A club and a cake

A couple of months ago, I was invited to join in on a newly forming book club. There are 6 of us that meet once a month to discuss our current book. So far I have really enjoyed the new friends I've made (I only knew 3 of the six from before) and the great books. I used to LOVE books when I was young. I would stay up so late reading and reading but then high school, college and laziness got in the way and I just stopped reading.

So Thursday was my month to host the book club and a neighbor had recommended the book The Help by Katheryn Stockett to me. I must say I loved this book and thought it was especially interesting because the setting is Jackson, MS in the 1960's. Clay's grandmother is from Canton, MS and Clay even lived in Jackson for a short while when he was very young. I didn't get any pics of the book club but I did get pics of the desssert I made. Several times the book mentions a caramel cake, and randomly enough Clay is obsessed with his Grannies caramel cake. So much so a few years back when we were visiting Grannie in Canton I copied down her recipe. I was always intimidated by it and never tried to make it. Book club was the perfect excuse to tackle this recipe.

The icing was the hardest part and while I'm sure the recipe makes perfect sense to Clay's Grannie, to me it might as well have been in Spanish. It mentions "boiling until a drop can be picked up out of cold water"??? What? So the first batch I boiled and boiled and dropped into water over and over again. Seriously I boiled that icing for like 1 hour waiting for like some kind of magic to happen and for it to scream "done" at me. It never happened and as soon as I took it off the stove it turned solid and rock hard. Whoops. Guess thats not what the recipe meant.



My second attempt was much better and Clay (and the rest of the book club) deemed the cake a success.






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Below are the books we've read so far and a few I've read on my own. I would recommend each of these books if you've not already read them and if you enjoy fiction.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik(didn't think I'd like this one and surprisingly did)
Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Kite Runner and A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini