Baked Goods Quotes

“You never told me how everyone liked the sirupskake."
"It was splendid!" she said, her smile returning. "Your fa- my husband asked that you bake another one soon for me to bring him."
Freya was always tripping over her words like that. Anna did the same thing herself. She chalked it up to wanting to say so much in a short amount of time. She was like a pot of melting chocolate: the words bubbled over.
"Did he like the candied oranges I placed on top?"
"Yes! He said he'd never seen it done that way before."
Anna shrugged. "I love to put my own spin on recipes. I like to be unique, if you haven't noticed."
"I have." Freya smiled. "I think my husband would enjoy meeting you. You and I have a similar joyful spirit, while he"- she sighed- "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, I'm afraid. Much like my daughter."
Freya talked about her daughter a lot but unfortunately never brought her along for visits. From what Anna knew, the girl seemed whip smart and serious. Anna wished she could meet her so she could shake her up a bit. Everyone needed to let their hair down sometimes. Plus it would be nice to have a friend close to her own age.”
― Jen Calonita, Conceal, Don't Feel

“Sourdough isn't only for bread. Any grain-based baked good- from crackers to waffles, from muffins to pasta, can be made with a wild yeast starter. Why would the home baker want to incorporate sourdough into their regular baking? First, it's an excellent way to use the starter you remove during feedings. Instead of throwing the excess in the trash, add it to your pancake batter or chocolate chip cookies. Second, a sourdough starter is an ecosystem of wild yeasts and beneficial bacteria that work together to add B-vitamins to grains, to break down gluten for better digestion, and to neutralize phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors. In other words, it's good for you. And finally, because sourdough eventually becomes a way of life. Experimenting with different ways of using it is one of the most satisfying aspects of using wild yeast in your kitchen.”
― Christa Parrish, Stones For Bread

“My father doesn't ask why I'm in the back after the first morning rush, making green and purple sugar paste for pan dulce. He's working on a batch of unicorn conchas, his latest stroke of genius, pan dulce covered with shells of pink, purple, and blue sugar that sell out every weekend.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“If he were a baked treat, he'd be a seven-layer bar- the perfect combination of sweet and salty, exotic coconut and homey caramel, and supported by a good, strong, buttery shortbread crust.”
― Rajani LaRocca, Midsummer's Mayhem

“My nutmeg-caraway shortbread had too many conflicting spices, he would say. And of course, it had nothing to do with leaves. The lemon-raspberry cake decorated with lemon leaves was too tart, and the toffee cupcakes with leaf-shaped maple candy were cloying.”
― Rajani LaRocca, Midsummer's Mayhem

“The clock in the kitchen chimed and Anna looked up. The first batch of cookies would be ready any moment; then it would be time to put it in another tray. After that, there were four different types of bread, krumkaker (she wouldn't fill them with cream in this heat), and at least two spice cakes to make. Her mother hated the idea of her baking cakes that might not sell ("The ingredients cost money"), but Anna knew people would want them, and they made a tidy profit off cakes. It was a win-win.”
― Jen Calonita, Conceal, Don't Feel

“I pass the bakery on the corner, the smells hitting me before I reach the shop itself. They are thick and sweet. Cars are double-parked down our street, locals dashing from the passenger doors to pick up their breakfast. A long queue snakes from the entrance. Inside there are piles of pork buns, slices of dark honey cake, rolls topped with pork floss, bread with ham laid on top and stuck fast with melted cheese. It is a different smell from bakeries back home. I tried a loaf of bread once, but the slices are thin and sugary.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, The Color of Tea

“During the afternoons the only thing that seems to hold my interest is baking. I go through my recipe books. Soft-centered biscuits, cakes slathered with icing, cupcakes piled up in pyramids on round plates. Pete doesn't say anything, although every morning he takes out the rubbish bags filled with stale muffins and half-eaten banana loaves. The only thoughts that seem to distract me from babies are those memories of Paris. A gray cold, tall men, black coffee, sweet pastries, Mama laughing, with her hair and scarf streaming behind her. The smell of chocolate and bread.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, The Color of Tea

