Hi friends, thank you so much for being here! It means a lot to me. If you enjoy my writing, I’d love it if you’d share A Little Something Sweet with the people you love. I also invite you to upgrade to a paid subscription, which gives you access to my Rom Coms Revisited movie club, exclusive recipes, and other subscribers-only content. Your support of my work allows me to keep creating here and elsewhere. I’m so grateful, xoxo.
You may not know this about me, but before I was The Sweet Feminist I had a tiny little food blog called Flours In Your Hair (cute, right?) where I taught myself to write recipes. Creating a cookbook has always been one of my big dreams. But prior to Baking by Feel, I really had no idea what that process entailed. Turns out it’s super long and complicated, with lots and lots of different steps. So this is part 1 (of however many parts it takes!) of the story of making my lil baby book.
Let’s start at the beginning. I started planning for this book in the middle years of The Sweet Feminist. At that time, I thought it would be something completely different - something much more related to the cakes. I had a general idea of what I was trying to do, but it was still very nebulous.
Now, in general, you can’t pitch to publishers without an agent. And since I had no idea how to get one, I googled it. And Google told me to send query letters to literary agencies. A query is typically an email that includes information about you and your future book, and sometimes actual book content/a proposal if you have it available. I worked off of internet examples, and drafted something I thought might work. Now, who to send those queries to? More googling. After several “I’m not taking on new clients” and many non-responses, I found an interested agent.
With her help, I wrote a proposal for that first idea and pitched it to publishers. And I got a whole lot of “yeah, no thanks”. Naively, I was surprised! Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t great for my self esteem. Rejection sucks under the best of circumstances, and it definitely sucked in those early-COVID unemployment days. I was big mad/sad for weeks. I baked a lot of brownies.
Eventually I came up with another idea - one that I liked even better. One that felt more like me. It’s a cliché, but it really was a lightbulb sort of moment. I was sitting on my couch and a thought popped in that went something like “Wait, I use baking to process my emotions all the time. What if there was a guide for that??”. I opened my laptop and typed out everything I could think of about the idea, stream of conscious style, until I ran out of steam. Here’s some of that brainstorm, pulled from ancient google docs:
Tiny break for context, in case you’re wondering where this sudden interest in emotions came from. During my COVID unemployment I was lucky enough to go to therapy for the first time. And through that therapy I realized that when it comes to emotions, I’m an intellectualizer. I thought that since I could understand my emotions and articulate them, that was the same as feeling as them. Turns out, it’s not! After some experimentation, I started noticing that it was easier for me to process my emotions when I was also doing something to engage my body. Something like walking, or playing with therapy dough, or baking.
OK back to the story. So, I wrote the proposal for Baking By Feel and my agent sent out letters. From those letters I got two bites, and then one offer. And then I realized I actually had to figure out how to write a book (!!).
part 2 coming soon!
some notable (and less notable) things
Book recommendation: Hannah Matthews’ You or Someone You Love - Reflections from an Abortion Doula is coming out 5/2 and is available for preorder now!
An eye-opening, transformative, and actionable journey through radical and compassionate community abortion care and support work: what it looks like, how each and every one of us can practice and incorporate it into our daily lives, and what we can imagine and build together in a post-Roe v. Wade United States.
Current Grinnell students: I’d love to see you at the workshop I’m hosting this week on campus! We’re making sour cream sugar cookies, talking about how to use baking as a way to process our emotions, and decorating Sweet Feminist-style cakes. It’ll be low pressure and fun!
Mifepristone will remain approved by the FDA for the time being!
Coming this Sunday 4/30: Rom Coms Revisited, She Devil (1989). Meryl Streep is the villain who lives in an all pink everything mansion!
ICYMI, Rom Coms Revisited is a new movie club for paid subscribers where we talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of your fave 90’s-early 2000s rom coms! Here’s the ones we’ve done so far:
My fave secret from this week:
Feedback request: what do you want to see more of in A Little Something Sweet? Let me know in the comments!
a recipe
This cake was designed to make someone fall in love with you (or make you fall in love with you). It’s a rich, deep, dark chocolate cake with a fluffy milk chocolate frosting. Bonus: it’s a single layer cake, so no need to mess with any filling or stacking. More time for making out, or whatever!
The secret ingredient? Love. Just kidding - it’s espresso powder. The amount we’re using won’t make the cake taste like coffee (but add some more if you’re into that!), it’s just there to amplify the chocolate flavor.
my current fave pic of Otie
xoxo,
your favorite becca
things that permanently live at the bottom of my posts:
Submit your secrets/sparkly moments here.
If you need help accessing abortion care, click here or here.
Grab a copy of my choose-your-own-adventure cookbook, Baking by Feel, here!
I seriously can’t wait to try out your book when I do it for my cookbook club! 🤍✨