Book Spotlight & Guest Post: The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig

Please join me in welcoming Judith Fertig to Always With a Book. Judith’s debut book, The Cake Therapist, is out today. I’ll be reviewing this book in the coming weeks, but for now, please enjoy this lovely guest post.

Title: The Cake Therapist   

Author: Judith Fertig     

Published: June 2015, Berkley  

Format: Paperback, 304 pages   

A fiction debut that will leave you wanting seconds, from an award-winning cookbook author.

Claire
“Neely” O’Neil is a pastry chef of extraordinary talent. Every great
chef can taste shimmering, elusive flavors that most of us miss, but
Neely can “taste” feelings—cinnamon makes you remember; plum is pleased
with itself; orange is a wake-up call. When flavor and feeling give
Neely a glimpse of someone’s inner self, she can customize her creations
to help that person celebrate love, overcome fear, even mourn a
devastating loss.

Maybe that’s why she feels the need to go home
to Millcreek Valley at a time when her life seems about to fall apart.
The bakery she opens in her hometown is perfect, intimate, just what
she’s always dreamed of—and yet, as she meets her new customers, Neely
has a sense of secrets, some dark, some perhaps with tempting
possibilities. A recurring flavor of alarming intensity signals to her
perfect palate a long-ago story that must be told.

Neely has always been able to help everyone else. Getting to the end of this story may be just what she needs to help herself.

The Art of Cake Therapy 

Marie
Antoinette, whose first language was actually German, either mis-spoke, was
poorly translated, or never actually said of the starving peasants, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche“ (“Let them eat brioche,” often
translated as “Let them eat cake.”)

But that
was the least of her troubles.

We may
not have the French Revolution, nor the shadow of the guillotine, like she did.

But we
do have job insecurity, fiscal cliffs, a shrinking middle class, a melting
polar ice cap, romantic interests who can’t commit, people we’d like to commit,
thankless domestic tasks, and the age-old question of “paper or plastic?”

We’re
stressed by things large and small.

So when
I was writing my debut novel The Cake
Therapist, I had an “aha” moment early on. What if my heroine could help
people solve their thorny life issues—with cake and flavor?

What if
Claire O’Neil Davis, who goes by “Neely,” could help her bakery customers and
wedding cake clients take charge with chocolate and coffee as the new year
begins. Get in the mood with blood orange and raspberry?  Lessen their grief with a little spice? Or
recognize their longing for home with pomegranate?

As Neely
says in The Cake Therapist, “there
was a flavor that explained you—even to yourself. A flavor whose truth you
recognized when you tasted it. A flavor that answered the question you didn’t
know you had.”

What if
cake flavors could help those who are doubtful, stuck in a rut, ending a
relationship, starting over, or not-so-simply stymied?

I
thought that would be great. So I created Neely, a talented pastry chef who
reads people as flavors. When she focuses on a wedding cake client, for
instance, then lets her intuition kick in, she senses a flavor. Every flavor is
the hyperlink to a feeling. And every feeling is the heart of someone’s story. Once
she has the story, she knows the flavors that will increase their well-being.

It can
be that simple. Don’t we all wish.

But real
life doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the story is more complicated.
Sometimes Neely only gets pieces of a story, and it takes a while for her to put
it all together. (That’s why writers
create flashbacks.)

Even as she
serves up ever-changing cake flavors that help her bakery customers move
through life, one flavor grows in intensity for Neely alone. A persistent and
increasing sourness alerts her to unfinished business, to anger and a long-ago
family tragedy that threatens to impact her first wedding client.

But then
an amazing strawberry cake with
the flavor of a sunny summer’s day
unlocks the past.

Yes,
good, made-from-scratch cake with wonderful flavor can do all of that.

Just ask
The Cake Therapist. Or try the recipe
and taste for yourself.

Thank
you Judith for writing this…I know I’m quite excited to read this and just might be trying some of the recipes myself, especially the strawberry cake. It looks delicious!!!