–I’ve never tasted pig’s stomach before, but I’ve heard that it’s good.
It’s basically like a pork belly, isn’t it?
By the way, I will confess to being a hopeless Top Chef addict. I love learning new cooking techniques!
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Feb 12th
2010
10:46 am
Shana Said:
Thanks for blogging with us. The book sounds great and yummy! I like to read about cooking a lot more than I like to do it!
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Feb 12th
2010
10:48 am
eap Said:
My favorite recipe was made with leftover Thangsgiving stuff-a turkey pot pie with the leftover sausage stuffing in it in a store bought pie shell.
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Feb 12th
2010
11:15 am
Kathryn Said:
Actually, Michelle, the recipe calls for the milk to be soured by adding 1-2 tbsp of vinegar. It is a very moist, dark, chocolatey cake and my kids love it with mint icing.
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Feb 12th
2010
11:23 am
Quilt Lady Said:
I guess one of my favorite recipes is home made chicken and dumplins. We still make them like my grandmother did. Except we add chicken base to our broth, which grandmother didn’t have. Its flour, salt, pepper, egg chicken broth, mixed into a dough and rolled very thin, with rolling pin. Cut into dumpling and dropped into boiling chicken broth. Cook until done.
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Feb 12th
2010
12:45 pm
catslady Said:
I’ve gone through stages in my life. When younger I loved to bake. Then I really got into cooking for over 15 years – until the kids came along and my husband had to work evenings. Then it was just the two of us again but I was out of practice lol. Now I make large Sunday and Holiday dinners for my grown family and their significant others and I’m beginning to get back into it!
We have a jelly filled thumb print cookie that has been in our family for a long time – it takes a lot of work but is well worth it. My one daughter is now taking up the gauntlet and she and her husband love to bake – horray!!
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Feb 12th
2010
1:54 pm
Michelle Willingham Said:
Shana–I love to bake more than anything else. Cooking…it all depends. My family is a little pickier than they should be.
Eap–I made a chicken pot pie just the other day. Loved it! But I am NOT thinking about the calories or fat in it…nope, nope, nope.
Kathryn–Oooh, mint icing? Sounds like a cake that would be similar to a peppermint patty. Yum!
Quilt lady–thanks for that recipe! I’ve been looking for some good, hearty cold weather dishes. That one sounds delicious!
Catslady–I’ve made those thumb print cookies before. They were so good. Mmmm..we rolled the dough in chopped pecans before pressing them down with our thumbs and baking them. I filled them with homemade raspberry jam this year. I took the kids berry picking and we made homemade jams and jellies. So easy, and so good!
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Feb 12th
2010
6:00 pm
Sori Yarbrough Said:
One of our favorite family recipes is homemade noodles. They’re super easy, roll out in a jiffy and are thrown in broth. They are a staple at Christmas and often requested for birthday dinners.
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Feb 12th
2010
7:53 pm
Michelle Willingham Said:
Sori–I had a disastrous attempt at homemade noodles. The dough was incredibly tough to roll thin (I don’t have a pasta roller), and they were really dry. I applaud those who can do them!
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Feb 12th
2010
8:54 pm
Linda Henderson Said:
My family dish is, believe it or not, potato salad. We seem to have it at every family get-together summer or winter. It’s a mustard potato salad and everyone that tastes it loves it.
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Feb 13th
2010
12:32 am
Jane Said:
Welcome Michelle,
My dad’s specialty is beef fried noodles. The most important thing is to use the thin noodles instead of the wider ones and make sure tenderize beef before cooking.
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Feb 13th
2010
3:22 am
Fedora Said:
We are such food lovers in our family, although I have to confess that when I try to make dishes my mom makes, they often don’t taste quite the same, even when I follow her recipe/directions. So my kids tend to prefer Grandma’s porridge (this rice stuff, with all sorts of stuff cooked into it–meat, mushrooms, seafood, etc.) to mine! Alas! We don’t really have many recipes that have been in our family for generations; some of the ones my mom’s taught me are so much work that I’m too lazy to make them often. For instance, there’s a type of rice “tamale” that’s wrapped in leaves and steamed; I’ve made them twice with my mom and aunt, but haven’t ever contemplated making them on my own!
Thanks for posting today, Michelle!!
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Feb 14th
2010
3:59 am
Callie Said:
My Great Grandmother Callie Clarinda made the best turkey stuffing using left over homemade biscuits she saved up from meals. Those biscuits were the best. There weren’t that many left over so it must have taken a week or so to collect enough of them. My Great Aunt Bertha made the very best ever peach cobbler using the peaches the family picked and canned. Your post brought back some great memories.
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Feb 15th
2010
2:02 am
Christina Hollis Said:
Lovely cover, Michelle, and the Molasses Cookies sound a great project for half term this week. My grandmother took a spoonful of molasses each morning as she said they’re ‘full of goodness’. She lived to nearly ninety, so those cookies are bound to be VERY healthy…
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Feb 15th
2010
11:22 am
Robin Greene Said:
There are recipes that I love but don’t prepare anymore because it destroys my whole system. One is what I call Unstuffed Cabbage. It tastes just like my Great-Aunt Alice’s Stuffed Cabbage without the work! My father also loves making Oxtail Soup which I like once but he makes enough for a week!
I’m looking forward to your new book.
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Feb 23rd
2010
12:55 pm
Sunnymay Said:
Mom filled me in on the secret to a family recipe for potato salad. It’s Kraft French Dressing which gives a zingy zip to the potato, hardboiled egg, celery, onions and mayonnaise or Miracle Whip Lite Salad Dressing that binds it all together. Garnish with paprika.
The other secret ingredient that no one can guess is in the comfort food, macaroni and cheese. She adds 1/2 to a whole envelope of Good Seasons Italian dressing to jazz it up.
Love the characters in your books and browsing in the aisles before choosing which one to grace my bookbag.
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Aug 11th
2010
10:22 pm
Michael Miller Said:
Cake recipes are the specialty of my best friend, my favorite ones are those exotic fruit cakes”–
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Sep 30th
2010
4:43 pm
Jessica Bailey Said:
i love to eat cakes and bake them too that is why i am always on the lookout for cake recipes;*”
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Oct 18th
2010
12:51 pm
Combi Boilers Said:
i love to munch cakes and i bake receipes based on different cake recipes that i can find on the net~;~
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Nov 7th
2010
1:37 pm
Hand Winch · Said:
the cake recipes on the internet are all very delicious and i want to try and bake all of them ”
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