“Cakes and pies lined the parsonage countertop and the church refrigerator was stacked with casseroles.
They baked spicy apple harvest cakes and angel biscuits so light they seemed to hover above the pan. They brought him jars of homemade bread and butter pickles, plum preserves, and chow-chow. Every morning cars lined the sidewalk in front of the church, and ladies bearing gifts of honey buns and banana bread still warm from the oven filed into the church. After a particularly moving sermon on "Faith, Fishes, and Loaves," they whipped up enough salmon croquettes and tuna casseroles to feed the masses.”
― Paula Wall, The Rock Orchard

“Cosima and Tommy sit on Midsummer Common, under a tree on the patch of grass where they first met. As is their tradition, Cosima has baked a plethora of goodies: sour cherry and chocolate cupcakes, goat's cheese and pesto pizzas, orange oil cannoli, and- Tommy's personal favorite- lemon and lavender cake.”
― Menna van Praag, The Witches of Cambridge

“There was also an amazing scent of fresh-baked... something.
Baking wasn't a thing under the sea. When Ariel lived at the castle with Eric she had tried breads, cakes, pies, rolls, and sweets, and found them all mystifying (though delicious). They were like nothing she had ever eaten before and sometimes came to her plate still warm, which was also an odd way to eat food. Eric had bought her twelve different kinds of pie at a fancy shop in town and laughed as she had a bite of each, savoring.”
― Liz Braswell, Part of Your World

“Madre Carmela's favorite nuts were almonds. Not only did she like the way they tasted the best among all nuts, but she loved the flavor they imparted to Sicilian desserts from cakes to biscotti, and her favorite of all, Frutta di Martorana- the perfect fruit-shaped confections made from pasta reale, or marzipan, which required plenty of almonds. Who would have thought that the base for an elegant, regal dessert like marzipan came from such a simple ingredient as the almond?”
― Rosanna Chiofalo, Rosalia's Bittersweet Pastry Shop

“Orchard stores advertising cherries and apples, fresh baked goods, gifts appeared along the road. Some promised the best cider donuts or cherry pie, others had outdoor activities where children could burn off some energy, and yet others offered to let you pick your own cherries when the season started. As they approached a store offering a wide selection of samples, Isaac pulled into the parking lot. It seemed like a good time to stretch their legs and grab a snack at the same time.
"Let's see what we've gotten ourselves into, Barracuda," Isaac said.
He stepped onto the gravel parking lot, the rocks shifting under his flip-flops. Minivans, SUVs, and cars, many bearing out-of-state plates, filled the lot. Inside the store, freezers contained frozen cherries, apple juice from last season, and pies. Fresh baked goods lined shelves, and quippy signs hung from the walls that said things like IF I HAD KNOWN GRANDKIDS WERE SO MUCH FUN, I WOULD HAVE HAD THEM FIRST and I ENJOY A GLASS OF WINE EACH NIGHT FOR THE HEALTH BENEFITS. THE REST ARE FOR MY WITTY COMEBACKS AND FLAWLESS DANCE MOVES. Bass slid his hand into Isaac's as they walked around the store, staying close to him as they sampled pretzels with cherry-studded dips and homemade jams. A café sold freshly roasted Door County-brand coffee and cherry sodas made with Door County cherry juice.
In the bakery area, Isaac picked up a container of apple turnovers still warm from the oven- they would be a tasty breakfast in their motel room tomorrow.”
― Amy E. Reichert, The Simplicity of Cider

“I go to the counter and take a blondie off the rack I used to do the chocolate drizzle and bite into it. They have browned butter and a combination of dark and light brown sugar, which gives them a deep caramel tang. The pistachios have retained their crunch, and the figs are just slightly tart. The white chocolate takes the whole thing over the top, and I know that, if nothing else, I can cook.”
― Stacey Ballis, How to Change a Life

