"I want to make you happy. I want to deserve you," she whispered.
"You make me very happy. You deserve better than I can give you. But I am yours, in every way for as long as there is breath in this body. Those other people can go to hell. They aren't experts on you and me."
"That's true. We are. I can't explain it though. I like to be able to analyze why things work. Those rules made it all seem simpler, less crazy."
"Well, you are pretty crazy." He kissed the top of her head. "But for us, it is not as simple as me being in charge always, it's much more fluid than that. We will figure it out, every time. That's the deal. You yield to me, and I will make sure we can take care of each other. Hand to God, if only one of us can win, it will always, always be you." My God, she loved this magnificent man. He continued, "I want what's best for us, as a family."
"Oh, honey, I do too." She snuggled against his chest. "You might hate Chicago. You know they don't have howling wolves there. Or Torsten or your mom."
"No, that's true," he agreed, "Mom and Torsten will visit us. If your show doesn't work out, Hazel in Chicago might be a hell of a reality show. But they do have Cubs, and Bears, and most importantly of all, pervy shops."
"Pervy shops?"
"Yup, gonna hit em all. Maybe I'll get into leather."
"Did you know there are people who like sign contracts and stuff?"
"Hmmm, maybe I need an 'only so many ridiculous questions in a single day' clause."
"I love you, Mr. Nelson."
"I love you, Mrs. Nelson."
"No leather." She raised her head to look at him. He cocked an eyebrow at her. She remembered herself and backtracked, "Okay, let's go slow with the leather."
"Agreed."
CassCooks Blog post
I am so excited to announce that beginning next month you will be able to watch my new show 'Bountiful Weddings With Cass'.
(Personally I pushed for the moniker 'Cass Cooks Canapés and Cakes' but the powers that be did not approve.) The very first thing we will do on the show is make the wedding cake that we served when Hazel married Lloyd at the lodge.
Without question, it's the prettiest cake you will ever see. Its a tall cake-each 'layer' consists of alternating thin layers of moist white cake and a citrus curd filling. Since I adore Hazel, we went for a rainbow affect. (You could use several layers of one filling.) But combining different juices and zest and buttercream you can get a variety of colors and flavors. Since Lady Hazel prefers shades of coral, we used blood orange, ruby grapefruit and tangerine fillings. I would recommend making all three of your fillings (or two, or four, or what have you) as you will want to compare their colors and perhaps jazz them up with the tiniest bit of food coloring. You want the colors different enough that it doesn't look as if you tried to make them match and didn't quite succeed. In cake baking, as in life, confidence counts for a lot.
To make the grapefruit filling:
You will need 1 cup of buttercream frosting (see index)
The juice of two grapefruits and the zest (zest them first)
Bring the juice to a boil and cook until its reduced by about half. This is the very, very slightly tricky bit—while your syrup is still warmish (you can hold your finger in it easily), pour the warm juice into the buttercream. The warmth of the juice will open up the buttercream a wee bit and allow it absorb the juice. Add 1 cup of sour cream—NOT straight out of the fridge—and 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 5 drops of grapefruit essential oil. Beat like a madwoman. Soon you will have a pale pink, luscious billowing sweet tart filling. Life is good. Set aside and do exactly the same thing with the tangerine (4 tangerines should be the right amount of juice and zest) and blood orange (2 should do it, but a 3rd wouldn't be remiss.) I highly recommend setting them in glass bowl next to each other so you can tweak the color.
Now—on your cardboard cake round—put a dollop of butter cream and one of your cake layers.
Fill a piping bag with your filling and use your scissors to cut a largish hole. Pipe the filling on in circles. Add a cake layer. Continue in this fashion, ending with cake. Now—should you desire, you can leave it as is—those naked cakes are all the rage. We however would rather leave a man behind on a battlefield then leave a cake unadorned. So cover with your buttercream. Do a thin coat, stick the whole thing in the fridge and allow to chill and then add swirls of frosting.
The blog will continue as always. The lodge will remain open. Hazel, Lloyd and Torsten would be delighted to have you up. We are excited to offer our new Huckleberry tours in June. Visit us, watch bears from the safety of a boat and then take home preserves you helped to make. Of course, whale watching and fishing will continue as they always have. Torsten is a real live park ranger—and he is the best tour guide you will ever have. Killian and I will be in Chicago for a while filming the show. I do not know exactly how we will adjust to our new life.
I do know that our
Marriage is Delicious
Cass
Recipe Archive
Swiss meringue Buttercream frosting variations:
Add up to 1 1/2 cups melted semisweet, or dark chocolate—not unsweetened, unless you are giving it to very awful people who you hate. Let the chocolate cool a tiny bit before you add it to the frosting—it will be softer, while its warm. Just continue to beat like crazy. OR sift in 1/2 cup cocoa powder.
