Starting off the new year I wanted to begin a project that could blend my love for baking with my other lifelong passion: reading. Baked by the Book is my way of sharing everything I love about what I'm reading each month with a visual (and delicious) rendition of the book. I love making custom baked goods for people that know exactly what they want, but it's such a rewarding feeling to create your own designs and have them turn out just as you imagined.
This month my book of choice was Modern Love, a collection of essays featured weekly in a column of the New York Times. For years I've listened to the podcast versions of these essays on Spotify while driving to work and always ended up laughing or tearing up.
This month's book choice and baked rendition lined up just in time for my BluffCakes Galentine's party. The decorating process was fairly simple (compared to some designs I've spent HOURS on) and there's even a time lapse IGTV on my instagram!
Now... for the review!
Modern Love
If you have ever loved, been loved, been married, dated, or just love LOVE - this book is for you.
These 50 short 5 or so-page stories paint a mosaic of love that is wildly diverse, frequently sentimental, and ultimately very hopeful. Each of the tales explores a facet of relationships, including dating, lusting, coming together and breaking apart, winning and losing, marriage and divorce, having children and losing children, being a child and a parent, and death.
All the stories first appeared in a New York Times editorial column called Modern Love. Many of the authors are professional writers. Each piece is a personal story illustrating what the author learned about love from an experience, sometimes wonderful and other times tragic.
My take-away from this book is that love is diverse - it is expressed in our lives more ways than anyone could ever describe. This book is so wonderful and full of short vignettes about all kinds of love are endearing, unforgettable, tearjerking, painful, happy, sad, awkward and so much more packed into a thin paper back.
I highly recommend either reading the book, checking out the podcast OR you can now see a TV show version of a selection of the essays on Amazon Prime Video!
I'm Chloe Sexton, a home baker from Memphis, TN who loves to make cakes, cookies, cupcakes and more. Contact me at chloe@bluffcakes.com or on insta @bluffcakes if you have baking, blogging or other questions. You can order BluffCakes right here on the website!