Summer events! Summer books! Travel recs!

And an incredible chocolate cake recipe

Hi everyone! I got to meet so so many of you during my Flirting Lessons book tour, thank you all so much for coming out to see me in so many cities! It means so much to me that you take time away from your lives to come hang out with me and talk about books for a few hours, and I had such a joyful time at all of my events. I have a handful of events left over the next few weeks, and then I’ll have a little break for writing until fall book festival season starts. This weekend I’ll be at the inaugural (and sold out!) Black Romance Book Fest in Atlanta, and the details of my schedule are all here (if you’ll be there, please say hi)! Then the following week, I have events for all of my Bay Area buddies (all around the Bay Area): on Saturday, June 7th, I’m doing an event with the amazing Jesse Sutanto at Books Inc. Mountain View for Worth Fighting For! It’s her Mulan reimagining that’s part of the same Meant To Be series that my By The Book was part of! And then on June 8th, I’ll be at Saintsbury Winery in Napa with my dear friend Manjula Martin, author of the incredible The Last Fire Season (now out in paperback!): we will talk about Flirting Lessons, life in wine country, and drink some of Saintsbury’s lovely wines. Please join us; get tickets here! And on Wednesday, June 11th, I’m doing my final event for a while, at it’s at home in Oakland at the Oakland Public Library at 6:30 pm. Please come!

In addition to the great books linked above, there are some books coming out in the next few weeks that I highly recommend! First is Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria: a fun, relatable, and very hot romance by one of my favorite romance writers, which came out earlier this week — a perfect summer read. Next week, one of my favorite reads of the year is out: Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve loved all of her books, but this one is my favorite; I read it in a single day, and I can’t wait to go back and read it over to linger in the world she created. Two books that I haven’t yet read but am very excited for also come out next week: Under the Neon Lights by Arriel Vinson (a YA romance about roller skating!) and All’s Fair in Love and Pickleball by Kate Spencer, an author I adore (a romance about pickleball, which I have never played but I see people playing all the time when I walk past tennis courts with Rosie).

So I have done a lot of traveling so far this year, and at some point soon I’m going to have a whole newsletter all about my travel favorites and must haves, but one thing I have to shout out now is my toiletry bag. I spent a LOT of time looking for the perfect one, and this one is juuuust shy of perfect, but good enough for me to recommend strongly. It’s roomy enough to hold all of the skincare and haircare and makeup I need for a week-plus long trip, but it’s also compact enough to be packed in my carry on and still leave room for all of my other necessities. (I used to use an amazon toiletry bag that’s recommended everywhere, and it’s super roomy and easy to clean, but it’s a little too big for me; I need room in my suitcase for so many other things!). It has different shaped compartments so that some things can stand up and some can lie flat, it’s easy to clean, and it comes in lots of colors. The one thing I don’t like about it is that the middle pocket (the biggest one) only has one zipper and not two, so when I need to open it all the way to grab stuff out of it, it’s easy for it to hang and be gaping open and for things to spill, but I can forgive that. It’s not cheap, so I used it a bunch before recommending it, but it’s a good A minus from me! They have sales, though (sometimes site wide, sometimes on specific colors) so if you’re in the market for one, I’d wait for a sale.

Okay so I know that I’ve raved about the Snacking Cakes cookbook many times here already (and I know I’ve recommended many chocolate cakes here already!), but this weekend I made a cake from it that I’d never made before, and it was so good and so easy to make that I made it twice in the same day. It’s her Fudgy Chocolate Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Frosting, and every element of this cake is absolutely delicious and so easy to toss together. She says in the headnotes of the recipe that the frosting in this recipe is one of the only ones in the book where she’ll ask you to pull out your hand mixer, but the second time I made it, I was in a place without a hand mixer so I just mixed it by hand, and it was fine — less fluffy than with a hand mixer, but you can easily make this whole cake by hand.

Fudgy Chocolate Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Frosting

For the cake:

1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk, well shaken
1/4 cup (60 ml) neutral oil (canola etc)
1/4 cup (55 g) unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup (68) g) unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
1 cup (128 g) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup (60 ml) hot coffee or water*
1/3 cup (55 g) chocolate chips or chopped chocolate (optional)**

*I used coffee both times I made it and also tossed in a little instant espresso powder because I love what that does to a chocolate cake
**I didn’t use the chocolate chips the first time I made it and used them the second time, both were great!

For the frosting:

6 tablespoons (85 g) unsalted butter, very soft (but not melted!)
1/4 cup (23 g) unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
1 cup (100 g) powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
2 to 3 tablespoons milk

For the cake:

Preheat your oven at 350 F, with a rack in the center of the oven. Grease an 8 inch square cake pan, and line it with parchment paper (make sure the paper hangs over the sides, it makes it easier to take the cake out).

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs for about a minute, until the mixture pales some and it’s foamy. Add the buttermilk, oil, butter, vanilla and salt and whisk until smooth. Add the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and baking soda and whisk until smooth (in the recipe she has you add the cocoa powder first and whisk and then the rest, but both times I made this cake I added all of the dry ingredients first and then whisked and it was super easy). Stir in the coffee or hot water, then fold in the chocolate chips (if using). Pour/scrape the batter into the pan, tap the pan onto the counter to get rid of air bubbles (a technique that works well with most cakes!), and smooth the top.

Bake until a tester comes out clean, 33-35 minutes. (My only complaint about this book is that she always gives a ten minute or so time range for the cake baking, and every cake I’ve made needs to come out of the oven at the very bottom end of that range — here she says 35-45 minutes, and mine were both done at right around 34 minutes). Let the pan cool on a rack for 15 minutes, then take the cake out and let it cool on the rack completely.

For the frosting:

Put the butter in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer (or a whisk and lots of elbow grease) until it’s smooth and creamy. Add the cocoa and mix on low, then slowly add the powdered sugar. Then add the vanilla, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk, and mix on medium-high until the frosting is fluffy; add more milk if necessary.

To finish:

Dollop the frosting on top of the cooled cake and swoop it all over the top. Top with sprinkles or shaved chocolate to make it look fancy, or just leave it as is, it’ll be delicious no matter what!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Jasmine