So much news! My next book, BY THE BOOK! And a collaboration with Keke Palmer!

And cake, obviously

Hello friends! I know, I know, I’ve been absent from your inbox for a long time, my apologies! I’ve been working a lot for the past few months and now I can finally share some of the things I’ve been working on!

First, my next book! It’s called By The Book, and it’s a contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast, published by Disney Books, and it’ll be out May 3, 2022! That’s right, I got to write a Black Disney princess, and I had to sit on this secret for a very long time! Here’s the cover:

Isn’t it beautiful? I hope you love Isabelle and Beau very much! Did I suggest a tiny change to the first draft of the cover so that Isabelle’s dress is almost exactly like a yellow dress I myself own? I will neither confirm nor deny that! You can preorder By The Book from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, or preorder a signed copy from my local bookstore, East Bay Booksellers! (You will also be able to buy it lots of other places, but it isn’t up online yet everywhere, so if you can’t find it yet at your preferred retailer, just sit tight!). Preorders are incredibly helpful for authors, especially right now because the pandemic has thrown all of book publishing into chaos (more on that in a few paragraphs), and I am enormously grateful for any of you who preorder this book, ask your local libraries to order it, or add it to your Goodreads, thank you so much! This page on my website has the description of the book and buy links and will give you all the updates on it as I get them! I hope and pray that I’ll be able to travel to do book events by then, because I have missed, my God have I missed, getting to meet so many of you and talk about books, so let’s all please put that on our vision boards.

Another incredibly fun thing that I got to work on this year is this: I collaborated with Keke Palmer on the Southern Belle Insults short story collection! All five of the stories will be out on November 9th, and I can’t wait for you all to read them. It was a real delight to get to work with Keke on this collection, and I need you all to click that link to the Entertainment Weekly piece to see all five of the covers, because they are SO great.

I have also been reading books, though I’ve been reading a lot more slowly than I used to — the pandemic has affected my reading in a bad way, and I do not like it. My attention span is shot, I get fussy very easily, it’s no good at all. HOWEVER, one book that did break through my pandemic related problems is Sankofa, by Chibundu Onuzo. Sankofa is the newest Reese Book Club pick, but I am not just telling you about it because of my loyalty to Reese — I read an advance copy of this book and loved it even before I knew Reese loved it too. It’s about Anna, a woman in her late forties, who discovers after her mother dies that her father — who she never met or knew anything about — was a former dictator of a small country in Africa. It’s about self discovery, and family, and what home really means, and it’s also engaging, and unexpected, and very funny.

Speaking of books — I’m sure all of you already know about the enormous supply chain shortages over the past year and a half, but you may not know how much those shortages have affected the book industry. Here’s a great article that explains some of it, but basically it’s about shipping (slow, delayed, stuck everywhere), paper (in very short supply), printing presses (all super behind, understaffed, shutting down), ink (I didn’t even know this one, and I’ve been paying close attention to this stuff), and probably tons of other things. This is all to say that if there are books that you want to give during the holiday season, or that you want for yourself, you should order or preorder them as soon as you can, because when a book goes out of stock these days, it takes a looooong time for it to come back into stock. Especially things like cookbooks, or anything with color printing, because those get printed overseas. And if you’re a last minute shopper (like me!) be nice to your local independent bookstores — they will have great suggestions for you if the books you had in mind are unavailable! And fyi, if you’re looking for any signed copies of any of my books for holiday gifts (or for yourself!) you can always order signed copies of my books from East Bay Booksellers — I’m happy to personalize them too! (At that link it just has the trade paperback versions of the books, but if you search on the site you can also order the hardcover and mass market versions of those of my books that come in other shapes and sizes!)

And I couldn’t go away for so long and come back and not bring you a cake recipe! This rum cake is from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and it tastes just like this incredible cake that my great aunt used to make, and I know you did not know my Aunt Peggy and her cakes, but they were truly delicious, and I’m so glad I discovered this recipe because I do not have hers. It includes both nuts and rum, but if you dislike/are allergic to/are abstaining from either, you can make it without (just leave out the nuts, and Sally says to sub milk for the rum (if you do that, I would increase the vanilla). This is another time to say that I vastly prefer cooking with weight measurements and find it so much easier (and also less messy — instead of having to clean out measuring cups for different ingredients you just toss them right into the bowl), and this is the kitchen scale that I have and love!

Okay total side note, but did we all read about the bakery in England and their controversy about using illegal sprinkles from the U.S.? I love this story so much. It makes me want to start making the cookies I talked about in this newsletter again.

Butter Rum Cake

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup (130 g) finely chopped pecans (optional)
3 cups (375 g) all purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks, 345 g) unsalted butter, at room temp
1 cup (200 g) packed light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
zest from a half of an orange (about 1 tablespoon)
5 large eggs, at room temp
1/2 cup (120 g) sour cream, at room temp
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup (120 ml) rum
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk, at room temp

Butter Rum Icing Ingredients:
3 tablespoons (43 g) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons (30 ml) rum
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1 cup (120 g) powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 F, and grease a 10 inch Bundt pan very well. (Sidenote: Baker’s Joy is my favorite thing to grease a difficult to grease pan with, if you find it, buy it right away). If you use nuts (I do not, I like nuts in some baked goods but not cakes like this) sprinkle the pecans evenly into the bundt pan.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. In another bowl (either the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk or paddle, or a large bowl that you can use a hand mixer with) beat the butter, sugars, and orange zest together until well combined, about two minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and then add the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla, and beat on medium speed until everything is combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl again — the mixture will look weird here, don’t worry about it. Pour the dry ingredients into the bowl, and mix on low speed. As you mix, slowly pour in the rum and the milk, and beat until everything is just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 55-70 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the middle of the cake comes out mostly clean. This took about 60 minutes for me (Sally says it takes 55 for her). Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool for at least 45 minutes to two hours inside the pan. Then turn it out onto a rack or onto a cake plate.

To make the glaze: melt the butter with the rum in a small saucepan over medium heat. Sift your powdered sugar (nothing is more annoying than trying to make a glaze with lumpy powdered sugar, trust me, I skip this step all the time and curse myself for it every time). Stir in vanilla, salt, and powdered sugar. Drizzle the warm glaze over the cake — you can do this either after taking the cake out of the pan, when it is still a little warm, or when it’s cool all the way; the glaze sets as it cools. Slice and enjoy!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Jasmine

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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party, Royal Holiday, Party of Two and While We Were Dating! Preorder By The Book!