The Proposal is the February Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick!
I'm thrilled that The Proposal is the Reese Book Club Pick for February! I'm so delighted that Reese loved the book, and I hope the rest of the book club does too. Follow the Reese's Book Club on Instagram for fun stuff from me about the book all month!
More exciting news -- I'll be coming to Austin, Nashville, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Phoenix in February! I'll be at BookPeople in Austin on February 13th, in conversation with Kayleen Schaefer, author of Text Me When You Get Home. I'll be at Parnassus Books in Nashville on Valentine's Day, which I'm super excited about! Then on Saturday, February 16th, I'll be at East City Bookshop in Washington D.C. in conversation with my dear friend Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know. On Sunday, February 17, I'll be at Greedy Reads in Baltimore. And in my first trip to Arizona, I'll be at Changing Hands in Phoenix on February 18th (I'll be back in Arizona at the beginning of March for the Tucson Festival of Books, and I'm super excited about that too). I hope I get to see lots of you at these events!
I've been traveling a lot lately, and (as you see!) I have a bunch more travel to come in the next few weeks, and here's a tiny thing has helped me so much on my past few trips with all of the weird aches and pains that happen with sitting in lots of airline seats and sleeping in hotel beds. When I was traveling a bunch last fall, I missed my foam roller a lot, and at one point thought "I wish there was a portable foam roller! Like, a tiny one!" Well, my friends, there is one: this massage ball by the same people who make my favorite foam roller. It says in the description it's for feet, but I've used it on my feet, my wrists, my hips, and my neck and shoulders, and it's fantastic on all counts. Sometimes the pressure hurts a bunch, but after a few minutes I feel so much better. And it's easy to toss in a purse or suitcase for travel.
A book I blurbed is out in the world now! I read Unmarriageable in one big gulp on the beach last summer, and though many of you are in temperatures 100 degrees or more lower than that beach was, I think it'll make great polar vortex reading too. It's a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan, and it's fun, thoughtful, and a great story. Read it this weekend!
I made these beautiful buttery buns for Christmas dinner, and my sister was right when she called them sensual, but they're delicious too. They're great for holiday meals, even better as tiny sandwich rolls for holiday meal leftovers, and if you're making any kind of soup or chili for the Super Bowl this weekend, they'd be fantastic. I got the recipe from King Arthur Flour, and I love their recipes, but I have a lot of notes about this one, just because I've made it a number of times, and have had to go rogue more than once because of ingredients and scheduling. Also, I frequently double this recipe, and as long as you have a really large bowl for it to rise in (I use the bowl from my stand mixer) and plenty of pans to put the buns in, it works just fine. I'll also add that this is one of those situations where using a kitchen scale makes this recipe SO much easier and better. All that said: the recipe is below!
Golden Pull Apart Butter Buns
Dough
3 1/2 cups (or 418 grams) all purpose flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons (or 21 grams) potato flour, or 1/4 cup (or 21 grams) potato flakes, or 21 grams cooled baked potato*
3 tablespoons (or 21 grams) nonfat dry milk
2 (or 25 grams) tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons (or 57 grams) soft butter
2/3 cup (or 152 grams) lukewarm water
1/3 cup (or 113 grams) lukewarm milk
Topping
2 tablespoons (or 28 grams) melted butter
Combine all of the dough ingredients in a bowl, and mix and knead to create a soft and smooth dough. I find this takes about 7-10 minutes in a stand mixer. Place the dough in a greased container -- they suggest an 8 cup measure, which I often use for rising dough, but the cleaned out and greased bowl of your stand mixer works great here -- and let rise for 60-90 minutes until doubled in bulk.
Once it's doubled, turn the dough out onto your work surface and gently deflate it. Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces (or 20, or 24 if you want to make more but smaller buns, which I've done with great success, though they're not as pillowy) by dividing the dough in half, then keep halving until you get to 16. Round and pinch each dough into a ball, and place all the buns into 2 greased 8 inch cake pans, evenly spaced. (I've done these in 9 inch pans and in 9 x 13 inch pans and it works well too, I just usually make them smaller when I do the larger pans. Cover the pans with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow them to rise until they're nestled against each other and puffy, about 60-90 minutes. **
Preheat the oven to 350 when you're ready to bake them. Uncover the buns, and put in the preheated oven for 22-24 minutes, until they're golden brown on top. Take them out of the oven, and immediately brush all over with the melted butter. After a few minutes, turn them out of the pan and onto cooling racks, or honestly just put them right onto the table because people are going to want to eat them right away.
*The original recipe calls for either potato flour or potato flakes, but because I find it impossible to find either potato flour or flakes in the grocery store (and I'm literally always buying the ingredients for this on like, Christmas Eve or something, so there's no time to order online) so the past few times I've made this I've substituted just equal weight of cooled baked potato. It works great and is far easier for me (especially since this way I won't have to have a box of potato flour or flakes in my pantry when I'll use it maybe three times a year.
**When I make this for holiday dinners, I usually do everything up until this step the night before, then I put the covered pans into the fridge. They rise overnight, and then I take them out of the fridge about an hour or so before I want to bake them and pop then pop them into the oven.
Have a great weekend!
Jasmine
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