Today I’m delighted to welcome Wild Rose sister Cj Fosdick to the blog. Here she is to talk a bit about her heroine in her Accidental series, the first of which is on sale now for 99 cents, and to share her favorite Victorian era recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Take it away, Cj!
Cookies as Poker Chips?
Authors often share a brain with their heroines. My favorite heroine, Jessica Brewster, is taller and slimmer than me, but we both have the same red hair, brown eyes, penchant for drama and taste for cookies. When Jessica participates in a living history tea party at Old Ft. Laramie with her late grandmother’s mysterious teacup, she never imagined she would actually become living history—in the shoes of her look-alike great great grandmother.
Fending off her ancestor’s charismatic first husband and raising her nine year old great grandmother are only two of the challenges she faces in 1886 while learning to cook, launder, and survive the bias and dangers of homestead life in Wyoming. Her charade in The Accidental Wife grows complicated when the transformative power of love takes hold, and her ancestor’s wayward brother shows up with dark secrets of his own. In a cabin poker game, Jessica offers her famous chocolate chip cookies as poker chips. (Since chocolate chips were not invented until 1937, she finds a way to improvise.)
Baking anything in a cast iron woodstove is a challenge to a well-educated single woman of the 21st century who often relied on take-out or the convenience of popping frozen meals into a microwave. Woodstoves couldn’t regulate baking temperatures well enough to produce cookies, but creativity is also the mother of pre-invention in a time slip. Jessica’s version of our most famous cookie uses a pocket watch and broken bits of chocolate bars bought at the Ft. Laramie trading post. In the end, Jessica’s ingenuity wins love and legacy in the poker game of life.
Jessica’s 1886 Chocolate Chippers
Since chocolate chips were not invented until 1937, time-traveler Jessica Brewster in “The Accidental Wife”
improvises this recipe found in her ancestor’s 1886 cookbook!
1 c. butter
1 ½ c. sugar
3 eggs
½ t. baking soda dissolved in a little warm water
2 ½ c. flour
Few drops of vanilla
Pinch of salt, nutmeg
3 or more chocolate bars (raisins optional )
Add ingredients in order, creaming first two.
Break up chocolate bars into about half the size of a fingernail & fold in. Refrigerate dough.
Bake about 10 min. @350 on baking sheets lined with parchment paper until edges brown.
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The Accidental Wife began life as an award-winning short story. The Accidental Stranger is the sequel to Jessica’s timeless journey with “…a fanciful twist on its genre,” according to Kirkus Reviews. Until August 31, the eBook of The Accidental Wife will be on sale for the first time at $0.99 at most online bookstores.
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