You can add drops of essential oil (any citrus is good, peppermint or cinnamon can be nice). The powdered spice will turn your frosting gritty. The main thing about essential oils is literally (and unlike some twenty-somethings I know who work at the local pizzeria, when I say literally, I truly mean literally) add them a drop at a time. You can always add more, too much and you will turn your dazzling frosting into some sort of strongly flavored tooth paste. Heartbreaking.
Cooking an honest to God Ham:
One of the banes of human existence is that humans all too often use one word to describe two different things. This is the sort of philosophical meandering that has driven people far smarter than I into a state of drooling in a fetal position. So we are going to nip that in the bud and proceed to cooking a proper ham. Most of what you think is ham isn't, or at least it's a very inferior sort. If it is bubble gum pink and swimming in a slimy liquid, its a 'city ham' or a 'juice packed ham' (shudder). And those things are okay, but should the opportunity to get a proper dry aged ham. (Smithfield is the most famous American brand) stop at nothing to procure it. You know those nightmare scenes that happen every year on Black Friday—the ones where someone assaults or pepper sprays fellow shoppers to get the last 'My mama loves me more than yours loves you' baby doll, or 'Let's kill everybody' video game? Those are shocking horrible instances of unacceptable behavior… but such activity to get a Smithfield is totally understandable. If you are going to jail, it shouldn't be over something stupid, people. Follow the directions to the letter—most dry aged hams that you can get your hands on won't need the soaking and scrubbing that our grandmothers' hams did. Put it in a pot. Submerge it in liquid—I tend to use half chicken broth and half water. Allow it to barely simmer for fifteen minutes a pound. Skim off the gray nasty foam. If time is on your side, allow it to cool in the liquid. If not, I absolve you. Remove the ham and lay it on a roaster—you can score the rind, and add cloves, (although if you are going to do that, go all the way and serve it with broiled grapefruit a la' Hazel's and Jim's wedding).
A glaze requires something sweet, brown sugar, maple syrup, something tangy, mustard is a favorite. Combine. See how easy that was? Spread it over your ham and slam it into the hottest oven you can muster for fifteen minutes. You will serve this in thin, salty sweet, pale pink ribbons. The south knows its way around a swine… so biscuits are the perfect accompaniment. It can also be the centerpiece of a charcuterie smorgasbord, to mix cultural dining patterns. Serve on a board with appropriate slicing apparatus, tart pickles, cheeses, and crudité. Seriously hop over to Kitchentoolsbyhand.com They have cleavers, and knifes and they
are perfect. They do exactly what we need our tools to do, they get rid of the things we don't need so that we can hold ever tightly to what we do.
Calculating wedding cake batter—basic rule of thumb, round up…
Okay, now we have a problem. Most books that tell you how to make a wedding cake, assume a much smaller portion than is reasonable. So if you are using a different source, you may need to double the recipe to serve as many people as you want. Personally, unless you are hosting a whole dessert buffet, I think wedding cake is the appropriate dessert for a wedding. This cake is yummy.
To make a 6" cake, each layer will require 1 cup of batter. For Hazels wedding cake, you will need four layers of each size.
An 8" cake will require 1 and 2/3 cups of batter per layer.
A 10" cake will require two cups of batter.
A 12" cake will require 2 and 2/3 cups of batter
Now, weddings are an expensive proposition, so buy one pan each in of your desired sizes. You can bake cakes of different sizes at the same time—just put the smaller ones up front and watch them. We made five 10" cakes (I thought they would be birthday cakes, but presto chango)! We used four boxes of cake mix per cake. So that's twenty boxes of high end cake mix which were about $1.50 each. If you don't live in Alaska, it will be cheaper for you. You will also need eggs, buttermilk, vegetable oil and butter, baking spray and parchment paper. We also used citrus juice, zest and essential oils, and a few drops of food coloring. We made enough cake to serve 100 people. We decorated them with a few roses. They were simple and luscious and, of course, the rainbow of fillings looked and tasted amazing.
For my own wedding, I used the same cake recipe, but for the filling I added a healthy dollop, about 2/3 of a cup, of huckleberry jam to the buttercream frosting to make the filling. I didn't have a choice, it all started with those rascally blue berries… I thank God for them every day.
The End
Susannah Shannon
Susannah Shannon lives in the Midwestern USA with her family. She is a committed cook, a more committed eater and reads anything he can get her hands on. She is delighted to be joining the Blushing Books publishing family. Her books combine humor, romance and spankings.
http://susannahshannon.com/
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Relish (The Cass Chronicles Book 2) Page 8