The Secret Lives of Baked GoodsSweet Stories & Recipes for America's Favorite Desserts

Portland, OR
May 11
Crafty Wonderland
Book signing at CakeSpy booth

San Francisco, CA
May 13, 6pm
Omnivore Books
Talk and book signing

May 14th, 6pm
Book Passage
Talk and book signing

Philadelphia, PA
May 21, 6-8pm
Anthropologie
Meet & greet, with cocktails and tastes from the book

Vernon Hills, IL (Chicago area)
May 23, 7pm
Aspen Drive Library
Mini-cupcakes and book talk

Manasquan, NJ
June 29, 11am
Booktowne
Book signing with samples

Collegeville, PA
June 29, 4pm
Towne Book Center & Cafe
Book event

Philadelphia, PA
June 30
COOK (cooking school)
Cake baking class

Seattle, WA
July 10
Tom Douglas summer camp
Baking class

July 13 & 14
Urban Craft Uprising
Booth

“I’ve always considered carrot cake a sort of health food. It’s so comforting to know that a version of carrot cake has been hopping around the globe since medieval times. This book is full of heart, history, and classic recipes. Jessie has found a way to thoughtfully infuse whimsy stories with cakes and pie. Secret Lives of Baked Goods has found permanent home on my kitchen bookshelf.”
Joy the Baker

“This gem of a book kept me smiling the entire way through with historical quips, urban legends and little-known facts of your favorite sweets! Jessie’s delightful storytelling gives fantastical life to her tried and true recipes.”
Jaden Hair, Steamy Kitchen
“Jessie Oleson Moore—she of the adorable anthropomorphized cupcake art at the CakeSpy blog and online store—has written a totally sweet history book. It’s also a cookbook, and you’ll find good recipes right alongside short biographies of desserts like Boston Cream Pie, Joe Froggers and Tunnel of Fudge Cake… The photos, by Clare Barboza, are absolutely delectable, and very few of the projects included are any more complex than that good ol’ American apple pie…”
Edible Seattle
“While not a history textbook, The Secret Lives of Baked Goods is full of surprising facts and intriguing details behind everything from Baked Alaska to Whoopie Pies.”
Jameson Fink, Wine without Worry

“In a feat of ethno-baking, this second cookbook for CakeSpy’s self-professed ‘dessert detective’ brings us over 40 sweet recipes and their backstories. Did you know that the Hermit were the most popular cookie during the Gold Rush? Or that Queen Elizabeth I was the first champion behind gingerbread men? Random confectionary factoids precede recipes for everything from classic cookies and pies to rare and curiously named desserts.”
Seattle Metropolitan

LEMON MERINGUE PIE

Lemon meringue pie is possibly the most dramatic dessert in the diner dessert case: a rich, neon-yellow custard pie topped with a sky-high cloud of lightly-crisp-on-the-edges meringue. Who could even dream up such a pie, visually more like an avant-garde art object than a digestible dessert? As it turns out, it’s really three separate dishes that were ingeniously combined as one.

First on the scene was meringue, which had been kicking around since the 1600s. Then came the filling. Lemon desserts had been prepared in America since even before nation’s formation: Columbus brought lemon seeds with him on his journeys, and the Spanish planted lemons in what is now California. As for the custard, per the Food Journal of Lewis & Clark, the Quakers received credit for developing lemon custard recipes in the late 1700s, and the concept became popular and more widespread in the early 1800s. Given their fondness for pies, it wouldn’t be too crazy to imagine that the Quakers could see the beauty in plopping down some of that beautiful, tangy custard into one of their delicious pie crusts.

But it was a city girl named Elizabeth Coane Goodfellow who deserves credit for taking this dessert to sky-high levels of delight when she brought the custard and the meringue together in delicious pie matrimony. Goodfellow was an interesting lady: American pastry cook, confectioner, and cooking school instructor—and, legend has it, ancestor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was married three times, and her third marriage, to a clockmaker in Philadelphia, brought her to the city, where she started a cooking school—not a common thing for a lady to do in the early 1800s. Nobody knows where she honed her skills as a cook, but apparently she was quite good: among other accomplishments, she was a mentor to Eliza Leslie,whose books went on to become extremely influential early-American cookbooks. Although Goodfellow never published her own book, she is remembered for something far more delicious: introducing lemon meringue pie.
The concept was featured in Eliza Leslie’s popular books, and it didn’t take long for this early version of the pie to spread far and wide. It caught like fire across the northeast, notably at the Parker House Hotel (also the home of the Boston cream pie, page 8), where it was perfected. From there, it gained popularity in commercial kitchens before finding its place in American diners. Today, it’s a dessert that embraces a bit of high culture in low-priced eateries, and remains a unique sweet-tart favorite in this great land of ours.

(c) 2013 by Jessie Oleson Moore. Reprinted from The Secret Lives of Baked Goods: Sweet Stories & Recipes for America’s Favorite Desserts with permission from Sasquatch Books.