“When I was growing up, the taste of pancakes meant the kind that my great-uncle made for me from Bisquick. If condensed cream of mushroom soup was the Great Assimilator, then this "instant" baking mix was the American Dream. With it, we could do anything. Biscuits, waffles, coffee cakes, muffins, dumplings, and the list continues to grow even now in a brightly lit test kitchen full of optimism. My great-uncle used Bisquick for only one purpose, which was to make pancakes, but he liked knowing that the possibilities, the sweet and the savory, were all in that cheery yellow box. Baby Harper wasn't a fat man, but he ate like a fat man. His idea of an afternoon snack was a stack of pancakes, piled three high. After dancing together, Baby Harper and I would go into his kitchen, where he would make the dream happen. He ate his pancakes with butter and Log Cabin syrup, and I ate my one pancake plain, each bite a fluffy amalgam of dried milk and vanillin. A chemical stand-in for vanilla extract, vanillin was the cheap perfume of all the instant, industrialized baked goods of my childhood. I recognized its signature note in all the cookies that DeAnne brought home from the supermarket: Nilla Wafers, Chips Ahoy!, Lorna Doones. I loved them all. They belonged, it seemed to me, to the same family, baked by the same faceless mother or grandmother in the back of our local Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
The first time that I tasted pancakes made from scratch was in 1990, when Leo, a.k.a. the parsnip, made them for me. We had just begun dating, and homemade pancakes was the ace up his sleeve. He shook buttermilk. He melted butter. He grated lemon zest. There was even a spoonful of pure vanilla extract. I couldn't bring myself to call what he made for us "pancakes." There were no similarities between those delicate disks and what my great-uncle and I had shared so often in the middle of the afternoon.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.”
― Karen Weinreb, The Summer Kitchen

“I feel like baked goods make everything better-- especially a situation as strange as this one.”
― Jennifer Gold, The Ingredients of Us

“Alex gawked at the baked goods. He sat down on one of the metal barstools. "Feeling stressed out, I see."
"Yeah." I passed the platter toward him. "Help yourself to the peach rolls or turnovers. I made them last night, so they're fresh."
"We okay?"
I nodded.
He didn't hesitate. "God, Marygene," he groaned around a mouthful, an expression of awe on his face. "There is nothing like your baked goods. I mean it. I've eaten pastries in all the best shops in Savannah, and nothing compares to yours."
Well, that was a real nice compliment. There were ample high-end pastry shops in Savannah.”
― Kate Young, Southern Sass and Killer Cravings

“We all left exhausted, and I went home and baked. It's how I coped with stress. Something about shoving my hands in a good dough, baking off a fruit loaf with a delicate crumb, or producing a perfectly crunchy batch of chocolate cranberry biscotti simply brought me comfort. I opened the pocket doors and invited the fresh, salty air and the sound of crashing waves inside while I tested a new recipe for chocolate peanut butter muffins, made a loaf of Irish soda bread loaded with dried fruit, nuts, and orange zest, along with two dozen pecan sandies, and finished off with cranberry pistachio biscotti.”
― Kate Young, Southern Sass and a Battered Bride

“Those are napoleons, éclairs, and jésuites for the restaurant."
"Jésuites?" asked Piper.
"They're triangular, flaky pastries filled with frangipane crème and sprinkled with sliced almonds and powdered sugar. They originated in France, and the name refers to the shape of a Jesuit's hat.”
― Mary Jane Clark, That Old Black Magic

“I was proud of Lucian. That much was certain. He'd come through today in a big way, creating not only two towers of croquembouche, swathed in glittering strands of angel-fine spun sugar, but also luscious ice creams paired with delicate butter cookies and mangoes to look like blooming lilies.”
― Kristen Callihan, Make It Sweet

“Welcome to Vanilla Honey," Alisha sang out, sliding a tray of golden-brown scalloped madeleines onto a display shelf. Butterscotch notes of blond chocolate wafted toward her. The flaked sea salt on top balanced the sweetness and lent texture to the airy cookies.”
― Chandra Blumberg, Digging Up Love

“The treats she served were the stuff of dreams—-a buttery tart glistening with fresh fruit, a molasses cookie that made Margot almost swoon with pleasure when she sampled it, and tiny, decadent chocolate brownies and lemon bars.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“I lifted another crate. This one was filled with clear plastic bags stuffed with treats. Each bag was labeled with a beautiful GLORY & BEE sticker and tied at the top with gold ribbon. There were cookies, caramels, fudge, divinity, peanut brittle, truffles. I wanted to sample them all.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane

