I have always loved to bake. I remember baking chocolate chip cookies when I was about 8 or 10 years old. Way back then I used paper grocery bags to lay the cookies out on, since I didn’t have metal cooling racks. I’ve come a long way since then with my baking skills and my kitchen equipment, but up until the second book in my Tech-Free B&B cozy mystery series, I had never created my own recipe.

I have never been a very adventurous baker. I prefer finding a recipe and re-creating that, rather than blazing a trail and doing my own thing. Why? I was afraid to make mistakes. I didn’t want to waste money (or food) if the results weren’t so good. However, for this book I wanted to create my very own original cake recipe. 

In the book Beets & Betrayal, a pumpkin spice layer cake with maple-vanilla buttercream frosting plays a prominent role at a marriage proposal taking place at the Yesteryear B&B. I could see that cake in my mind, and I could taste it. So I set out to make that cake.

I enjoy making cake and other baked goods from scratch, and it was interesting to think about creating a cake recipe on my own, instead of following a recipe. As I usually do when I am trying something new, I checked out books from the library. I started paying attention to the common ingredients in almost all cakes, and how I could tweak a basic recipe to make what I wanted to make. It was incredibly freeing to think about the recipe from the ground up, rather than just following a recipe that had been created by someone else.

I knew I wanted to make a rich, dense cake, so I added sour cream to the recipe. I love spice cake, so I wanted to amp up that flavor profile, as well. Adding the pecans made it beautiful, but also gave a satisfying crunch. The final result was delicious!

Want to get the recipe? Check out Beets & Betrayal, the second book in the Tech-Free B&B series, here.