by Sarah McCoy
Vegetable oil for frying
½ cup butter
1 cup water
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
3 eggs
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Note: You’re going to need a candy thermometer for this one.
Heat at least 2 inches of oil to 375°F. Stick the candy thermometer in it to check.
In a pot, simmer the butter and water together. Add the salt and 1 tablespoon of the sugar. Stir until dissolved. Bring to a boil. Mix in the flour, stir it fiercely to blend well. Continue mixing until mixture forms a doughy ball, about 1 minute, but take it off the heat after 30 seconds or they won’t puff up like they should. (I ruined two batches until I figured out the timing.)
Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each. Make sure all the eggs are incorporated and the dough is shining pretty. Let it cool for about 5 minutes. Mix up the remaining sugar and cinnamon in a brown paper bag and set aside.
Here’s where it gets tricky, so make sure your patience hat is on tight. Spoon the dough mixture into a plastic baggy—one of them Ziplocs will do. Squish the dough into one of the bag corners. Cut that corner tip. Squeeze out 4-inch strips of dough into the hot oil, 3 or 4 at a time in the pot, otherwise they’ll crowd up and make a heap of a soggy mess. Fry 2 minutes, then flip them with a fork. Fry another 2 minutes till golden and crispy. Use the fork to fish them onto paper towels. Let them drain for a few minutes, but get them in that brown paper bag quick as you can. You want them hot to make the sugar stick. They say these are best warm, but I’ve had them a day old, and they still taste dang good.
Enormous thanks to my editor, Kate Kennedy, whose masterful editorial skills, boundless support, and friendship fostered my creativity and helped the book bloom. To my publicist, Nora O’Malley, who jumped in banging the drum and never ceased. My Crown family is unparalleled.
Thanks to my agent team, Doris Michaels and Delia Berrigan Fakis, for loving this story from the start and for sharing it with German family members, survivors of this onerous period in Germany’s history. Their enthusiasm for the book was the ultimate stamp of approval. As well, many thanks to Paul Cirone and Molly Friedrich for friendship and wise counsel. Your generosity continues to astound me.
Thank you to the staff of Marina’s Germany Bakery in El Paso, Texas, and the German Community Center at Fort Bliss for graciously allowing me to visit, ask questions, and poke around. In researching this novel, I’m indebted to the countless World War II websites that kept me awake nights, horrified, fascinated, and unable to forget. To the survivors of this war, thank you for having the bravery to live. To their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, thank you for having the courage to share your history. As well, deepest appreciation to my students at the University of Texas at El Paso who trusted me with their personal immigration stories. Your words did not fall on deaf ears.
To my “person,” Christy Fore: no words can express how treasured your friendship is to me. Thank you for reading this and all my writing. Your insight and ability to graciously manage my obsessive-compulsive nature have been my Balm of Gilead on many a day.
I’m blessed and entirely beholden to my family. You are my lamps in this world. Thank you to my parents, Eleane and Curtis, my baby brothers, Jason and Andrew, the Norats, the McCoys, and everybody in between. Your infinite love, encouragement, prayers, and ability to make me laugh so hard I lose my balance have given my life a joyful and necessary equilibrium. Thanks for shepherding me through the good days and bad. Mom and Dad, thank you for reminding me that I can always “come home.”
Last, but most important, I thank God for my husband, Brian Waterman. Garmisch, Germany, is woven into both our childhoods and adult lives. Thank you for ceaselessly being my champion and my German translator; for reminding me that we all need a little holiday sometimes (preferably at a Deutschland B&B); for encouraging me to climb to St. Martin Hütte even though I thought it too high; for patiently cheering me up the rugged alpine path and providing celebration drinks at the summit. Every day you do the same. May we grow old greeting each dawn with, Guten Morgen, coffee drinkin’?
Reading Group Guide
The discussion questions and list of book club activities are intended to enrich your reading group’s conversation about The Baker’s Daughter, Sarah McCoy’s absorbing and compelling new novel. In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this novel as well as the ending. If you have not finished reading The Baker’s Daughter, we respectfully suggest that you wait before reviewing this guide.
Discussion Questions
• The epigraph pairs two quotes. The first is from Mark Twain, and the second is from Robert Frost’s poem “The Trial by Existence.” Why do you think McCoy put these quotes together? Which characters do you believe they reference?
• The concept of baking, sharing, and passing on recipes is woven throughout the book. What are a couple of your favorite family recipes? Have you shared those with your children and/or friends? How have recipes played a part in your own childhood and adult life?
• Epistolary storytelling in the form of letter writing is a vital way the characters directly communicate with each other and express many of their innermost feelings. Do you have friends or family members with whom you frequently exchange letters, cards, or e-mails, though you rarely see them in person or talk on the phone? If so, do you find yourself being more or less open in those written communications?
• Reba is continuously reinventing herself, trying on new personalities and fictitious lives. Why does she engage in this behavior? Why does she think running away from her family’s problems will help her achieve a new beginning? How do you believe discovering Elsie’s story changed Reba?
• Considering Elsie’s true feelings for Josef, why does she take his gifts, accompany him to the ball, accept his proposal, and wear his ring? Why does she pretend to be engaged to him? Do her circumstances make her betrayal right? If you were in her position, what would you have done?
• When Reba finds her daddy’s therapy notes, she wishes she had never read them. She wants to remember him differently. She doesn’t want to believe that the facts are true. Have you ever felt this way about something? Looking back, do you feel remorse or gratitude for the decision you made regarding it?
• Both Elsie and Reba are confronted with the issue of blind obedience. At what point must we question the governing regulations? At what point must we act on our own convictions? Is this a slippery slope?
• Though generations apart, Elsie and Reba are both empowered women. How does this manifest in Elsie’s story? In Reba’s? How does McCoy depict gender roles? How do all the women characters claim or reclaim their power (Mutti, Hazel, Frau Rattelmüller, Jane, Deedee, Reba’s momma, Lillian, etc.)?
• Does Josef’s personal suffering justify his public actions? Do you sympathize with Josef’s struggle between duty to country and his individual feelings? Why or why not? Similarly, how does Riki justify his daily work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection? Have you ever participated in something you didn’t believe in?
• Collective ownership is a central tenet of the Lebensborn Program. What might you see are positive attributes of communal living? What are the negative? Discuss the importance of personal identity and/or possession to Elsie and society as a whole.
• Do you believe Mutti was right to keep Frau Rattelmüller’s letters from Elsie? Discuss her motivations and the possible outcomes if she hadn’t kept the secret.
• In the Epilogue, Jane gives Reba a recipe cookbook in honor of her “setting a wedding date.” Do you think they followed through? Where do you think Riki and Reba are today?
Book Club Activities
• Ask each book club member to bring a family recipe for a book club recipe swap or a prepared dish for a potluc
k of family foods. Go around the group sharing the history of each dish/recipe.
• Pull out pretty stationery or a lovely card and write an old friend. Say anything that comes to mind as if he or she were sitting beside you and see what comes to the page. Mail it as a surprise to that individual.
• Elsie and Hazel watched Jean Harlow’s Libeled Lady (1936) as girls. Consider renting the film and hosting a movie night with your book club. How do you see the female starlets resonating in Elsie? How would you cast The Baker’s Daughter as a movie?
• Have a baking party using Elsie’s German recipes from the novel’s Epilogue. Pick one as the theme (say, a Lebkuchen Bake-Off) or try them all.