“The shelves were filled with baskets of goodies, and mason jars had been loaded with beautiful honey lollipops, their amber color almost translucent. There were tiered trays full of boxed cake slices and stunning cupcakes topped with playful fondant bees, clear packaging showing all the delight inside. An old tobacco basket on the countertop was brimming with sugar cookie sandwiches filled with various types of frosting.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane

“I tap the link, and it opens up a bright, cheery, robin's-egg blue web page. P&P Bake, it's called. It's clearly one of those WordPress blogs converted into a website, but that doesn't make it any less captivating--- the pictures on the posts are so vivid, I can practically taste them through the screen.
I scroll down, glancing at the dessert names, lingering on the pictures. The most recent is Tailgate Trash Twinkies, which are apparently a homemade cake roll infused with PBR; I scroll down and see A-Plus Angel Cake, and Butter Luck Next Time Butter Cookies, and then---
And then, on Halloween, there's an entry for Monster Cake.
My breath stops before it can leave my chest, my entire body stiffening on the couch like a corpse. There's no mistaking it. I may have a bad habit of eating Pepper's baked goods so fast, it threatens the time-space continuum, but the bright colors and gooey mess of that cake are so distinct in my mind and in my taste buds, I could see it in another life and immediately identify it.
Yet my brain still refuses to process it, and I'm still scrolling as if I'll blink and it will disappear, a vivid, sleep-deprived teenage hallucination.
But the further I scroll the worse it gets. The So Sorry Blondies. The Pop Quiz Cake Pops she and Pooja were eating the other day. A few things I've never heard of before, with irreverent, silly names, some of which must be Paige's, but others that are so distinctly Pepper it stings to read.”
― Emma Lord, Tweet Cute

“An hour and a half later, we are the proud parents of two massive sheets of Monster Cake, some impressive concoction called Unicorn Ice Cream Bread, three dozen Kitchen Sink Macaroons, peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcakes, a three-layer Paige creation dubbed Sex-Positve Brownies ("Slutty Brownies," Pepper explained, "but Paige took a course on feminism and sex work, so."), an ungodly amount of banana pudding, and a bunch of misshapen cake balls we rolled around in melted chocolate and stuck in the fridge.”
― Emma Lord, Tweet Cute

“I lift myself into the back of the truck, where the warm, sweet smells of freshly baked baguettes and pumpkin muffins waft past my nose. It's how I imagine heaven must smell, the perfume of yeasty bread and cinnamon-laced muffins filling the air as little angels float by on pillows made of billowy croissants.”
― Dana Bate, A Second Bite at the Apple

“If there is a small silver lining to my continued unemployment, it is that I have increased my hours at the farmers' market, where I am surrounded by people who love growing and making food as much as I love eating, reading, and writing about it. Every market brings with it a new sensory adventure: the toothsome crunch of Rick's millet muffins, the brazen tang of his sourdough, the sharp and herbaceous scent of his cheddar dill scones. Instead of trying to force a food connection like I did at The Morning Show, I now live and breathe an agricultural smorgasbord on an almost daily basis, poring over luscious apples and lumpy, bumpy squash and fat loaves of buttery brioche. In a strange way, despite the meager pay, I finally feel as if I'm where I belong.”
― Dana Bate, A Second Bite at the Apple

“I unload the almond poppy seed muffins into a cloth-lined basket, and their sweet, vaguely nutty perfume fills the air. Unlike his sturdy raisin bran muffins, which are dense, dark, and chockablock with plump raisins, the almond poppy seed muffins are delicate and cakey, their crumb so light and tender they threaten to float out of the basket. When Rick isn't looking, I sneak a bite of one of the broken muffin tops, and before I know it I've eaten the entire thing, the flavor as rich as the texture is light, bursting with sweet almond essence.”
― Dana Bate, A Second Bite at the Apple